The next major update for ASOIAF: TMG is here! With it comes some astounding changes to the way we build lists that have opened the door for some insane combinations. This could very well be one of the most brutal seasons of the game with the floodgates now wide open. Here are some of my initial hot takes on the update.
4pts of Free Attachments Is Unbalanced
The development team has taken the alternate list building rules which gave you some free points to spend on attachments and made this the official way to build lists for the game. This is an incredible change for list building and has already sparked some crazy list designs for several Factions, but it brings various levels of buffs to Factions.
The Boltons struggle to spend these free points since you cannot use them on Neutral attachments, resulting in the best unit in the Faction, the Flayed Men, having no Attachments to utilise this change. It innately nerfs Ramsay as a Commander due to him being the only 2pts Attachment in the army, so if you want to use the free points you will likely need to bring him. In addition, your first Bastard Boy is free, and Ben Bones could be free inside the Bastard’s Girls; because of this it is very difficult to take advantage of these points.
For the Martells, on the other hand, there were various lists that could bring some high quality units and three NCUs but then have no space for attachments without dropping some of these units for something less costly. Alternatively, there are lists where every unit has attachments in it. The list I took to Ribble Rumble in November 2024 has gained 6pts due to 2pts attachments going down to 1pts and the free points for list building. The change could be revolutionary for some Factions like the Martells.
Whilst the change has allowed various attachments to finally be considered for a Faction to take in their list, the balancing of these attachments is going to be a problem and should be a point of focus for the development team to keep an eye on come the mid-season update.
Mag The Might Be
Speaking of balance, Mag the Mighty was in danger of losing out on the attachment benefit since you are incentivised to bring monsters and not infantry units. Foreseeing this, the development team included a rule for Mag the Mighty that reduces his cost for each free point you do not spend on attachments in the list. In a 40pts game this could make Mag 1pts if you do not purchase any attachments.
Due to this you could bring Mag, Wun Wun, a Giant, two Mammoths, and three 4pts NCUs. You could also swap Wun Wun for another giant and either swap a Mammoth to another Giant or swap a 4pts NCU for a 5pts NCU. Or you could bring Mag, a Giant, two Mammoths, Varamyr, Wolf Pack, Shadowcat, and three 4pts NCUs. An eight activation or ten activation Mag the Mighty list. List building has expanded for Mag players and it makes him a very fun list to mess around with.
Free Folk were dwindling in the last season, but this could be one of those changes that increases their playrate going into the new season, especially considering how fun Mag lists are.
Free Attacks Are Finally Nerfed
Finally! Since I started doing articles several years ago, I have constantly whined about free attacks in the game. It is a nice thing to get when you are the player but it has dominated the meta for the entire time. If you can find a way to get additional attacks in your army, then you are very likely at the top of the table in terms of faction strength.
Khal Drogo has been one of the best Targaryen commanders due to this factor with the Tactics Card Assault Orders. Victarion also utilised this alongside We Do Not Sow (which has gone on untouched), to be the most played commander within Greyjoys. Further to this, Gregor Clegane saw a huge increase in playrate at events due to the changes to combat units in the Faction that were worth utilising this strategy with. Assault Orders may have been the best card in the game due to the performance of commanders that brought it.
Now with it nerfed to final rank only, units that can negate the weight of the nerf due to their lowest dice not being that different from their highest dice could still perform well. If the Mountain can bring a Golden Company Elephant or the newly improved Flayed Men into a list, then they would be ideal picks for Assault Orders as not much would change for them. In most other situations you are losing two dice for the attack. It may not amount to too much but this will have a significant effect.
Might of the Iron Throne and Motivated By Coin were abilities that could give you a free attack action, or charge for Might of the Iron Throne, by replacing the effect of a specific zone on the Tactics Board. This is now replaced with abilities that improve the attacks of the units they are with and additional effect. No more machine gun crossbows for Kevan Lannister, but also Cortnay Penrose for the Lannisters which had become a favourite of Baratheon players recently.
