Let’s be honest here, Game of Thrones as a setting, as a franchise as, a design space for games is just an awesome place. The books and show have made so many fans world wide that there are plenty of people looking for more, but for those in the table top community you know that this franchise has also produced some of the best table top games in the market today.
You have the Game of Thrones board game which is just amazing, recently getting its own digital version. You have the Game of Thrones living card game, another smash hit in my book and now we have Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game, a new rank and file mini game adaptation. While I reserve judgement to an extent with this first impressions article as my experience with the game is limited to a few games, as my first impressions will indicate, I’m very excited about this game. There are some very good reasons for miniature gamers to take notice and today we are going to talk about this lovely game a bit from the perspective of a newbie.
Evolving Modern Miniature Games
There are many notable features in Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game that modern miniature gamers will appreciate and find familiar, in fact the game improves on many modern staples of the genre.
These improvements where born out of what I believe to be something of a golden age in the world of miniature games. There have been a metric ton of amazing mini games in the last few years and the hits just keep on coming. It all kind of started with Fantasy Flight Games who took the approach that miniature games don’t have to be complicated, that they don’t need a 400 page rulebooks and special army books and through that approach FFG produced hits like Star Wars X-Wing, Armada and Legion. This has triggered miniature game makers to re-asses the classic exception based designs and really changed the face of how miniature games are made and released. An evolution to design was started and games have been benefiting from and evolving ever since, after decades of stagnation.
Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game is among the latest of games to take advantage of this evolution and what can be said about this game is that like many modern mini games, its VERY easy to get into.
For starters the rulebook is more of a pamphlet and the rules are crystal clear with a dependable, structured core rule system that you can rely on. This has become the norm in good miniature game designs. This makes the game very approachable, very easy to teach and it really clears out that elitism that has for so long been associate with miniature gaming. SoIF didn’t invent this concept but it takes full advantage of it. It evolves it further by providing living documentation and an officially supported app to ensure players always have the latest rules and unit errata. This allows them to make changes to the game as they see fit without the frustration of our books and game material going “out of date” which is still a problem even in many modern mini games.
The next thing to note is that SoIF miniatures come pre-assembled and I can’t say enough about how that opens the world of miniature gaming up. The game assumes that its meant to be played, that it’s not a hobby that occasionally masquerades as a game, but that its an awesome game first, which you may or may not care to also make a hobby.
I know that this is controversial to say but for me personally if your game comes on a sprue, its an automatic no from me, nothing else about the game matters to me. I want to play these games, if I have to spend 20 hours gluing shit together you already lost me and I believe a lot of that elitism persona of the genre comes from this assumed hobby expectation. SoIF takes this a step further by not requiring any assembly of any kind, compared to many games like Star Wars Legion for example where while you don’t have to deal with sprues, you will still need to super glue stuff to play. Making each army a specific color so they are easy to tell apart on the board further illustrates the fact that SoIF is a game first and a hobby second, as it should be in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy painting mini’s to some degree, but I don’t want to be forced to if I’m busy and have assembly block my playing the game. I have plenty of miniature games on my shelf I have never played because they are still in sprues.
Another modernization I think is worth noting is that starter boxes come with ready to play and moderately competitive armies. I can’t express enough the disappointment of getting a new miniature game with a starter box only to find out that my game is still technically incomplete and what I have is not an army, but a demo of the game or worse, the game comes with the built in assumption that you will buy two starter/core sets. I hated this with X-Wing, I hated it with Armada, its literarily the reason I don’t play Legion (after buying two core sets I STILL don’t have a complete army).
Finally and I think this is fairly significant albeit minor thing, but even in the starter set you have quite a few list building options, in particular considering it is in fact a starter set. Typically starter sets are not only very limited, but there is a pre-built army in it and there is no customization or flexibility in list building. With SoIF there are choices to be made, variations to be had and I think this is a great thing. It gives you a taste of what is to come and that helps to encourage you to expand your army.
