[Player Guide] Commanders in Siege of Winterfell (Updated on 2022/9/21)

This guide is based on the author's personal experience and is only relevant to the current game’s content.

Siege of Winterfell is a popular real-time strategy in Game of Thrones Winter is coming! In this event the main thing that matters is your troop stats and the commanders you use, as their special skills can change the battle results for you. In this guide, I will review their importance in this event and will give you some suggestions.

Basics

During this event, all players can have 3 deployments on the battle map. In each of these deployments, players can have up to 3 commanders and one dragon. Commanders will have special skills for “Real-time strategy events” that they can use during the event.

Please note that not all commanders have their strategic skills yet. You can review all available commanders on the event page in the Cross-server events tab. You need to set your lord as one of the commanders with strategic skills if you want your lord to be in the event and to use their stats. 

In this event commanders won’t use might - they will use Rage. Your commanders will try to cast their skills in the same order you deployed them in battle (I mean first your chief commander will use their skill, then your deputy commander 1 then your deputy commander 2). This means the order you deploy commanders in battle is very important! When your troops are in combat the rage will start to fill at different rates. If you have fewer troops your rage fills faster. when commanders have enough rage they cast their skill automatically.

During the siege of Winterfell, troops have different marching speeds. In this event Cavalry > Infantry = Bowmen > Spearmen in terms of speed and lower-tier troops have a higher marching speed (T1 > T2 > T3 > T4). The attack range of troops is also different. In this event Bowmen> Spearmen > Cavalry = Infantry in terms of attack range.

Quality and Skills

Commanders use their special strategy game skills during this event. These skills are either active or passive. They can either target a single enemy or an ally or they will have AoE (Area of Effect). The AoE skills can affect multiple enemy/ally deployments that are in range and will not just affect your deployment and the enemy deployment that you’re fighting with and targeting, instead, they will affect all deployments that are in range.

Each commander has 1 active strategy skill that will require rage and one or few passive strategic skills that will increase your troop's stats by a lot. Just owning a commander will be enough for you to be able to use their active strategic skill with full power and effect. However, the quality of commanders will increase the passive stats significantly. For example, if you own a grey Cersei, you will have her “Wildfire Siege” skill which is damage heavy AoE attack but you will only have her boosting your army with 10% total health, defense, and attack. This is when a gold Cersei has 200% of total health, defense, and attack for her deployment.

Awakening commanders have no effect on their strategy skills either. The only benefit you earn from having a commander awakened in this event is their increased army size.

You can also hire commanders with few black diamonds for each match that will give them in great condition to use them in an event (just with a lesser army size). This way if you like to use a certain commander skill in more deployments, you can hire them as well and use them and their extra in two different deployments. Note that if you create a duplicate of your lord, only your own lord (that you didn’t hire) will benefit from lord bonuses.

Formation and Setups

In this event, you can only have 3 commanders with each deployment; which means 9 commanders in total. You can’t use the same commander twice in the same deployment (You can’t use your own Annie and hired Annie in the same deployment for example). These restrictions make it important to design your marches to gain the maximum benefit from them.

Because of the nature of the deployments and the way commander skills work, using pure setups or close to pure setups is the best way to maximize your troop's bonuses and will give you more mobility and range during the event when needed. Suggested formations to use are pure formations of Infantry, Spearmen, Cavalry, and Bowmen, or at least close to pure formations. You need to make sure to have your buffs and bonuses set up before the match in a way to support the troops you’re bringing to the match. Using a pure bowmen march with no bowmen attack bonus will be useless for you. Note that lord equipment bonuses will only effect for the march lord is deployed in.

It’s best if you use commanders of the same type with your troops so they can boost your troops with passive skills at the same time they can use their skills.

Commander skills and combinations

I will discuss commanders by breaking them into different groups based on their skills:

Group A: Counter Attack

Counter attack is the damage your troops deal back to enemy when they are attacked. Commander Jon Snow increases this damage, which makes hitting his army more painful for the enemy. He also reduces the normal attack or skill damage taken by 80%. This all makes him a great “Anti Damage Tank” commander at the same time.

The Counter attack class commanders would like to absorb the enemy damage to be able to return a greater percentage of it back for that duration.

