Silverball guide · Game of Thrones
Choose your house like it matters, because it does
The house you pick at the start is not a skin. It hands you a permanent ability and a button power you can fire once a ball, and it changes what a good game on this machine looks like.
One choice, made before you have hit anything
You choose one of seven houses at the start of the game. That house's mode is immediately qualified, and more importantly you inherit its powers: a persistent benefit that just runs, and an action button power you can fire once per ball.
The action button is lit solid in your house's colour when it is ready. Lannister and Greyjoy are the exceptions to the once-a-ball rule.
What the houses actually give you
They are not balanced against each other and they are not meant to be. Lannister collects far more gold from the gold targets and starts you with 500 of it, which makes the Mystery purchases realistic. Tyrell keeps one inlane permanently lit to raise the combo multiplier, which sounds small and is not, especially during modes. Martell has no persistent ability at all and instead gives you an add-a-ball, on the button, during any multiball.
Stark adds ten million to every Winter is Coming hurry-up, which is worth a great deal if you can reach Winter Has Come and very little if you cannot. Baratheon starts you two shots into the Wall and raises its jackpots, and gives you a timed save on both outlanes. Targaryen spots its own house complete and can freeze every running timer for fifteen seconds.
Greyjoy is the odd one: it starts completed, and it absorbs the persistent power of every other house whose mode you finish, stacking them as you go, at the cost of each house battle needing more shots than it otherwise would.
You can buy a different power later
Gold is a real currency here. Complete the gold standup targets to light Mystery, and the award screen offers you three options: keep your gold, a cheaper random award, or the most expensive thing you can currently afford.
With enough gold, some house action powers are for sale, and buying one replaces your own action power for the rest of the game. Your persistent ability stays. So a poor early house choice is recoverable if you are collecting gold.
Seven shots, and each belongs to somebody
The playfield divides cleanly. The left drop bank lights Lord of Light and advances the spinner, and three completions qualify Baratheon. The left loop qualifies Greyjoy, the right ramp is Stark's, the right loop is Martell's, and the right two-bank is Tyrell's, which also lights the Blackwater locks and Wildfire.
The left ramp is the important one: it locks balls for Blackwater, it starts house battles, and it starts both Hand of the King and the Iron Throne. On a Pro the dragon lane carries Mystery, the extra ball and the Wall multiball start; on the Premium and LE that work is split between Castle Black and the right loop into the Iron Throne toy.
Swords raise the ceiling on your multiplier
Completing any house mode, or a pop bumper award, lights the right ramp for a sword. Swords score, and they can be multiplied for very large points, but that is not the reason to collect them.
The reason is that the playfield multiplier is capped at three times until you start collecting swords. Each one raises the cap by one, up to five. Without swords you simply cannot reach the top multiplier.
Blackwater is the multiball to learn
Two standup targets on the right light the lock at the left ramp, and you must lock a ball before lighting the next one. Three locks start it.
Complete the five major shots for jackpots and the super lights at the battering ram for twenty seconds, and it can be collected as many times as you hit the ram, with each hit also raising your playfield multiplier. Let the super time out and the jackpots relight needing two shots each, but the second shot and the super are worth double. That trade repeats, getting harder and richer each time.
Winter is Coming, and the trap inside it
Every time you light a house, the shot you used ices over. Three iced shots in any combination starts Winter is Coming, where the last iced shot flashes for a hurry-up and nothing else can progress. Four hurry-ups collected starts the mini wizard mode.
Here is the trap, and it is by design rather than a fault: if your third Blackwater lock is lit and you start Winter is Coming on the centre ramp, the multiball starts without letting you choose a house mode to stack into it. The workaround is to take the centre ramp hurry-up early, before you lock balls.
Stacking is the whole game
Almost everything worth doing here is worth doing on top of something else. A house mode inside Blackwater, with a playfield multiplier running, is the shape of a big score.
Which is why the ordering matters more than the shooting. Get the mode qualified, get the multiplier up, then start the multiball.
The Wall
On a Pro, six completions of the top lanes enable Wall Multiball and the dragon starts it. On the Premium and LE it is six shots to Castle Black, started at the right loop. Playing as Baratheon, completing his drop targets also spots progress.
Three ramp shots collect jackpots and light the super on the dragon, then the jackpots move to the loops and three of those light the dragon again. Be aware that later code cut what Wall pays significantly, so it is no longer the scoring strategy it once was. Further Walls cost eleven completions.
Where the game is going
There are three mini wizard modes and then the Iron Throne. Winter Has Come comes from the hurry-ups, Hand of the King from its own set of requirements, and the Iron Throne sits behind all of it.
Nothing here is reachable by accident on a single good ball, which is the argument for choosing a house whose powers suit the route you intend to take rather than the one whose sigil you like.
Where this came from
Silverball wrote this, but not from scratch: it was compiled against the published rules below and checked against them, rather than written up from one person’s games. None of the wording is theirs. Machines get code updates that move the right shot, so a guide has a date on it for a reason.
- Game of Thrones rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
