So you’re eager to play and you’ve picked a faction. Now what? Well, if you’re playing online then the sky is the limit and you can try out anything you want. If you’re planning to play with physical models at the store, then odds are good that you’re going to get a starter set, since it gets you the most models for your money, and you’ll work up from there. But what do you want to work towards?
Three NCUs
The first thing you’ll want to do is pick out three NCUs. For this reason, almost no matter what army you choose to play, you’ll see people recommending that you buy a “hero box” as your second purchase, since it expands the number of NCUs you can pick from. You want three NCUs because control of the Tactics Board is a big deal.
There are five places you can normally play an NCU on the board, and four of them are really, really good. So good, in fact, that if you get free reign to play the board however you want, you can easily beat an army that didn’t take NCUs. It gives you access to more maneuvers, more attacks, more cards, and healing, which are all things that’ll be the difference between your men living and dying.
Now what if you take only two NCUs? Well, you can do that, but I wouldn’t build lists like that without playing the game enough to fully understand what you’re surrendering that way. If you know what you’re giving up and you feel it’s worth it for the list, then okay, but it’s incredibly rare that any combat units or attachments are going to be more efficient than an NCU.
NCU abilities tend to be force multipliers. Take Tywin, for example: if you get an enemy on the ropes, your opponent is liable to want to retreat with it or heal it, but if you use Tywin’s ability before you can, you can turn that unit into scrambled eggs and clinch the kill. Tywin acts simply at the start of any Turn, including your opponent’s turn, and that gives you flexibility that a Combat Unit just doesn’t possess – believe me, it’s worth it.
And even when an NCU just has somewhat basic abilities, if you have three of them then it pressures your opponent to try to take Tactics Zones earlier so that you can’t wall them out. If you only have two NCUs and you play them both, your opponent will now see that – hey! You’re not going to block them on any zone that’s still open! And that’s bad, because if you’re leaving open even one important zone, you’re giving your opponent the chance to stall and grab that Zone’s effects whenever it’s most beneficial to them. The pressure from three NCUs is a psychological part of the game that makes your opponent more willing to accept playing the zones at less ideal times.
It’s hard to fully appreciate how much stronger it is to use three NCUs compared to two without a little experience and having beaten down a two NCU list a few times. Once you get it, though, and your opponent uses his second turn to exhaust both Zones he can on the board, you’ll really appreciate how much breathing room you’re left with to punish him with your own two NCUs. Never let your opponent have those free Zone claims.
Which NCU is Best for Me?
This is a broad question, and it’s a difficult one to answer. The simplest way of putting it is that you want NCUs with as few conditional requirements as possible. That is, an NCU that can be played easily and consistently is naturally going to be a lot more reliable than an NCU who’s asking you to jump through hoops and say the alphabet backwards before they cooperate.
Qyburn here is a good example of an NCU with a lot of uncertainty about what he’s going to do. He’s actually not the worst NCU and can sometimes be valuable if he pushes an enemy away from claiming a zone, or if you can exploit the Tokens he places, but it’s worth considering that he asks you to wait for an enemy NCU to activate, then he makes you name two Zones, and your opponent then gets to decide which effect they’d like to honor – if there are three Zones open, they might pick the third, and it’s possible they didn’t need the other two Zones anyway.
As an example, I once played a game against a player who invoked Qyburn on me at the start of my turn. He told me not to take Wealth or Swords, because I could take a free attack with either Zone using my own abilities, so I instead took the Horse and used it to maneuver to his unit’s flank, where it couldn’t see me and was now a sitting duck for me to charge. Incidentally, the Horse was what I wanted in the first place. Not every Qyburn play is going to be a miscalculation like that, but you need good game knowledge to use an NCU like Qyburn, so these complicated powers that ask for many assessments are not going to work well if you’re new to the game and don’t know how to make those assessments. If we’re being frank, NCUs like Qybrun aren’t especially great for experienced players either, but you will at least understand when and how they can be used.