For Motivated By Coin, this was to affect Bronn who was taken in so many Factions to improve the fire power of the ranged unit they would bring. Since this had to be changed, all Stormcrow units lost this ability vastly changing how they will be utilised going forward. Mercs were used outside of Neutrals a lot, and now they get rerolls and heal a wound on activation when holding the Wealth Zone. Mercs will still be useful in other Factions whilst they will become more effective in combat for Neutrals.
With lethality being turned down for these lists, those that have a bit of resilience against attacks or plenty of ways to heal may begin to shine a lot more.
Bolton Balance Remains a Secret
The development team released an article on the ASOIAF website as a sneak peak into what would be arriving for the major update. Within this they mentioned that they have their usual amount of army updates with a mention towards balancing directly at the Bolton Faction. However, a consensus amongst Bolton players in various communities across socials, is that this was not enough to make a substantial change.
In total, the Boltons saw an update to two units, two Tactics Cards, and gained a faction ability. This is no way near enough needed to turn the Boltons around. In my experience, it is really difficult to move through your deck whilst also getting worthwhile benefits out of it. The replacement of Remorseless Examples with Bloody Beheadings doesn’t change the flow of the tactics deck and is still a dead card early in the game, but it has the potential of doing something big. At least the change to Sadistic Games is one that will help the flow of the deck.
Dreadfort Prisoners is nice, but it again suffers from the same issues as the tactics deck where you need to get engaged and kill a minimum of three ranks to get a benefit out of it. The Baratheons used to have the same issues with their tactics deck where you needed to be engaged to get something out of the deck and it made it difficult for them to compete. They got an overhaul to their deck and it changed them overnight. The Boltons needed this specific overhaul to make a difference.
They also lost access to the Neutral commanders like Vargo who fit perfectly into the force. Whilst Roose was nerfed in the previous season to encourage you to not play Boltons inside of Neutrals, this change may give you more of a reason to switch back to Neutrals to give you more options, especially since you can run Flayed Men with attachments for less than what you would in Boltons, and you would have access to more 2pts attachments.
The Boltons still don’t look worthwhile at all, but there are some fun lists you can build to get creative with what they have at their disposal.
Neutral Faction Set For Repair
An uplifting change in this season is that Neutrals are finally being acknowledged for some changes by the development team, but there hasn’t been many changes this season to Neutrals outside of aligning the changes from other places. This is likely to allow the development team to build some insights on the performance of the Factions without it being influenced by their performance in other Factions.
Neutral commanders are no longer able to lead non-Neutral forces. This was the whole reason Jokin was nerfed and I hoped it would see his attachment card reversed from just Precision back to Overwatch, but this was not the case and he remains in his neutered self due to the abuse of the commander in other Factions. Daario commander used to sit nicely inside of the Stormcrow Archers to give them Motivated By Coin, but now that his abilities will only affect melee focused units, he fits better in Stormcrow Dervishes. A lot has changed for Stormcrows and how they will be played so this might be a good thing.
The Boltons saw changes to bring them in line with the reworks in the Bolton specific Faction. This is going to be huge for Neutrals as Flayed Men and Blackguard are genuine threats that got boosted, and with the power of the Neutral deck they could be quite scary.
For Mummers nothing changed. Zorses are still great but the rest is a snooze button. Vargo may find himself inside the new Blackguard but Skirmishes are a little underwhelming. Golden Company is lost without a dedicated commander, Daario could work inside of Swordsmen but you are doubling up on some bonuses. Jokin could work but then Widower doesn’t really fit anywhere. The remaining three commanders want to play around panic tokens and panic damage which is not what the Golden Company is known for.
Hopefully a Heroes 4 box is round the corner to flesh out the Faction just that little bit more and the mid-season update has some tasty new changes to help bring the Neutral Faction into balance with the rest of the game.
We Do Not Know Balance
Earlier in the article we spoke about the nerfs to Assault Orders which would affect Victarion. But, Victarion might be the only one that this change affected the least as Greyjoys saw some nerfs that don’t amount to too much. We Do Not Sow did not receive the same nerf to free attacks that Assault Orders did, so spamming free attacks is still viable for the Greyjoys and now they do it far better than others. I can see Assault Orders being used more for mobility reasons with the free charges and still being able to do some damage especially when you can force a panic test with Reapers or Silenced Men.
