Power pool, Power Token and Power token matching is House

By Yolteotl, in A Game of Thrones: The Board Game

Posted at

Hello everyone !

I have carefully read the rules and i'm missing some points about Power Tokens.

Page 4 :

"Place all Power tokens (for all Houses) in a central pile. This pile of Power tokens is referred to as the “Power Pool.”

"Each player then takes five Power tokens matching his House from the Power Pool."

=>Here, it's clearly written "matching his House".

Page 16 :

"When a player resolves a Consolidate Power Order, he removes the Consolidate Power token

to gain one Power token from the Power Pool"
=>Here, it seems you can take any of the power tokens from the Power Pool. No "matching his House"
Page 24 :
"When a House vacates a land area (i.e., all its units leave during a March Order) the House may elect to establish control by placing a Power token from its available power in the vacated area (a House can never establish control over a sea area)."
=>Here, you have to put a Power token and no "matching his House"
So, my point is : If we can take a Power token from another House, it seems odd to use this Power token to etablish a control (how knowing it is "your" token ?), but it is not a problem to use Power token from another House for bids. If we can't, what is the point of having a Power Pool (with honest players, it seems easier to have two stacks by players) ? It could be really interesting to "steal" Power Token from other Houses, so they can't control lot of areas. Is it what is wanted in the rules or i'm mistaken ?
Thanks for your answers !

Posted at

You are not allowed to obtain enemy House' Power Tokens in any way.
I feel that it's rather intuitive.

Posted at

You are right, in fact, i have read all the instructions except the page 6 where it's written :

"Collect/Receive/Discard Power: When instructed to receive or collect power, a player takes the indicated number of Power tokens bearing his House insignia from the communal Power Pool. When instructed to “discard” power, the player takes the Power tokens from his available power and returns them to the Power Pool. A player may only collect, receive, or discard Power tokens bearing the insignia of his own House"

So the Power Pool is only here to limit the possibilities of cheating, it's not really convenient, so we are used to make 2 stacks of Power tokens on both sides of players screens.