I wonder if the fact that you need multiple cores if you intend to participate in tournament play is stated on the back of the box? This would be useful information for someone who spots the game on the shelf of his or her LGS.

EDIT: I realize that FFG's main tournament-playing audience consists of people who are already familiar with how things work in LCG Town, but with the all but guaranteed explosion of the playerbase due to the franchise's now-universal visibility, there are bound to be new players brought in for whom this info would be vital.

There's nothing about a single core set that keeps one from making a single tournament legal deck.

Actually you can't make a tournament legal deck out of a single core. There are only 19 cards per faction plus neutral, plus, if you play the agenda, a splash of non loyal cards from one other faction. That will not add up to the minimum number of cards for a tournament deck. At least based on what I read in the LTP.

Actually, based on the L2P and RR, there are 20 cards for each, of which ~6 seem to be loyal. By combining two you get 20+14=34. There are also 32 netural cards, but you can't run Fealty or 4 roseroad/searoad, so that limits you to 29 neutrals for a grand total of 63 cards. Cut three cards, pick your 7 plots - and voila! Legal deck.

What he said.

There's nothing about a single core set that keeps one from making a single tournament legal deck.

Mathematically, yes. But should you? Should anyone?

I wanna see some kickass player build such a deck, take it to Worlds, and win with it. Stranger things have been known to happen.

I wanna see some kickass player build such a deck, take it to Worlds, and win with it. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Mathematically, yes. But should you? Should anyone?

Well there is The War of Five Kings tournament at worlds so several people will compete with a single core at worlds.

As a new player it would surely be enough to buy one core set and keep up with the chapter packs, at least for the moment. If you are not familiar with the game you don't know which cards you need. So it would be better to play some time with a deck that's not the most efficient just to try things out. After some time you realise which cards are good for the strategy you want to play and then it's not too late to buy a second or third core set.

I wanna see some kickass player build such a deck, take it to Worlds, and win with it. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Mathematically, yes. But should you? Should anyone?

Well there is The War of Five Kings tournament at worlds so several people will compete with a single core at worlds.

You're thinking of the Kingslayer at Gen Con. Wo5k at Worlds is just whatever the card pool is at the time. Probably Core Set (however many) plus the first one or two chapter packs. I'll bet any amount of money anyone wants to say that nobody makes the top cut of that tournament with fewer than three Core sets.

As a new player it would surely be enough to buy one core set and keep up with the chapter packs, at least for the moment. If you are not familiar with the game you don't know which cards you need. So it would be better to play some time with a deck that's not the most efficient just to try things out. After some time you realise which cards are good for the strategy you want to play and then it's not too late to buy a second or third core set.

Not really. I don't see a time coming, really almost ever, where at the very least a second core set shouldn't be the immediate first buy. Probably three for the foreseeable future. There's a philosophical commitment at FFG to keep the Core Set relevant so that new players don't feel like they bought into the game with a box of cards that have been obsoleted by subsequent releases. So don't expect the chapter packs to provide straight upgrades to the themes and characters present in the core set.

As a new player it would surely be enough to buy one core set and keep up with the chapter packs, at least for the moment. If you are not familiar with the game you don't know which cards you need. So it would be better to play some time with a deck that's not the most efficient just to try things out. After some time you realise which cards are good for the strategy you want to play and then it's not too late to buy a second or third core set.

Not really. I don't see a time coming, really almost ever, where at the very least a second core set shouldn't be the immediate first buy. Probably three for the foreseeable future. There's a philosophical commitment at FFG to keep the Core Set relevant so that new players don't feel like they bought into the game with a box of cards that have been obsoleted by subsequent releases. So don't expect the chapter packs to provide straight upgrades to the themes and characters present in the core set.

I assume you are talking about competitive players and I agree with you there. If you play to win in tournaments, sure, buy three core sets. But if you are completely new to the game and have no idea how it works. How would you know if you even like it. Maybe Magic the Gathering or Yugioh are more your kind of thing. Or you just wanna play with your friends and like to keep things casual. 40$ seems like a much more easy investment to lure new people into starting the game, instead of here buy three boxes of this and every chapter pack that will be printed.

I don't know how the prices are in the US but I can still get a 1st Edition Core set for 30€ on Amazon. So I see no rush to buy everything immediatly.