At The Table
I think that SoIF is one of those games where you can easily comprehend the rules, but there is tremendous depth in how those rules are applied to the strategic and tactical component of the game. The game is a bit deceptive in this regard, it seems like a simple game, but is almost overwhelmingly deep to the point that it can very quickly become a little intimidating.
This is a game that is extremely sensitive to tactical and strategic mistakes at the same time. Where you position your units during deployment is critical, where you position them at the end of the first round can be game changing. Make one mistake and it can cost you the match. This is a game where you can be wiped off the board in a single round and it does happen and its not because of the dice.
As such I think this game despite having a very minimal learning curve for the rules has an extremely steep learning curve for becoming even marginally competitive. There is just so much subtle things in this game that you have to remember and their are so many ways units, actions and effects can have on the game that it can feel almost impossible to keep it all in your head. Things can swing on a dime because you forgot that your opponent has some commander who has an order that lets him make an extra attack or that archer units when they shoot can shift 2 inches, or that your player has a hand of cards that can let him break various rules in the game, or that the NCU (more on that later) has some special ability that stops you from doing something you had been planning for with one of your units.
It actually reminds me a bit of games like Magic: The Gathering where if you have a high level of expertise, knowledge about the game, about the cards, about the effects, you become almost super humanly good against people who don’t have that knowledge, because you can anticipate and plan around the activities of your opponent. This isn’t a game where you can look at the board, create a strategy and execute it. You need to know in great detail every inch of what your opponents units can do, all the possibilities of his hidden hand of tactic cards, the many ways effects can combine and the subtle timing of effects that can trigger unique and devastating combinations.
These things take time and practice to learn well and I would argue that this is a game that you not only must learn how to play, but you must study if you have any hope of ever winning a match.
What this does for the game is two fold. On the one hand it can be frustrating because part of the learning process is losing, badly and often. It takes time to really pick up many of the subtle elements of the game and that can feel like a bit of a turn off as you learn the game through failure. You come to realize the rules are simple and fun, but that the strategy of the game has so many layers that this ups the stakes on the learning curve front a great deal.
On the bright side of things however, a game that challenges players, takes time to learn to play well, ultimately gives you a reason to keep playing. A game that has a basic strategy that all players work out ends up being a game about list building and who rolls dice the best, where there is no expertise beyond the basics of the game and it all boils down to list vs. list and dice vs. dice. I see a lot of games like this and they tend to lose their energy in our groups as the conversations shift from “how can I improve my strategy” to “My army sucks because my units aren’t as good/cost effective as my opponents”. The conversation essentially shifts to discussions about what is and isn’t balanced, because there are no more avenues from the perspective of strategic play. SoIF does not have that problem, which is not to say that there aren’t some balance issues here and there, but “how you use units” matters a lot more than “how good the units are” and its very easy to prematurely judge a unit in the hands of inexperienced players.
That is not to disregard a conversation about balance, but often a unit may feel unbalanced because your not using it right and that is a very different conversation.
The result of all this is a game that is deeply tactical and strategic, a game you can study, really sink your teeth into. You will drive yourself crazy thinking about the different effective ways to use your units and your cards, but beyond that because the game comes with a lot of different “game modes”, aka scenarios, each more unique then the next, there isn’t this “one list to rule them all” kind of thing in the game. You build your list, but no matter what you build, every scenario is going to create unique challenges for that list and your always going to have advantages and disadvantages going into every match as a result. The same list that gets completely crushed in one scenario may totally dominate in another.
My impression so far about the game play is that, I’m largely confused. I’m in that newbie zone still and I feel like I lose matches, not because I roll dice badly (though I often do) or because my army is shit but because very clearly and very obviously I make a lot of tactical and strategic mistakes. I can see that with every match I improve dramatically and really the conditions haven’t changed, but how I see the game has. This to me is as a whole, purely positive. I see a lot of potential in the game and as I play more matches, I’m eager to learn and play even more. This is a good place to be in a miniature game.