The most broken NCU in the game is Balon Greyjoy who is able to bring back a destroyed unit in outflank and without being activated if it hadn’t activated that round. One such combination is to allow Victarion to go down, bring him back with Moqorro, and then have a second one running about with Balon. 5pts for this ability is just not enough, and the development team believe increasing it to 6pts would solve the problem.
It might have done, if at the same time Greyjoys didn’t just make up a bunch more points due to the free attachment rule for list building. This has resulted in Balon’s balance being redundant, and we still have him as a menace. Honestly, this should just be like Tyrion Lannister where you can pull a What is Dead May Never Die card from your deck or discard pile once per game. It retains the same vibe in design of the rules whilst giving some form of balance to it.
Iron Victory Crew got better, Divide the Spoils got better, some of the most expensive attachments that had some very decent rules got cheaper. There were a lot of changes that buffed the aggressive Faction to a point where I am genuinely worried about playing against them when I already was fearful of them before. I can see this having far more impact in casual games than competitive since not everyone is playing the best list to their best ability, and Greyjoys can just casually wipe the floor with the opposing force.
I hope the development team keeps an eye on the Greyjoys for the mid-season update and make sure to apply a nerf to Balon that will actually result in him being rebalanced.
An Uneventful Night’s Watch
Whilst Night’s Watch had a few more changes than the Boltons, they more or less got nothing. The biggest change may be in the form of one of their most popular commanders getting nerfed due to the performance of Assault Orders in other places. Cotter Pyke is on the downturn and may have lost the favourite spot for the Watch. Another big change is Yoren going from 6pts to 5pts, with the realisation that he is the least played NCU in the entire game.
The rest are small changes to attachments for abilities that don’t do much. Perhaps Ambush on the Ranger Trackers and Benjen could be a big deal, same with 1pts Samwell if you want to sacrifice something that helps the combat power of your force. Eddison may see the table now alongside the unimpressive Denys Mallister.
That is all the changes for the Night’s Watch. No reconfiguring of their tactics card, no internal balance of their commanders, and nothing to reshape some of the units that are underplayed. Night’s Watch more or less got nothing. Perhaps this is because they will be the focus of the mid-season update? But this feels a lot like copium at this point. It could be something similar to the Neutrals where they just need to research and develop some of their changes some more and didn’t feel comfortable applying them at this stage. Only time will tell, but in the meantime, you had your time in the sun and I hope it isn’t too long until you see a sunrise again Night’s Watch.
Blood In The Water
Since it was revealed in the Vision in the Flames article from CMON that we would be getting 4pts of free attachments, players have been designing wacky lists that showcase how powerful thai change truly is. However, it wasn’t until the full release of the major update that we saw what could be the most broken way to utilise these points.
For Targaryens, they have a lot of great units and attachments, with the biggest problem being how you fit them all in. Before this update you would be lucky to see one Bloodrider attachment but now that all of them went to 1pts with no changes to their rules, and these four Bloodriders can be taken for free, it has shown a devastating oops all cavalry list for the Dothraki that might be one of the best forces in the game. There was a list going around of five cavalry units and two NCU, with Khal, three Bloodriders, and Jorah as attachments, and one of units is not basic cavalry.
Another list sees the Targaryens take advantage of the free points to spam out some Relentless Unsullied Officers in Stormcrow Mercs, as taking four of these units and four officers is only 20pts. Holding the bags will then have all your Relentless attacks rerolling at all times. You could fit a few more units and some very strong NCUs and make an infantry list that will be difficult to face. In the same vein, bringing two Unsullied Swordsmen units with a free officer in each is just so good that it can’t be ignored.
Take these two lists and align them with the powerful Mother of Dragons on the Skahaz denial lists, and Targaryens are looking to cement themselves as a rising threat. They will need to compete alongside elite melee forces with free attachments from the Greyjoys and Lannisters, and then the very strong Brotherhood who more or less got a free Peasant Levy out of the update. It is going to be one brutal season of ASOIAF.
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