Go for stuff like Tywin. At the start of the turn – bang. His ability fires. In Tywin’s case, all he does is hurt the enemy, so it’s easy to find a place to put the effects. On the enemy, obviously. When you’re new, you may not know which enemy is the best one to target, and that’s okay! That’s part of learning, but these basic, almost elementary abilities are almost always going to have a greater skill ceiling because they’re so reliable, and they always make a positive difference.
Pycelle is another good example of a straight-forward NCU. If you can look at it, understand it without scratching your brain too much even as a new player, and know it’s going to work 100% of the time, you’re probably looking at a tournament-viable NCU. As a rule, being clear and simple is almost always the same as being good.
Roose here follows the rule of being simple and easy to understand, at a glance, but he’s actually one of the worse options you can go for, so there are some exceptions. His problem has nothing to do with how easy he is to use however.
Avoid Things that Specialize in Panic
Roose’s ability to lay down Panic tokens is easy and simple, so what gives? Why is he not a good NCU? Well, he’s actually not simple, and it’s because there’s a bunch of math behind ASOIAF’s Panic mechanics. The way it works is, you roll 2d6 and you’re trying to roll equal to or above your unit’s morale. Where you run into trouble is, 2d6 is technically what you’re call a “bell curve”, but…
The statistical distribution for these results is not so much a “curve” as it is a pyramid. All the rolls concentrate mostly around 7, but the average morale for all units is probably close to 6+. The average morale for units weighted according to their actual usage is 5+, and it’s not at all rare to see units with 4+ because popular commanders like Stannis or Drogo have Iron Resolve.
So what you have when dealing with Panic is a really clunky statistical distribution that isn’t curving well and that offers kind of a lot of variance in results. Unless you can lower a unit’s morale to 8+, there’s a more than 50% chance of the unit saving its Panic check. The lack of smooth curve means that a 5+ morale isn’t ironclad because the dice can still swing pretty wildly to both ends of the spectrum, but it also means that lowering an enemy’s morale significantly isn’t very ironclad either.
Typically, if a unit is investing really heavily into causing Panic, it’s giving something up or expending limited resources to do so.
The Lannisters, for example, could really knock a unit’s Morale score down to almost nothing if the stars align and all the conditions of their Panic effects are in place (yet needing the conditions are a red flag, because you can’t always have them), but even if you can drop a unit to 10+ morale, that statistical curve isn’t curvy, and there’s an 17% chance the opponent will roll a 10 or higher. So imagine you’ve paid for a unit or spent a bunch of points for the ability to cause Panic tests at 10+ morale, but 17% of your attempts are no-joy. That is, when the opponent passes the test, these effects do nothing, and all those resources are thrown away. Hear Me Roar is discarded regardless of the outcome.
Getting your opponent to a 10+ is plainly a bit of a best-case scenario with Panic abilities. More typically, you’ll count your blessings to lower them to an 8+. That doesn’t mean you can’t use Panic-based abilities, but they’re harder to utilize and are extremely circumstantial. There are some units on which they generally won’t work at all, such as dragons, wolves, or Varamyr’s animals. Some abilities will reduce the likelihood of success and the damage caused by Panic. Some commanders have cards that can block Panic Tests outright, ensuring their effects fail frequently even on vulnerable units. Then to make it all worse, plenty of abilities can react to a Panic Test, allowing the enemy to heal wounds, hurt your units, or otherwise grow stronger because of the tests.
Until you’re familiar with all of those units and abilities, it can be an uphill battle to use Panic mechanics or anything specialized into Panic – and there’s not much you can do, skill-wise, to overcome the statistical disadvantage. To play units like that, you need to understand which units are likely to fail Panic Tests, and which are likely to pass, then focus the Panic Tests on the units that are more liable to fail if there even are any in your opponent’s army.
Favor Speed, Understand Defense
First starting off, a lot of players tend to gravitate towards defensive units. Something with good armor is more liable to forgive a mistake and give you a chance to turn things around, but sadly, purely defensive units are often some of the game’s worst.