The Details of The Targaryen Army
The army I chose is the Targaryen army, it was a rather unplanned choice, I largely made it based on theme and maybe a bit because I knew at some point I would be getting some dragons which I thought was cool. I did not investigate the army nor chose it as a result of anything specific about how it would play.
The Targaryen army, at least as its represented in the starter set is a very fast moving, hard hitting cavalry army, a sort of glass cannon driven by hit and run tactics. My experience with them so far has been that it seems to lean a lot more on positioning and use of cards to be successful, though an argument could be made that all armies and really the game as a whole is about position and timing of card play.
There are some really interesting units, some I would argue are just amazing while others, even with my minimal knowledge of the game I recognize as absolute shit. So its a bit of a mixed bag, but there is plenty of room for adaptation and some really great army lists can be formed even with just the starter set.
I will talk a bit about the different units in the starter set here just to give you a feel for the army, but it suffices to say some of this conversation might not make sense unless you know the game rules and I will make that assumption here (that you know the rules of the game).
Jorah Mormon The Wandering Knight
First up is Jorah Mormont, The Wandering Knight which I start with only because there should be so little to say about this unit, yet I will say a lot anyway because he was one of my favorite Song of Ice and Fire characters. Jorah is, by no stretch of the imagination the worst unit in the Targaryen army and arguably in the whole game. It almost feels like a misprint its so bad.
The main problem is the cost of this unit, not visible in the picture here, but at 3 points, this unit simply doesn’t earn its point value, not even close. Scout Openings is a strangely tone def ability in a game that is so well designed, a short range ability you are not likely to get more than 1 use of if you’re lucky. Jorah is very vulnerable because of having only 2 health in particular to the many instant wound abilities of NCU’s and card effects. An argument could be made to use him for the extra activation, but you may very well never see an activation with Jorah thanks to this unique vulnerability. You essentially are adding a unit to your army list that almost assures your opponent will get a free victory point, it just doesn’t make sense to pay 3 army points for that privilege.
You can get a lot of mileage out of the Targaryen army for 3 points, investing it in Jorah is a terrible use of such a limited resource.
The frustrating part for me is that his ability and setup just does not fit within the game, within the setting or within the Targaryen army. Jorah from a story perspective was a volunteer serving Daenerys, while also being one of the tougher characters in the story surviving all sorts of crazy stuff. For him to be weak and expensive is a tragic misreading of the character.
Ok I have said my peace, moving on.
Dothraki Screamers
These guys are the staple of the Targaryen starter set, you get two of them and while I would argue that at 6 points they are just 1 point too much for a cavalry unit with no abilities, however, cavalry units in their own right offer exceptional flexibility on the battlefield so I can understand the 6 point cost here.
My argument for reducing its cost by 1 has more to do with the fact that activation advantage is a major concept of the game. The impact of activation advantage is massive in SOIF and the Targaryen army does not have that all important “low cost unit” required to put them in a place where they can compete in a game where 8-9 activations is the norm. Typically a Targaryen army will have 6 to 7 activations at best which means every match you enter you will be out activated, typically by at least 1-2 activations. It might not sound like much, but this really knocks Targaryen’s out of competitive play entirely, its very difficult to overcome an activation disadvantage. This being the Targaryen’s staple unit seems like the most appropriate place where an argument for reduced cost could be made.
At a 5+ defense you want these guys doing hit and runs on people’s flanks, which can be devastating with a 3+ attack and though they can hold their own in a fight with a 6+ morale save, they aren’t likely to be able to remain in a sustained fight for very long with a +5 armor save. Their leverage is their 6+ speed which can be increased in various ways in a Targaryen army with NCU’s like Daenery’s Targaryen, Khaleesi and Targaryen cards like Unstoppable Advance.
