A Storm of Swords

 A Storm of Swords (Original)

I've seen people ask about this Game Mode every now & again, but for the longest time (having split a two-player starter with a buddy to get into the hobby & only taking the relevant models & cards for myself) I had never seen nor been able to find digital copies of the Storm of Swords game mode cards.  I had an idea of how the Castle Wall worked, but absolutely no clue what the "Siege Decks" were capable of; hearing only occasional mention of "wild imbalance," etc., etc.  So when I stumbled upon these copies of the Game Mode cards, the 1st thing I wanted to do here was provide the originals, in all their wild, imbalanced glory, to the community...& then see if we can improve upon them.

The Castle Walls Unit Card

8 dice on 4+?  Okay, that's more dice than usual, but only hitting on 4's... You do get 3 of them, so that can be strong.  Tar & Pitch seems rough, if they're then following up by shooting you too (which they are allowed to do).  Then once I noticed that you can't target Castle Walls with Ranged Attacks in the current Game Mode rules, that got even more punishing. (Spoiler though, I recommend changing that rule later on in this article - along with a few others changes.)

Giant profile defensively (but with no defense saves)?  Yeah, that can be tough to crack - unless you have something in your deck/faction that makes it damn easy, I suppose (Hello, Greatjon.  Hello, Giants).

The Siege Decks

For those who don't remember (or, more likely, never knew in the first place), each player will randomly get 3 of the 6 Siege Cards from their respective Siege Deck to use throughout the game.  So let's see what each deck is capable of...

The Attacker Siege Cards

• Unexpectedly removing terrain? Yeah, that can be powerful in the right hands.
• All Attachments AND NCU's lose abilities for the Round? Okay, definitely strong.
• Everyone gets Charge Distance Re-rolls & +1 to Hit? Yeah, also strong.
• Everyone becoming Weakened, or Panicked, or Vulnerable? Okay, Doran has a card sort of like that & it's not that great.  This version might be a bit better though.
• Pass a Morale Test (on Activation, no less) or become Panicked? Alright, that one actually feels pretty weak.
• On a roll of 3+...D6+2 WOUNDS to a unit? And to all units within 2"??? I think that one has to change...(Though it seems like it doesn't specify between Friendly or Enemy - so that's something, I suppose)

The Defender Siege Cards

Alright, so having looked at the Attacker Siege Deck, let's see what the Defender can do:

• Basically Qhorin Sacrifice, but some added restrictions & no sacrifice needed.  Okay, that's workable.
• Forced to activate out of order? 3 times in a game?  We already know how strong that can be from variations on Tyrion's cards, so that's pretty good.
• +1 to Hit & +2 dice?  Have to start engaged, but that can be a hell of a punch, so...okay, I guess.
• Dauntless (but a bit stronger) for everyone for a Round?  That can maybe be okay too, if you built for it...
• Endless Horde-ish...It's not a free unit, but there's also no tempo interruption, so that is probably pretty good.  Not overly strong though, when you consider that all of the destroyed Attacker units will keep coming back all game, by default.
• Your Castle Walls get +1 to Hit & Sundering for the rest of the game?  Yeah, that's probably strong.  Long Range, 8 dice, 3+ to Hit, Sundering on 3 units; I'd take that.  3 free Ranged Attacks is honestly really good too, but I'd be hard-pressed to take that over a permanent buff to 3 strong ranged units.

A Storm of Swords (2021 s01)

So now on to our own community update to this Game Mode which is, while interesting, certainly in need of some love & attention to bring it up to the 2021 version of the game's standards.  The guiding tenants we tried to follow were: less randomness, less of the outcome decided by the Siege Deck (by reducing obviously overpowered cards & trying to bring them all to roughly similar power levels), & less uncertainty on rules interactions.

The 2021 Castle Walls Unit Card

The 2021 update included a notable upper limit on Attack Dice totals (with a few exceptions). Keeping in line with this, we've reduced the number of dice the castle wall throws from 8 to 7. These are 3 free long range units the Defender gets on their side, so this is a modest reduction & possibly not enough, if anything.

We then modified the defense profile, so that instead of 6 Wounds & Resilience (1 wound per 2 hits), the Castle Walls instead have 12 normal wounds.  These are nearly equivalent, but serve to make the Castle Walls slightly more vulnerable to repeated, normal melee attacks (since an odd number of hits doesn't result in 1 wasted each attack), but stronger against auto-wounds.  This seemed a fair change to ensure all factions have roughly equal strength against the walls, instead of a few outliers being particularly strong (Greatjon's Berserker Tactics card or Giants auto-wounding attack profile, as a few examples - though admittedly, Giants being excellent wall busters does seem appropriate).

Note that according to the current Game Mode Special Rules, Ranged Attacks cannot be performed on Castle Walls.  While we initially attempted to avoid Game Mode changes, I would recommend a handful of changes & clarifications, as follows (underlined, for emphasis):

Setup:

• Each player rolls a die (re-roll ties). Whoever rolls highest chooses whether they will be the Attacker or the Defender or pass this choice to their opponent. The player who does not make this choice will choose who will be the First Player when the game begins. (EDIT:) Complete this step before list selection.
• After the Defender places all Terrain, beginning with the Attacker, each player alternates deploying 1 Combat Unit to the battlefield, continuing until all combat units (except the Defender's Reserve units) have been deployed.

