Melee might just be my favourite way to play Thrones. The four-player variant really brings the scheming and plot twists of George R.R. Martin’s novels to the forefront of this already exceptional game, and it’s well worth your attention if you’ve not tried it before.

There are plenty of understandable reasons why many people don’t play as much melee as they might like. It’s harder to organise a four-player game than a two-player game, it takes longer (roughly 90 minutes per game), and so on. As a result, many players’ only exposure to melee might be one or two games over the course of a couple of years, grabbing their joust deck when someone spontaneously suggests melee and then not really understanding how to have a good time with the format.

This article is aimed at those people who have either never played melee before, or have done so very occasionally and are not sure what the fuss is about. There’s a really rewarding experience to be had in this format – so I want to help you get the best out of it.

I’ll be offering tips that cover both how to make your melee games really enjoyable and how to do well in them. Those two things overlap, for sure, but the former is the most important aspect and is what will keep you coming back for more multiplayer games.

My thanks to James Waumsley, who posted a similar article on cardgameDB two years ago that served as a broad inspiration for this. A great deal of what he said there remains as true today as it was then, but two years is a long time in an LCG (his post was made long before a melee restricted list was introduced, for example) so I felt that a fresh perspective could be helpful. For those seeking further tips, Wamma remains a wiser oracle on the subject than I and has the UK national melee champion’s title to prove it.

The most important thing to remember: Melee is not joust.

Sure, you’re still using the same set of cards and rules that you do in a two-player game of Thrones, but melee is a different beast in ways both subtle and stark. If you approach a game of melee exactly as you approach a game of joust, two things will happen: you won’t do very well and you won’t have very much fun.

What this simple point means is that you must be willing to challenge assumptions that you’ve made about how Thrones works from playing joust. If you’re open to that, you’ll be fine. This key point will permeate almost every other part of this article, so get on board with it.

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Melee is a conversation.

Melee feels a lot more like a board game than the head-to-head duel of joust. It’s much more social. If you don’t embrace this, it won’t work for you (and that’s fine! Just be aware).

In joust, you’ll get your head down, make decisions, do your challenges as you see fit and then sit back and see how your opponent responds. It’s a mostly silent battle of wits. In melee, it’s a conversation. Every part of the game (particularly the plot phase and the challenges phase) is up for debate. Nobody can stop you from making the decisions that you ultimately want to make, but you will be expected to talk about them and how they’re going to affect the game. And as much as I want to preach the gospel of melee, if this sounds like an insurmountable problem for you then you may want to turn back at this point.

If, as I hope, it does not, then let’s get down to business…

Build your deck differently.

Most joust decks typically aren’t good melee decks. For example, heavy military-focused decks or targeted-kill effects aren’t very good in melee. These things work in joust because they allow you to win challenges without much difficulty, closing the game through unopposed power. They’re bad in melee because they allow three players (two of whom aren’t you) to win challenges without much difficulty. They make you significantly more powerful than one player, but not much different to the other two – and, because you’re the one who spent your resources to hurt that one player, you’re actually helping your rivals by freeing them up to use their own resources more productively.

In melee, you’re going to want to prioritise effects that gain you power. The average game will end within two-to-four rounds, so you need to be able to close in that kind of time.

That might sound like a dedicated rush deck is your only option, but that’s not exactly true. Power is gained more quickly than you might expect in melee because of the title cards – rivalry is a straightforward way for most players to have a chance to gain two power per round. Most of the time, you will be able to negotiate your way towards claiming your rival bonus, particularly in the early rounds.

Rushy cards are all very good in melee, but a great many of them are restricted (more on that later). In a general sense, you should focus instead on identifying cards and tactics that can reliably gain you power, and then building a deck that can support them.

Bear in mind that you don’t want to be a target. If you build a deck that goes all out from the start and gains 10 power in the first round, that’s great, but only if you can be sure that you push to 15 in the second round because otherwise you can expect to be aggressively managed by your rivals.

It’s more valuable to be able to unexpectedly jump from 10 power to 15 than it is to straightforwardly jump from zero to 10. This makes effects that gain power from your hand particularly valuable, because they are harder for other players to point to as things that make you a threat – one player whom you know controls The Honeywine is more of an outward threat than a player who may or may not have a Daring Rescue in hand, for example.