I would argue however that this is really a 7 point unit because fielding it without one of the two commanders for an extra point (Either an Outrider KO or a Screamer KO) is really not getting your points worth, they transform this unit from a threat to a major threat with one of the two KO’s. You will feel like you need to have them I think to get the value out of this unit and strictly speaking if you add 2 Screamers and 1 Outrider, each with its own commander you are spending those 3 points you just saved by not adding Jorah into the list, a vastly better investment in army points in my opinion.
Screamers are a great unit, though I can understand some arguments for using Bloody Mummer Zorse Riders for example as a potential alternative. While slightly more expensive at 7 points, Zorse Riders offer some built in abilities.
The Dothraki Outriders
I think the best unit in the starter set by a fair margin, the Dothraki Outriders at 6 points while tricky to use largely do to an absence of a melee attack and short range of their bow, have incredible mobility thanks to a 6+ move combined with their Nimble ability. In fact, I’m fairly certain this is the most mobile unit in the entire game.
When fitted with their attachment (Outrider KO), they are shooting 7 dice at 3+ into units that can be assumed to be vulnerable (thanks to their Outrider KO) which when combined with shooting into a flank can be absolutely devastating even to the toughest of units. Their nimble ability also keeps them out of range of other short range units and makes it much easier for them to get into peoples flanks. All around its a pretty amazing combo and deadly combination.
This is a unit that when timed and used well will always earn its 7 point cost (never leave home without a outrider KO however). I think its well priced within the scope of the Targaryen faction and though I think I could file a complaint when comparing this unit to the Nights Watch Ranger Trackers who are effectively better and cheaper in every way as they get the Outrider KO ability built in, have better defense and a reasonably decent melee attack. I do believe that Nimble is so significant that it makes up for it.
Its unfortunate that you only get one of these guys in the starter box, I think I would rather have another unit of these guys as an option then the poorly thought out Jorah.
Dothraki Veterans
Finally we have the Dothraki Veterans which is our high priced, high value unit. It seems every faction gets one, but at 10 army points it is one of the most expensive units in the game, currently one among only 3 units that come in this pricey. It is more expensive then a bloody dragon for crying out loud!
The question is, is it worth it and the answer is, that I just don’t know. There is no denying its ferocity, it is absolutely devastating to get shot at with 7 dice at 3+, then get charged with 8 dice at +3 before any other effects are even applied in a single activation. With an Outrider KO or a Screamer KO you could potentially wipe entire fresh units off the board with a single attack and when you consider some of the Targaryen cards like Overrun or Khal Drogo’s cards (The Commander) like Devastating Impact, the potential for a single game winning move is very high. Your opponents are going to fear this unit and rightfully so, its a game changer.
The problem is however that as it stands, to invest 10 points into a single unit is a hard pill to swallow for any faction but in particular the Targaryen faction where if you really consider the makeup of the army we already have major activation disadvantage problems.
The cheapest unit we have is 6 points (screamer and outrider), which arguably need their KO’s to be effective making them 7 point units realistically speaking. Adding this 10 point unit into any army list means you are going to be limited to 4 units on the board at most, meaning 6 activations at best (with 2 NCU’s). That is too big of a disadvantage in a game where you will be facing 8-9 activations as a standard. In my experience having an activation disadvantage and having a unit disadvantage on the board at the same time is pretty difficult to overcome and this may very well explain why Targaryen’s are at the bottom of tournament play results, yet to win any recorded tournaments in which they were played.
I don’t think the issue with Veterans are the Veterans themselves, in fact, like the screamer I think the unit is appropriately priced in general, yet I would argue because of the composition of options for the Targaryen’s, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to add them. We don’t have cheap options to offset high cost units and running any army but with only 6 activations is a losing proposition, it’s just too big of a disadvantage.