The Lannister Guardsmen are a good example of something that seems to get almost worshipped by inexperienced players, but that rarely sees any play from experienced players. The reason is because it’s trying to reward the mistake of leaving the unit exposed. When this unit gets hit, your opponent has to take a Panic Test, and if they fail it, they get absolutely blasted with potentially six wounds.
Thinking it’s clever, new players put an Assault Vet in this unit. The Assault Vet makes the test more likely to fail and adds another wound to the test.
And then they’ll use Joffrey too, so now if you attack those Guardsmen, you’ll be really in trouble! You better not do it! So… what if the opponent just doesn’t attack? Well, then you’d have spent 11 points on a combo that encouraged your opponent to kill one of your other units, which is not necessarily a net gain for you unless you had a very high-level strategy behind that. If your opponent kills another unit, that other unit is still worth Victory Points, and it’s not necessarily detrimental to them. In fact, you can count on your opponent to always be doing whatever is most strategically reasonable from their own perspective, so the only reason they would attack your Lannister Guardsmen is if they had no idea what was going to happen, or…
They have an ability that can just block the Guardsmen’s ability, so it doesn’t matter. Zorses are an uncommon example of this, but there are plenty of others, and the Panic-based aspect of the Guardsmen places them in the territory of being useless against high morale enemies or against cards that will auto-pass the test. Once the Guardsmen are stripped of their defensive ability, what do they have? Nothing.
Because of their slow 4″ movement, they have a hard time repositioning or supporting other units if the enemy is being uncooperative – and the enemy is always uncooperative. Their poor attack profile means they’ll lose fights with most enemies. Their poor morale means they aren’t as tough as they look and can fall apart if even one wound gets through.
A unit that can’t proactively defend itself is not a “defensive” unit. Units like this do maybe perish more slowly, and that can be an advantage sometimes, but it’s not as keen an advantage as it seems by its first glance. Meanwhile, these Zorses are ironically better at playing defense than the Guardsmen are. Because of their high maneuverability, they can angle themselves around to the opponent’s flanks or even the rear, and that will cause the opponent not to press forward as much – they may castle up defensively for a countercharge, and changing your opponent’s behavior to be more passive can help you win games. Using units that are passive to start with, which can’t be used offensively, places you on the backfoot.
What Guardsmen are is a security guard. A mall cop. They’re not licensed to do anything to anyone, and aren’t really trained to, either. You sit them on an objective so that there are warm bodies there and your enemy can’t be there, and once an enemy gets to them, they will die. Guardsmen make mediocre mall cops – they’re actually not even the best unit for it within the Lannister army – but there are quite a few examples of very expensive mall cops that fundamentally only die more slowly and don’t actually defend. It’s almost always a bad idea to throw more points after passive defenses such as the Guardsmen.
Tully Sworn Shields are another good example of this kind of unit that specializes in dying more slowly, but not actually defending. They can take quite a few hits if your opponent doesn’t know what they are nor how they work, but once an opponent is familiar with them, they’ll know they need to get around the Order somehow or just shoot them to shreds with archers. Neither of those things are difficult to do.
The Rose Knights are a very borderline example of a unit that specializes in dying slower. They are one of the best “die slower” units in the game, so new players tend to love them, but their slow speed of 4″ gives them all the same trouble the Lannister Guardsmen had with not being able to get where they belong on time. As a result, enemies can skate around the outside of their threat range with shocking ease, and archers are once again a terrible menace.
The best defenders will appear something like the Lannister Halberdiers, above. Though they don’t have the 3+ saves of the “die slower” specialists, they don’t lose attack power when dropping from three to two ranks, and their average speed of 5″ means they aren’t going to have a hard time catching anything if they need to play support. They also will have an easier time retreating if they’re over their heads, and “Set for Charge” is an effective deterrent ability. Blocking hits is fine, but a good offense is a better defense than any passive alternative.