Use the restricted list, even in casual play.

I mentioned that many rush cards are restricted in melee – this is important. The implementation of a melee restricted list in 2017 transformed the format from a mildly fun alternative to a truly vibrant and exciting game.

You might think that you don’t need to use the restricted list if you’re just going to casually build melee decks with your mates on a game night, but I strongly urge you to do so. Without the list, most games of melee simply come down to whomever wins initiative on round two.

The list, though arguably a little overdue for an update, makes it so that a wide variety of decks can perform well and win tables. As long as a player understands their deck, can read a game state and navigate the social game, they have the ability to succeed.

In addition, if you can, make sure that you play with four players. It’s comfortably the sweet spot to keep everyone involved and engaged without the game taking too long. Three-player tables are OK if you need to make up the numbers at a tournament, but if these occur then I would urge you to adopt the Stahleck house rule of removing the Crown Regent title and ignoring supports. Having any given player only being able to attack one of their only two opponents is not fun for anyone.

Five- and six-player games are only encouraged when you’re at Stahleck and it’s 2am.

Someone else is the threat.

This is why you need to speak up in melee – because the way that you win games is by other people not realising that you can win before it’s too late.

Having three opponents at the same time often means that, if people can see a clear path to your victory, they can collectively prevent it. So you need to make sure that they are more aware of each other’s proximity to victory than yours.

Never miss an opportunity to point out to the rest of the table how much power another player could gain by taking certain actions. You don’t have to worry about giving them ideas; trust me, they’ve seen it too. The more that your rivals are aware of what one of their number could do, the more likely that they are to obstruct each other instead of you. If drawing attention to a big power play makes that player too scared of reprisal to try it in the first place, then even better.

This is especially important because, the closer that any player gets to 15 power without actually reaching it, the more that the rest of the table is obliged to deal with them. Becoming a clear leader in a game of melee is bad for this reason; if you can’t close, you’re going to be a target. And you need other people to be the targets if you’re going keep those key characters on the board, or hide that key event in hand for when you need it most.

If someone else is pointing out why you should be the target, it’s up to you to explain why another player is more dangerous.

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Know when to shut up.

This is weird, because talking is very important in melee, but there will absolutely come a point at which you need to stop talking. Nobody likes feeling manipulated, and people will start getting suspicious if you keep hammering home the same point over and over again – why is it SO important to you that this one challenge goes there and not there? Try to anticipate the point at which people will turn around and ask why you care, and stop talking before you reach that point.

Make sure that you are part of the conversation, rather than overpowering the conversation. People will get annoyed with you if you don’t let them speak, or don’t let an argument go once everyone’s said their peace. And people who are annoyed at you will develop conscious and unconscious biases against being helpful to you.

If other people are talking about why another player is the threat, agree with them quietly (unless they’re the threat). Let them do the work for you. It’ll mean that you have more time before you need to shut up next time you need to explain why yet another person is the threat.

Don’t gang up on one player.

It’s important not to disrupt the balance of the board too much at a melee table. It might sound like an advantage to do so much damage to a player early on that they are never able to recover a board state – because, hey, that’s one fewer player that can beat you, right? But you need your rivals to be healthy enough to block each other. If one player is unable to resist challenges, any of the rest of you can whale on them for huge power gain, and you can’t guarantee that it won’t be one of your rivals who exploits that.

Similarly, the nature of the title system means that you could find yourself supporting (unable to attack) the player most likely to close out the game. If one of the remaining two opponents doesn’t have the board state to attack that player, suddenly it’s looking a lot less likely that the three of you can prevent this imminent defeat.

The more players there are who are capable of defending against a player who is threatening victory, the less likely it is that you’ll have to be the one sacrificing your ability to make gains in order to mount that defence.

In large part, success in melee comes from getting other players to do what you want. If you anger a player by targeting them disproportionately, they may be less inclined to help you later even if they are in a position to do so.