Even as a casual player you're going to feel the bite that you can't attach dupes to your main characters, or that Daenerys gets humongously powerful with her Dragons around yet you only have one copy apiece. For that reason, what I said was that your first purchase to grow your collection after the first core set, should be a second or third core set. The Core Set needs to (and based on all we know, does) wear its shortcomings on its sleeve, in order to prompt subsequent and ongoing purchases. Even casual players will start to outgrow a single core set very quickly.

can anyone please explain the concept of duplicates? (as if I were a 5-year-old version please:-)) to my undestanding so far is that I can run 3 copies of unique strong characters but I can bring only one into play, but under some circumstances they can all be played (like saved or revived)

If a unique character has been discarded a new copy can come into play if you draw it. If a unique character has been moved to the dead pile then all additional copies are no longer valid for play. The idea of having three copies of a card in your deck is to increase the likelihood that it comes onto play.

If you have one copy of a unique character in play and a second copy in your hand, you can just put this second copy in play by putting it under the first copy of the character on the table during Marshalling for 0 cost. The reason you don't just lay it on top of the copy already in play is that there will be different versions of characters as the game grows, but they will have the same name, so they still count as the same card (with different abilities), but you can only use the abilities of the first copy you played, even if the second copy you put in play has different abilities.

Then, after you've played a duplicate, whenever that character has to leave play, you just discard the duplicate, and the first copy stays where it is. Even if the character was to be killed, you just put the duplicate on the discard pile, not the dead pile, and the first copy survives and stays in play.

Now, if you play the first copy and it gets killed before you can "duplicate" it, it goes on the dead pile, and you can't play you're duplicates anymore, unless the character is raised from the dead by some possible future card effect.

Since you can't have more than three copies of a card (per title) in your deck, you can have up to two duplicates, and you can place them both under the first copy, even in the same Marshalling Phase, so can save the character two times. You don't put both duplicates on the discard pile, just one, for each case of character discarding or killing.

... I think I got everything?

nice, well explained, much appreciated

one last thing though, can I put my duplicate from the hand and place it over a character in play assuming I want the effects from the one I have in hand?

No, you cannot change the version you have in play when playing a duplicate.

Duplicates are going to be hugely important in 2nd edition.

• Unlike first edition, you can place dupes during Setup. This accelerates your draw as it means you can play more cards out of your hand, so you draw more off your deck before Round 1
• Dupes cannot be canceled, unlike first edition.
• Dupes are a game effect now, not a character ability, therefore they can't be shut off by blanking the text or cards like the new Catelyn Stark.

I foresee that players trying to play out of a single core set are actually going to be very dismayed at watching the investment in a 7-cost character evaporate from a kill event or a kill attachment, when the ability to make that character more resilient really only comes with more cards. This is going to be a powerful incentive. While my heart goes out to people advocating for the viability of a single core, when it comes to increasing the power level and utility of your decks, the very best dollar-for-dollar value you can consider will be more core sets. It'll be so massively useful that you'll really want it right away.

Look at it this way: a 2nd core set is 220 usable cards at about $0.18 per card at retail.

A Chapter pack is $.25 per card, and those cards don't give the massive power-up to your existing cards that dupes of your core set characters will.

All I'm saying is that people need to see past their reflexive resistance to the idea and just look at the way the game is and what is the best value to increase the variety and consistency and power of their decks.

Blanking a card never prevented from saving it with duplicates (since it was a gained ability).

I agree with you on the rest. The situation with the Core Set is "pick any two":

• variety (different cards)
• completeness (number of each card)
• affordability (price)

FFG chose to sacrifice the 2nd, because sacrificing the first would make a boring game (and drive off competitive players) and sacrificing the 3rd would drive off casual players.

I could have sworn that was not what Ktom said during my Store Championship. Maybe it was something else. What else shuts off dupe saves under 1st edition besides Brienne and Burning Bridges?

I could have sworn that was not what Ktom said during my Store Championship. Maybe it was something else. What else shuts off dupe saves under 1st edition besides Brienne and Burning Bridges?

Anything that says "cannot be saved" so for instance the plot "Wildfire Assault". There were a few of them.

Burning Brides doesn't shut off dupe save either (because it has been ruled as only affecting printed abilities). What did is:

• effects that prevent players from triggering effects (Brienne)
• effects that prevent a card from triggering its abilities (Bitterbridge, the kings and queens that shut themselves off when there is another in play, like Tommen and Alannys)
• effects that directly prevent saves (Wildfire Assault, Assault on King's Landing)
• terminal effects, also called burn (Flame-Kissed, Incinerate)

The 2nd Ed rules exclude the first two cases (since dupe save is now a game ability). But they include the last two cases (see Save in the RR). Wildfire Assault is an example for the 3rd; Dracarys! and Plaza of Punishment are examples for the 4th.

What happens if the plot Heads on Spikes hits a copy of a character you already have marshalled?

Nothing. Being in the dead pile just means you can't Marshal a copy of that character into play, it has no effect on an extant character or attaching a dupe to that character.

EDIT: I love this forum.

whaa?