The other commanders that are in this category are Seg who also adds to counter attack by even a greater value than Jon snow (400%). Even though, commander seg doesn’t reduce damage, he is a weak healer commander as well. Commander Haley can also do this by 90%.

A full tank class setup or 2 tanks and 1 healer is a great candidate to take the Winterfell resources and to carry it, as a lot of enemies would want to attack that march.

Group B: Skill Damage

There are several commanders that have skills with a direct damage against the enemy. The main commander with such skill is Daenerys Targaryen who adds Bleed effect in an AOE area. Bleed is a type of skill damage that will affect the enemy over time.

Commander Cersei can also do AOE skill damage against the enemy in a static circle. The main difference between Daenerys and Cersei is that, Cersei creates a static circle of damage and deals damage to up to 3 enemy marches that are in that circle over time, while Daenerys chooses 3 targets within an area and the bleed damage will stay with those commanders. In other words, you can scape Cersei damage by simply leaving the area she is affecting, or new people might receive the rest of her skill damage as they enter the circle; while Daenerys damage will stay with whoever was targeted at the very start with it.

Commander Julien can also deal AOE skill damage while commanders Robert, Sandor, Arya, Kravras, hector and Russel can also deal Skill damage to the enemy but they all target a single enemy and their damage has no AOE effect. Commander Robert’s damage is also Bleed like Daenerys skill.

Here is a list of all the damage dealer commanders in order of the magnitude of their skill damage:

Daenerys (AOE-Bleed) (4200 * 3) > Cersei (AOE) (3600 * 3) > Robert (Bleed) (3300) > Julien (AOE) (1000 * 3) > Sandor (2500) > Arya (1800) > Kravras (1700) > Hector (1600) > Russel (1500)

Group C: Damage Reducers

 When discussing about damage reduction, we need to consider multiple aspects. As mentioned before, commander Jon snow can reduce any damage done on his troops by Normal attack and Skill damage by 80% for 4 seconds

Meanwhile there are many commanders that can also help ally marches in an AOE and reduce any damage that is dealt to them. Commander Petyr Baelish is one of these AOE protectors and damage reducers. His effect can work on 3 marches and reduce damages by 70% for 5 second. He can reduce the normal attack, counter attack and the skill damages which is basically all source of the incoming damages.

Commanders Jaime, Leila, Sinara and Theon are all also AOE damage reducers that can do the damage reduction only for normal attacks (80% for 3 targets, 5 seconds).

Commanders Varys and Sheila are also damage reducers but they don’t have an AOE effect. Commander Varys reduces the damage dealt by normal attacks to your army by 90% for 4 seconds. Commander Sheila however, reduces the skill damage dealt by the enemy that you’re fighting by 85% for 5 seconds.

Having damage reducer commanders alongside your armies can increase the survivability of your marches and is generally a great idea, specially for the team fights.

Group D: Healers

Reducing damage, will prevent your armies from getting wounded while healers will bring back the wounded to your armies. During this event, not all damaged troops will end up in event hospital. There are basically 2 types of wounded:

- Serious injury: You can heal these wounded troops in event special hospital with special healing speed ups that your alliance leaders can buy with alliance supplies. This is just like the way you heal your troops in alliance conquest.

- Normal injury: This is only in the Siege of Winterfell so far. Basically, if troops are in this state, they will remain with your deployment but won’t fight anymore. Healer commanders will be able to bring back normally injured armies. Also, as soon as your normal wounded troops return to your castle they will be auto healed.

The heal, just like damage reduction can be both AOE or single target. Commander Daena has a single target heal skill that effects your own march. Commander Simon can also heal 3 marches in an area by a huge amount. Here is a list of all commanders with heal skills in order of their skill’s strength:

Simon (AOE) (1800 * 3) > Salma (3300) > Rhea (3300) > Patelo (3300) > Kevin (3000) > Margaery (1800) > Sansa (1200) > Daena (1000) > Annie (800) > Sabrina (500) > Seg (400)

Commander Sansa can increase the amount of healing received by 1200% for 5 seconds which also affects her own heal. This would mean, if there are marches with commander Simon around, her march can receive way more heal than usual.

Group E: Skill Damage Buffer

Group B commanders deal a massive amount of skill damage against the enemy but we can increase that if they are following a skill damage buffer commander. Jeane (85% for 5 seconds), Margaery (80% for 5 seconds) and Raymond (60% for 6 seconds) are the 3 skill damage buffer commanders.

