ASOIAF Buying Guide: Greyjoys

Hello Westeros!

House Greyjoy is the latest faction which came to our shore, and is a quite popular choice for new players, due to their already updated cards, and their fantastic sculpts!

Everyone interested in pillaging gaming tables should start with the Greyjoy starter, but what next?

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Pillage Mechanics

Before drifting into the different units, it is essential to understand the pillage mechanics for the Greyjoy faction.

Pillage comes into the form of tokens, which your units can either get or distribute by destroying enemy ranks during an attack. Each pillage token will grant a bonus to the unit, offensively, defensively or for some abilities.

It is one of the most important tools in the Greyjoy arsenal, turning cheap units into stronger ones, but does require some set-up or directed assaults in order to get them as soon as possible.

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Greyjoy Starter

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Heroes

There are 4 heroes in the starter: Victarion Greyjoy, Asha Greyjoy, Aeron Greyjoy and Rodrik Harlaw.

Both Victarion and Asha can be used as Commander or Attachment to put in Combat Units, while Aeron and Rodrik can only be used as NCUs.

The two commanders vary greatly in style:

• Victarion Greyjoy is the offensive commander of House Greyjoy, providing even more free attacks to an already brutal tactics deck, and making sure these attacks are successful. His attachment version brings “Relentless”, the best way to get a cheap activation in the game.
• Asha Greyjoy is a morale support for your troops, and their success in passing morale tests can have hard consequences for the opponent. Her attachment version is one of the most useful ones, bringing Warcry and improving her unit’s morale to 5+.

Both the starter NCUs have very different abilities:

• Aeron Greyjoy brings more healing to the table, and can be quite efficient for lists with units who can do many actions (such as Victarion attachment or his commander cards)
• Rodrik is a great support, allowing you to redraw cards twice per game, allowing you to recycle your hand and get the best tools at your disposal when you need them.

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Units

The Greyjoy starter, like all the other starters, comes with 2 basic infantry units and 2 more specialist ones.

• 2 Ironborn Reavers
• Ironborn Bowmen
• House Harlaw Reapers

The Ironborn Reavers are the basic unit of the faction. For 5pts, they are one of cheapest most offensive units in the game, with their Pillage ability turning their attack from a 4+ to a 2+ when maxed out. They are however quite flimsy defensively, with bad defense and morale, so need to be handled with some finesse.

The unit comes with a Reaver Captain, who gives “Outflank”. This ability can be hard to use against a seasoned opponent, but can also turn a battle upside down if well-timed.

The Ironborn Bowmen are very cheap, at 4pts, and do not have direct benefit from Pillage, but instead “divide the spoils”, improving nearby units. They also get rerolls when attacking units on the flank or rear, which is quite good to harass the opponent. They are the primary users for the “Finger Dance” tactic card, giving out Vulnerable tokens quite easily, without getting any back (unless in a range duel).

The last unit of the starter is the House Harlaw Reapers. They have “Vicious” and can choose to heal or deal wounds thanks to their pillage tokens, making them more resilient than reavers.

This unit comes with the Warsworn attachment, who gives the ability “Fuelled by Slaughter”, allowing his unit to heal after attacking, and healing even more after destroying ranks.

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What should be my first purchase after the starter?

Same as for Starks and Lannisters: the faction’s Heroes 1 box.

Heroes play a huge part in the ASOIAF game, and are the best way to add a lot of flexibility to your lists, at the lowest price. Plus, for book readers or show watchers, it is much more engaging to play the Euron Greyjoy in a unit instead of “Reaver Captain #1”, and makes for a more interesting game.

The Greyjoy Heroes 1 box brings you 6 new characters.

For Commanders, you can now have Balon Greyjoy, the Kraken King, his mad brother Euron Greyjoy, his inept son Theon Greyjoy, and an old man stuck in a chair, Erik Ironmaker.

Every commander is very different and brings a lot to the table. Balon has some great cards and abilities: “Fuelled by Slaughter” and “Iron Resolve” make his unit quite hard to kill, and his cards are very supportive both offensively and defensively. Euron is not beginner-advised, but can turn the whole game into a very hair-tearing experience for your opponent (ultimate troll-game: Euron Greyjoy vs Tyrion Lannister) with some very strong cards and bluffs. Theon is surprisingly quite effective, especially on movement shenanigans, helping the faction with their absence of cavalry. Finally, Erik Ironmaker is the least liked of all Greyjoy commanders, mostly due to not being able to take his NCU version at the same time. He still is an able one, relying on pillage tokens to improve your units’ performance.

Attachment-wise, the box brings Nute, who is Victarion’s second in command, and works very well with him, giving more attacking potential and being able to use his tactics cards for his unit as well.

Qarl is the second attachment of the box, and comes in 2 profiles. His 1pt version gives “Expert duelist”, ideal for auto-wounds or killing problematic enemy attachments, while his 2pts version adds a +2 bonus to his unit’s morale. He can also be used in the same unit as Asha, for an overall well-rounded attachment package!

Theon is another attachment, helping a unit to reach its target from far away, and being able to retreat after attacking. He works insanely well with the Bolton Bastard’s Girls, very ironically.

