“I must have the gold cloaks. The City Watch is two thousand strong, sworn to defend the castle, the city, and the king's peace.”

–George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce The King’s Peace, the third Chapter Pack in the Westeros cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game.

Eddard Stark has arrived at King’s Landing to serve as the Hand of the King, but even as knights travel from across Westeros to participate in the Tourney of the Hand, insidious characters gather in the shadows. The subtle intrigues of King’s Landing can prove dangerous to anyone, even under the protective banner of the king’s peace.

The King’s Peace is the third Chapter Pack in the Westeros cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, and it continues the cycle’s journey through the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire with memorable characters like Ser Rodrik Cassel, Ser Alliser Thorne, and Ser Gregor Clegane. Two new plots—one neutral and one loyal to House Baratheon—offer new deckbuilding opportunities. Finally, this Chapter Pack includes a brand-new agenda that’s sure to inspire entirely new types of decks.

The Lord of the Crossing

Within The King’s Peace Chapter Pack, you’ll find the first new agenda since the Core Set. This agenda offers you the support of House Frey and The Lord of the Crossing (The King’s Peace, 60). The Lord of the Crossing agenda reads, “During the first challenge you initiate each phase, each of your participating characters gets -1 STR. During the third challenge you initiate each phase, each of your participating characters gets +2 STR. If you win this challenge, gain 1 power for your faction.”

The Lord of the Crossing offers a powerful reward and can help you claim victory faster, but your entire deck must be built with the agenda in mind. The drawback of this agenda (lowered STR across your participating characters) happens immediately—when you make your first challenge. However, to gain the benefit, you must make three challenges during your challenges phase. This means that whenever you don’t make three challenges during the challenges phase, The Lord of the Crossing only hurts you, rather than helping you.

With that in mind, you must build your deck with the intent of making three challenges per challenges phase whenever possible. Of course, if you kneel all of your characters in order to make three challenges, you’ll have no defenders and your opponent will inevitably destroy you with or without the help of House Frey. One way to avoid kneeling too many characters is to use characters that either don’t kneel to attack or have ways to stand themselves. You could pair The Lord of the Crossing with Ser Jaime Lannister (Core Set, 87), Randyll Tarly (Core Set, 183) or Asha Greyjoy (Core Set, 67) for maximum results, especially in combination with a plot like A Storm of Swords (Core Set, 5) that allows you to make three challenges without having to make one challenge of each type.

The other primary way to ensure that you can consistently make three challenges every challenges phase is by having a large number of characters. The Night’s Watch certainly excels at marshaling a surplus of cheap, efficient characters, such as the Steward at the Wall (Core Set, 133), the Old Forest Hunter (Core Set, 131), and the Ranging Party (Core Set, 132). With Jon Snow (Core Set, 124) in play, attacking with even one of these characters can become a challenge your opponent can’t afford to ignore. A large number of Night’s Watch characters supported by Jon Snow could certainly be a way to take advantage of The Lord of the Crossing agenda. Then, when your opponent makes his counterattack, you can use Ser Alliser Thorne (The King's Peace, 45) to defend against military challenges and maintain your character base.You must be cautious, however. A well-timed Wildfire Assault (Core Set, 26) could destroy your character base.

The Lord of the Crossing naturally increases your power gain, but you might still want a way to quickly close out the game once you get close to fifteen power. To that end, you can include a new plot, A Tourney for the King (The King’s Peace, 59). This plot gives each of your Knight characters the renown keyword and the text, “Immune to opponents’ events.” If you’re able to marshal a significant amount of Knights, such as the Hedge Knight (The King’s Peace, 57) included in this expansion, A Tourney for the King can help you build atop the power from The Lord of the Crossing to quickly claim victory.

Join the Tourney

The Tourney for the Hand begins in King’s Landing, but even among this show of martial expertise, intrigue abounds. Join the combatants and summon your most loyal knights—in this expansion, each player chooses whether he will keep or break The King’s Peace.

Look for The King’s Peace at your local retailer in the first quarter of 2016!