Please remember that the skill damage commanders (Group B) have to follow these commanders and not to be used before them. For example, Margaery should be before Cersei when deployed and not after her.

Note that commander Margaery was also a semi weak healer as well.

Group F: Normal Attack Damage Buffer

When discussing normal attack damage buffing, I need to clarify that I’m discussing only about the commanders that will directly boost the normal attack damage of your armies with their skill and not by boosting your troops stats.

This description limits this group to commanders Annie (70% for 5 seconds) and Raymond (60% for 6 seconds).

Note that commander Annie is also a healer commander. Commander Raymond can also buff the skill damage for a limited time, which is useless as it would mean you need a skill damage commander after him which means you’re not going to use his normal attack buff to it’s maximum potential.

To use a Normal attack buffer commander, it’s best if they get followed by a commander that increases your troops attack bonus with their skill right afterward. Commanders Enzo, Latz, Drake, Jaime, Sinara and Leila are perfect candidates of that which I will explain in next group.

Group G: Bonus Boosters

In addition to the passive bonuses that apply if you have commanders in high quality, some commanders have an skill to boost troops bonuses for their own troop type by a huge percentage for a short amount of time.

Here is a list of commanders that can increase different stats like this:

Infantry Attack: Feis (1200% - 8s), Andrea (900% - 8s), Sinara (900% - 5s), Latz Karin (900% - 5s)

Infantry Health: Latz Karin (900% - 5s), Jon Snow (300% - 4s)

Infantry Defense: Andrea (900% - 8s), Barret (900% - 8s), Latz Karin (900% - 5s), Winton (900% - 5s), Rhea (300% - 5s), Patelo (300% - 5s)

Cavalry Attack: Robb (1200% - 8s) Laena (900% - 8s), Leila (900% - 5s), Enzo (900% - 5s)

Cavalry Health: Enzo (900% - 5s)

Cavalry Defense: Laena (900% - 8s), Mengo (900% - 8s), Enzo (900% - 5s) - Salma (300% - 5s), Winton (900% - 5s), Uma (900% - 5s), Rhea (300% - 5s)

Spearmen Attack: Arslan (1200% - 8s), Meranda (900% - 8s), Jaime (900% - 5s), Drake (900% - 5s)

Spearmen Health: Drake (900% - 5s)

Spearmen Defense: Meranda (900% - 8s), Gorell (900% - 8s), Hector (1200% - 6s), Drake (900% - 5s), Uma (900% - 5s), Salma (300% - 5s), Patelo (300% - 5s), Julien (50% - 6s)

Bowmen Attack: O’Biehn (1200% - 8s), Melisandre (900% - 8s), Theon (900% - 5s)

Bowmen Defense: Melisandre (900% - 8s), Egbert (900% - 8s)

Total Defense: Kevin (400% - 5s)

Note That all these stats come in addition to the passive stats that all commanders have an unlike those are not relevant to the commander quality.

Group H: Disablers and Effect Cancelers

Commander Tyrion comes with the very effective skill of disabling the enemy march from doing any normal attack counter attack or skill damage for 6 seconds.

At the same time there are multiple commanders that can cancel enemy commanders’ effects on your army. Commander Simon can remove any effect beside the Bleed damage. Commander Sabrina (for your own army) and commander Daena can also remove all status control effect and grant immunity for 5 and 4 seconds which will cancel effects such as Tyrions disable, Sandors rage reduction, …

Group I: Rage Reducer

Commanders Sandor and Soren can reduce enemy march rage, causing them to delay any future commander skill casts. As it was mentioned, rage is determining how frequent a commander going to use their skill. If you reduce enemy rage before its completely refreshed, you’ll simply delay the skill casting of enemy march.

Recommendations

All these being said, it’s very important for everyone to build their setups after thinking about which utilities they want to use in fight. Some combinations such as Margaery, Cersei or Jon Snow, Seg are very popular and very effective as by using commanders that can buff each other or commanders with similar usage, you can maximize the benefits you can obtain by these commanders.

It's also very important to use commanders that can buff the troops that you want to use in this event. For example, using Jaime alongside spears is a better use of his bonuses.

To read more about the event itself check out my other guide about it: here

Good luck and enjoy!