The Commanders
In the Targaryen starter set you get two commanders, Khal Drogo and the commander version of Jorah Mormont. In my humble opinion these are both excellent commanders that work extremely well within the Targaryen faction and they are both a joy to use. They come with strong abilities in their own right that punish opponents and offer some amazing surprises for your enemy and frankly both of their tactic card sets are filled with some amazing cards.
Jorah Mormont tends to be a lot more flexible than Khal Drogo and I would argue that cards like Bravery in the Face of Death and Superior Flanking are two cards you can count on using in every game. Martial Superiority is also a great defensive card that punishes opponents for attacking you. Really they are all great.
Khal Drogo’s tactic cards are a bit trickier to use. The already mentioned Overrun can have insane impact on games in combination with successfully timed charges.
Addrivat! is extremely circumstantial, I find its the card I discard the most often. It requires you to activate the combat action on the NCU board to use, which means you must already be engaged with the opponent and have the initiative. In addition screamers already have sundering so they don’t leverage as much of the card as other units might, its useless to outriders because it’s melee only and you don’t want to use it with veterans because you won’t get your ranged shot – charge combination, arguably the main reason to use veterans.
To be honest I don’t recall ever actually playing this card, the circumstances when you could use the card combined with actually having it in your hand at the same time are extremely rare. Its clearly designed to combo with Khal Drogo’s ability but even there its not great since usually you will have Drogo in your Veterans unit and you don’t want to skip over your ranged shot before charging. I actually think its a terrible card in general.
The trickiest of the cards is Ride-By-Attack, it allows you to make a march through an enemy, performing a charge as you do it. Again its a very situational card because you need to be able to move far enough through a unit to get on the other side of them to do it. Additionally it doesn’t combo well with your most expensive unit as it does not allow you to use that ranged attack before the charge as the card must be used on activation. It requires considerable coordination and positioning to pull off, but can push one of your cavalry into your opponents back line so in addition to the charge you have good positioning for the next series of action. It has a lot of potential and I think becomes more relevant and significant in expert hands.
Conclusion
There is certainly a lot more that can be said about the Targaryen army, there are other components and cards not mentioned here that could be discussed but I think I have shown enough here to come to this conclusion.
The Targaryen army is a very mobile force that can make high impact moves that can completely decimate opponents but in the same token, it has a lot of vulnerabilities and is susceptible to terrible collapse if not positioned well and its core effects timed poorly. I think it should probably come with a warning label that says “For Advanced Players of Song of Ice and Fire” because it really does assume a lot of knowledge to use well.
As an army its biggest drawback which I think is the biggest contributing factor to its poor competitive play results is the fact that it lacks the ability to overcome the activation advantage almost all factions will have over it. The standard amount of activations for a list is 8-9, for the Targaryen’s its 6-7. This is a major problem for the Targaryen’s that keeps them from being truly competitive and there is currently no way to overcome it.
I do believe however with a bit of practice and a few expansion units, in particular the Heroes box to get some variety in the NCU’s can result in this army being at the very least fun to play. With some good player skill developments I certainly think you can get some wins on your record with the Targaryen’s, as they tend to really punish opponent mistakes.
I suspect in time their will be changes made to this army, its clear to me that units like Jorah Mormont The Wandering Knight are just too awful to be ignored and the cost of units like Screamers and Veterans are probably going to be adjusted (or their abilities adjusted) to bring them in line with the rest of the game or at least the army will get some methods to help them overcome their awful activation disadvantage.
The Targaryen Faction represent the newest addition to the Song of Ice and Fire miniature game and as such I think inevitably, as was the case with the rest of the games many factions, there will be some adjustments needed and made. CMON however seems to be very cautious about just sporadically making changes which I think is a good thing.
So far I’m enjoying my experience with SoIF, there is a lot of love put into this game, some really great design work and a really great design space to expand the game. Even as I write this article I as well as many of my gaming friends are waiting for new units to arrive to join the ranks of our armies so that is a good sign that we will continue with this great in my local gaming group.
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