Special Victory Conditions:

• The Attacker wins via normal Victory Point accumulation or if the Defender ever has no Combat Units remaining on the table. (Reserves do not count as being on the table.)
•  The Defender does not gain Victory Points, but automatically wins at the end of Round 6 if the Attacker has not scored the number of Victory Points needed to win. (The Defender would count as having scored exactly the number of Victory Points needed to win in that case, for scoring purposes.)

Special Rules (Defender):

• The Defender does not begin with all Combat Units in play. They must select half of their total Combat Units (by unit tray count, not their points value; rounded down) to begin in Reserve.

Special Rules (Castle Walls):

• Castle Walls may be Charged (but always align along the front, long edge) and targeted by Melee Attacks and Ranged Attacks as if they were enemy units. This is the only way Castle Walls may be damaged. They do not roll Defense Saves, never make Morale Tests, and each award half the Victory Points required for the Attacker to win the game when destroyed (i.e. - 5 VP's each in a 40 point game).
• Castle Walls may be targeted by the Wealth Tactics Zone as if they were friendly units.
• Castle Walls are not removed from the battlefield when destroyed and, if destroyed by a Melee Attack, the Attacker gets to Surge Forth as if they had destroyed a normal Combat Unit.

The first two changes serve to allow ranged units to attack Castle Walls in addition to melee units & give some counter-play to help the Attacker avoid the Tar & Pitch ability of the Castle Walls.  The ability to target the wall with the Wealth zone also gives the Defender some counter-play with damage mitigation to balance the additional ways the Attacker can damage the Castle Walls.  When Castle Walls have 6 Wounds & Resilience, this healing would be too strong in the Defender's favor, but with a more typical 12 Wound profile, this is not nearly as significant of a boost. (The biggest risk now could be running out of Wound Tokens!)

The third bullet point (as well as the note about only aligning along the front) are attempts at Quality of Life improvements to eliminate uncertainty about what to do when a Castle Wall is destroyed.  It eliminates any question about if a Melee Unit is able to Surge Forth from killing Castle Walls & prevents follow-up confusion when they would then be stuck flush to a piece of impassable terrain.  It also clears up any potential question on if a dead wall could still take a Free Ranged Attack from the Tactics Zone or Defender Siege cards; the intent here is that they cannot, since they'll be removed from the field altogether.

The 2021 Siege Decks

The Attacker Siege Cards

Here is our attempt at balancing the Attacker Siege Deck according to our 2021 guiding principles. Ultimately, we decided the target value of a card was about the same as a 5 point NCU's ability or a "good" Commander Tactics Card.

• Siege Equipment seemed like a decent baseline power level for Attacker Cards.
• Sow Discord was changed to match the Order: Sow Discord, but eliminating the requirement for the target to fail a morale check.
• Press the Assault seemed far too strong to provide an army-wide bonus, so instead it affects only 1 unit, but is allowed starting on Round 3 (1 Round earlier)
• Starve Them Out was about right on the power level, but handing out Weakened seemed the least useful from the Attacker's point of view. (Their units come back anyway, after all!) Instead we changed it to Vulnerable by default, followed by Panicked, followed by Weakened (mostly to save time by eliminating extra decisions a player would need to make).
• The Long War felt much too weak, since Combat Unit activations are usually used to finish out a Round & unit morale is higher on average than previous versions anyway.  Instead of trying to rework it, this card was replaced with a lesser version of Tywin NCU's Once per Game ability.
• Catapult Barrage felt both extremely strong, but also extremely swingy, with damage being decided by a D6 roll.  This card was re-worked to allow the Attacker to use any of their NCU's for an Othell replace effect twice per game.

The Defender Siege Cards

Trying to continue to follow 2021's guidance & match what was done for the Attacker Siege Deck above, the following was changed on the Defender Cards:

• We considered changing Parlay to match the Tactics Card "Parlay" more closely.  On further consideration though, it's a lot like a reduced version of Qhorin NCU's sacrifice ability; slightly reduced but also at a lower cost, so we left it alone for now.
• Combat Chaos has the potential to be extremely powerful, so we adjusted it to be dependent on a D6 roll of 3+ (following the example set by a current card with similar effect, "Intercept Orders")
• Hold the Line was a powerful effect granting +1 to Hit & 2 extra attack dice, so it was reworked to grant the new Order: Hold the Line to any unit in your army up to 3 times. (Still powerful, since its harder for your opponent to see coming, or avoid even if they do.)
• Rallying the Troops was potentially quite strong in the right list yet nearly useless in the wrong one, so this card completely re-worked by allowing it to be played 1 Round earlier & give the player Tycho's Once per Game ability on a Siege Card.
• Unexpected Reinforcements seemed fine, except for its trigger - it's similar to Endless Horde, but with an extremely generous trigger of "Start of a friendly turn."  Therefore, we changed it into an NCU replace effect & then changed the wording to better match Endless Horde too, mostly for consistency.  We considered keeping the Infantry only restriction, but Defenders seem to have a harder time at this game mode & it seemed wrong that your "unexpected reinforcements" couldn't possibly be mounted troops, when that seems the most likely type of unit to realistically pull-off this sort of effect.
• Arrow Stock seemed too good.  It had a powerful effect of boosting the walls ranged attack, for the whole game, or granting three free attacks.  We reduced it by having its 1st effect only last for the Round & its 2nd effect only granting 1 Free Attack Action.

Print Me & Play Me!

All of the above info, condensed into a (hopefully) easy to print 11x17 sized image below.  Print it out, give our updated game mode a try, & let us know how well you think we did at providing a more balanced (or at the very least, more entertaining) experience!