Show Tower Spearmen, who have similar characteristics to the Lannister Halberdiers, are probably one of the most elite defenders in the game and do a great job of holding the line, especially once you factor in the healing or defensive support from NCUs and attachments. They’re not forced to give up speed, and they defend by attacking – again, while blocking hits is nice, you also reduce the number of hits the enemy can inflict if their men die on impact with your forces.
Maneuverability, as mentioned with the Zorses, is also a major form of defense. Partly because you can compel your opponent to play less aggressively when they know something as dangerous as a Screamer could countercharge them, but also because high maneuverability can allow you to reach an enemy’s flank or rear. If a unit cannot see you, they cannot charge you, and evading attacks completely is better than merely dying slower.
Cavalry project an entire radius of defense. If you have a strong cavalry unit that hasn’t activated, your opponent won’t want to move their troops close enough to get sacked by it. If they manage to get on your flank, the cavalry can rush to save the endangered units. Many players will use a pure Dothroki army in competitive tournament games because a list of all cavalry, even though they’re only 5+ saves, is very hard to outmaneuver and can’t be taken advantage of with simple, dirty tricks. Always defend yourself, always have at least one unit of cavalry.
Hire Security Guards
You won’t have the points to get everything you want! Luckily, not everything you buy will be in the fray all the time, so you can save points by buying cheap security guards. The Lannister Halberdiers from earlier are a great example for this, because they’re a very affordable five points in cost, and because they can defend themselves, most enemies will leave them alone if they’ve got bigger fish to fry. You also need to leave units sitting on objectives to score points off of them, so a few cheaper soldiers holding down the fort is a good idea.
Some commanders have cards like this who will let you transfer the action of your security guards to a more important and more assault-worthy unit.
Other commanders can be placed in your security units, and they can allow your elite forces to take attacks in their place, which is even better.
If you’re not using a commander like that, then a cheaper unit can be a good place to park an attachment who provides benefits to your army, or maluses to the enemy. They become a helpful support unit rather than someone scrapping it out on the front lines.
The Drowned Men are one of the better examples of a cheap unit that won’t do its own fighting, but who can sit on an objective and keep the rest of your army alive. You can score points by killing a unit, and you can score points by holding an important spot on the field. By holding that spot and supporting the men doing the actual killing, you can obtain the best of both worlds. Don’t get caught up trying to fill every unit slot with something elite. It’s a huge waste of points to leave your expensive knights babysitting a dragon egg in the middle of nowhere.
Archers Apply Pressure
If your opponent gets into a good position on a forward objective, they might castle up around it and make themselves very hard to remove from there. Although it’s possible to build lists without archers, and it is done, as a newer player it’s probably a good idea to have long range units to get out of exactly this type of jam.
Crossbows may notably not be quite as strong when attacking as the most elite melee units, but they perform their attacks from relative safety and can choose any target within range. That means that unless your archers get caught out, they should be able to deal harm to someone every single round, if not multiple times. Are you melee units not in a good position to make use of a free attack? That’s okay, your archers often will be.
Your opponent won’t want to simply sit there and take it. If they try to put up a defensive formation and wait you out to win on score alone, begin shooting them. If you happen to get in a good defensive formation, then use your archers to shoot back and don’t let that pressure be unilateral.
Focus On Basics, Skill Counts for More Than Luck
There are unlucky rolls – this is a dice game. I’ve personally seen at least two games now where somebody went to shoot with their crossbows and had all six dice turn up as ones. The odds of that happening were terrible, but it does happen! One of those people was me.
But you’ll win and lose a lot more often based on where your units were positioned and how you used your NCUs. You can also tamp down on luck-based losses by avoiding units with a bunch of conditional statements, or by avoiding Panic-based abilities, as was mentioned above. Some armies have a steeper learning curve – the Martells are a great example of that – and you might lose a few more games to start with if your tools need more game knowledge to understand, but hang in there! It’s a surprisingly balanced game, and once you get the hang of it every army has its paths to victory.