Finally, Euron helps bringing a unit to its maximum potential right from the start of the game, but at the cost of dealing wounds while they take any action. Due to to this downside, Aeron is a good NCU to bring with him, to cancel this effect.

Finally, the box brings you 2 of the most useful NCUs in the faction: Wendamyr, Maester of Pyke, and Erik Ironmaker in his NCU version. To round-up, Balon Greyjoy can also be used as an NCU.

Wendamyr is a tricky one: he can replace the zones he goes on to get a token, each token allowing you to either heal and draw a card, or shift 3”. This can give your army a lot of flexibility and is particularly useful in a 3 NCUs list, where you might end up on a zone you don’t really need at the moment (for example the Crown zone).

Erik Ironmaker is your Pillage distributor: every time he goes on a zone, he can give one of your units one of the pillage tokens on him. He starts the game with 2 tokens, and gets a new one every time your opponent goes on the Bags zone, which is great to force your opponent to make a choice between healing his units and improving your own, or none of the above.

Finally, Balon can bring back, once per game, a dead unit with all the pillage tokens and attachments it had. This is a very powerful effect if used right, but can turn useless or disastrous if badly timed.

The Greyjoys only have 2 heroes boxes so far, and the Heroes 2 box is also great value: Baelor Blacktyde commander is one of the faction’s most efficient ones, and Beron Blacktyde brings enormous resilience to your units. However, the first box brings you a more versatile set of tools, which will be more useful for starting.

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Heroes done, how about units?

Now that you have your starter and your heroes, you basically need only one more unit box to get to 40pts consistently, which is the most common for games.

The Greyjoy faction is still quite young so you won’t have as many options of boxes compared to older ones.

For beginners or new to the faction, I would greatly advise one of the two following choices: Ironmakers or Silenced Men. Both units come at 7pts, so they are in the elite part of the faction.

The Ironmakers are one of the most resilient units in the game, providing you manage to get some pillage tokens on them. While other units get improved offensively, the Ironmakers get a +1 to their defense value for each pillage token on them, bringing them to a 2+ defense when maxed out. Their morale is only of 7+, so Asha Greyjoy is a commonly seen attachment in them, for a 2+ defense 5+ morale tank. Their highly defensive profile makes them a great anvil for Greyjoy players, and they can also work well as commander bunker (Balon, Erik and Theon work well in them).

The Silenced Men are more of a support unit, if support was based on panic tests. Their pillage tokens make them more resilient to panic tests, while making the enemies nearby terrified. They have great synergy with the House Harlaw Reapers and their Vicious ability, for a grand total of -4 to morale on the opponent during a Reapers attack. They also work well as commander bunker, taking less wounds than average thanks to their pillage ability and their good morale value.

These are in my mind the two most beginner-friendly units to add to your Greyjoy list first, both of them bringing different tools but the same purpose: to have an anvil a bit more resistant than the other Greyjoys units.

I would say both choices are good, but the Ironmakers might be a bit more beginner-friendly overall, and polyvalent in terms of attachments to put into, so I would probably go with them first.

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What next?

Once you have purchased Greyjoy Heroes 1 and 1 of the two units above, you should definitely try a few games. This will give you an idea on what your strong suits are, and what you think is missing from your usual lists.

Due to the low number of boxes currently in the faction you will probably end up buying most of them, or at least 1 or 2 more.

Ironborn Trappers are another cheap unit, which can get surprisingly resilient and offensive if you put the Asha-Qarl duo inside. They help to dish out tokens, while making the enemy’s attacks less deadly, only for 4 pts!

As mentioned above, Heroes 2 comes with some great commanders and NCUs, and will definitely be one of your next purchases, giving more flexibility and reliability to your lists.

The only 2 boxes I would recommend to keep for last are Drowned Men and Blacktyde’s Chosen. Both are still pretty good, but much more specific in use.

The Drowned Men are a support solo unit, which are quite useful if you bring one, but the box comes with 3 of them, which is a bit of a waste (the models do look very nice though). 2 Drowned Prophets complete the box, to give your units “Resilience”, a very useful tool but which you can get thanks to Beron NCU in Heroes 2.

The Blacktyde Chosen are the members of House Blacktyde, who do not rely on pillage tokens to improve, but help surrounding units, in the same way as Bowmen. Their advantage is to be quite self-sufficient compared to other Greyjoy units, not relying on pillage mechanism, but it makes them less useful for tactics cards which share this mechanism. They still have a great profile, including some in-built healing, but their uniqueness makes them less essential to the Greyjoy faction.

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The Greyjoy faction is tremendously fun to play, their offensive abilities being some of the strongest in the game, as is their healing, which can make it a weird experience for your opponent (“How many ships do these guys have?!?”). I find them to be the most satisfying faction to play and play against, being quite unpredictable and always having some ace up their sleeves, so greatly advise picking them up!

They are not the easiest to play however, if pillage is not working well they can struggle a bit, but their overall flexibility makes them really enjoyable to play!

Especially Victarion, if like me you sometimes wish for a fun game where you can plan a bit, then put your brain next to the table at the opportune moment and charge headstrong!

Grob’