This doesn’t necessarily apply only to the challenges phase, either. In the plot phase, for example, someone might flip Varys’s Riddle while someone else flips Summer Harvest. In that scenario, players could conspire to leave the Harvest player stuck on just two gold. It might be funny, yes, but it’s also likely a harsher penalty than is healthy for the table. Instead, maybe consider bargaining that player into choosing Riddle as the target for their Harvest instead of that Late Summer Feast at the other end of the table…

Evaluate cards differently to how you would for joust.

Recommending specific cards to use or decks to build isn’t the primary purpose of this article, but I would like to highlight a small handful of staple melee cards and cards that are good examples of melee deckbuilding principles. Hopefully you’ll find them to be useful inspiration in constructing your own deck.

First up is The Dragon’s Tail. Put simply, I don’t leave home without this card in melee. In joust, this is card disadvantage against your single opponent so only really sees play in mill decks – but in melee, it’s easier to get more value. Firstly, games last for fewer rounds on average than joust so the benefit to draw more of your deck in that shorter time is intensified. Secondly, this card only chooses one opponent, rather than each opponent, so can be a simple but valuable bargaining tool – for example, asking the Master of Whisperers not to resolve intrigue claim against you in exchange for two cards. Whenever I cut this card down from 3x in a melee deck, I end up regretting it.

Arguably the single most commonly played card in melee is The Kingsroad, which is a must-include at 3x no matter what the rest of your economy base looks like. Burst economy in a shorter game is already excellent, but the initiative boost can be game-winning by itself.

Cards that can affect your opponents’ cards in a positive way can be just as helpful as ones that hurt them. Core Set Margaery Tyrell, for instance, remains very influential in melee as she can tip the balance in challenges in which you’re not even participating – and often, you will care about those every bit as much as your own challenges. A newer version of a similar idea is Arbor Queen, which is in some ways even better in melee as you can run it effectively in a mono-faction Tyrell build and influence all manner of challenges.

You’ll also want to think about your plot deck differently. Unlike in joust, you are very unlikely to need to flip all seven (or more) of your plots in any given game of melee, so you have the option to be more flexible in what you can include. For example, a card like Duel has never really found its place in joust because it can be amazing in one matchup and awful in another. In melee, though, this is a commonly seen card as it can control problem characters on multiple opponents’ boards – it’s very unlikely that you’ll come across a table where there aren’t sufficient targets. And if there’s not a good time to flip it, you don’t have to.

Your plot deck should include a suitable opener (many of the common joust openers are similarly solid in melee, but there is room for creativity). Perhaps most crucially, you should include an intended closing plot, and also probably a backup closer in case you are stymied in some way. The rest is up to you, and the knowledge that you’ll only play them when you need to means that you can include some interesting flex options. Varys’s Riddle is typically a great card to have up your sleeve for plot-phase shenanigans, but the likes of Your King Commands It, The First Snow of Winter, The Annals of Castle Black, A Game of Thrones and much, much more can be very effective when circumstances are suitable.

Don’t forget to think about titles.

Title cards are the only things that exist in melee but not joust, and they’re appropriately important. You want to think about them a lot – which abilities work best with your deck, which titles your opponents are likely to choose, and what your choice of title will say about you to the other players.

There are three key aspects to a title. First is a support, i.e. someone you cannot attack. If you know that you need to be able to go after a certain player, try to anticipate which title they will or have already chosen and avoid taking one that supports it. You may also want to try to pick a title that will be supported by a player against whom you don’t think that you can defend.

The second is a title’s rivals. The rivals mechanic is what introduces enough power into a game of melee to keep it ticking along at the right pace, and you want to make sure that you keep up with your opponents by getting your two counts of rivals power per round… usually. Two players trading challenges for mutual rivals bonuses is a common sight. Not only do you want to pick titles that you think have a good chance of having two rivals, you may also want to avoid being rivals with certain other titles (Master of Ships, for example).

The third is the title’s special ability. You might think that the Crown Regent is a bad choice because I just explained that rivals power is important, but consider the implications of a redirected challenge. If you’re trying to close a game with a key challenge, you have to be able to win it against two different opponents if the Crown Regent is at the table. This powerful control effect can protect you when you need it or hold up a rival when they’re in danger of winning, and often you may be tempted to take it just so that nobody else can do so.

Other titles are also very valuable for their abilities. Early on, you’ll find the Master of Laws and Coin being chosen quickly, as players seek extra draw and money to set up their boards and prepare the foundations to close. Later in the game, the Hand of the King becomes highly coveted for its capacity to manufacture power-gain. In the right hands, Master of Whispers can be deadly (Lannister in particular enjoys it in combination with Queen Cersei or Trial By Combat), and as of recently the Free Folk agenda can use Master of Ships to turn a high-claim military challenge into a swing of three power.

Initiative is important.

Going first is great in melee if you want control over titles, or if you want to close the game before anyone else has the chance to win.

However, if you can’t close, going first can be dangerous. On the first turn, if nobody has any power and you go first to rake in four or five, guess what: you’re going to be taking a disproportionate number of challenges on defence, because people can actually take claim against you. Going first gives you more opportunities to look like the threat, and nobody wants that. In many games, the first player on the first round may simply opt to just pass their challenges rather than kneel out their board and become a target.

Then again, maybe you have some tech in your deck that rewards you for going first. Only you can know what you need, but what’s not up for debate is that winning initiative is always valuable in melee. It should always be a consideration in your plot choices.

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Make deals. Only break them if you have to.

We’ve already discussed how you’ll be in constant conversation with your opponents. Part of that will be making deals – ‘let’s trade unopposed challenges, which challenge would you be most okay with losing?’, for example. Generally speaking, you should probably avoid making a deal too complicated – just a simple ‘you do this for me, I’ll do this for you’.

Once you’ve made a deal, if you feel like you’re going to want to make other deals in the future, keep your word. You want to appear cooperative and as trustworthy as could be reasonably expected, so that people will do you favours both consciously and unconsciously. If there is an exception to this rule, it is that you should break your word if keeping it would guarantee someone else the win. Depending on your opponents, the opposite exception (break your word if it will guarantee you the win then and there) may be accepted, but some players might see this as a reason not to make deals with you in future games.

If someone breaks a deal with you, understand that it’s just a game and try not to take it personally (as long as they are doing it in that same spirit). If breaking their word hasn’t even achieved very much in terms of deciding the result of the game, make a mental note that they may not be very good at the whole deal-making thing and consider whether it’s worth it the next time that they offer you something.

Similarly, if you are breaking a deal with someone, make your reasoning as clear as possible. This can be as simple as immediately reaching 15 power and offering a slightly apologetic handshake, or if you broke a deal to stop somebody else from profiting too much, explain how that was the case. If you can get your deal partner to agree that the deal should no longer be honoured before you irrevocably break it yourself, then all the better.

Of course, circumstances change during the game and you may find yourself needing to renegotiate. If you agree with one player to allow a challenge through unopposed against you, and then other players do some serious damage to you in the meantime before you can deliver on your promise, you may need to argue your case with your partner. Good players will respect the need to keep the board balanced and should be open to altering the deal to less catastrophic terms.

Everyone needs to be on board.

Melee is fun when all of the players involved are taking it seriously. Note that this doesn’t have to mean that everyone is being ultra-competitive – in fact, I’d argue that casual melee is the best kind of melee – just that everyone is committed to embracing the format and having a fun game together.

If one player at the table doesn’t really want to play and doesn’t do their part to make it a good game, it won’t be any fun. If one player thinks melee is stupid so brings a grief deck that has no plan of its own to actually win, it won’t be any fun. (That’s not to say that irritating, chokey, board-wipey decks aren’t valid choices, just that they need to be doing it as part of a plan to win, not just to troll everyone.)

If one player overreacts to being the target of a challenge on round one and then spends the rest of the game bearing a grudge and focusing purely on taking revenge on the initiating player, the balance of the table will crumble and the game won’t be any fun.

This all might seem obvious but issues like these are what have made plenty of players in the past try one game of melee, have it go badly, and then never give it a chance again. If this has happened to you, you have my assurance that it gets much better at the right table. If you plan on organising a game of melee, do your utmost to ensure that everyone’s on the same page.

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Some of my favourite memories of Thrones come from playing melee. If you’ve yet to experience the joy of it, then I hope the above tips will help you to get the most out of it!

Special thanks to Wamma (again) and Joe Zimmer for their help in refining this guide. Hello to Matt Slade.