Hi,

Just wanted to ask a few questions as group of my friends have been playing the game with just the single "core" set for a couple months now.

1) During a recent Military challenge I had core set Renly and Stannis's Northern Cavalry onboard, suffice to say I lost the challenge but defended it to prevent a free power claim.

Stannis's Northern Cavalry had been lowered in Strength that turn due to the Lannister plot card "Hear me Roar".

Do I have to kill Renly for this claim or can I choose Stannis's Northern Cavalry and then have it be prevented from dying, thus annulling the military claim?

2) Core Deck balance? In a multiplayer game I won quickly with Baratheon a few times, but everyone else in the 3/4 player games is wary of this speed so the Baratheon player is often targetted to keep it deliberately weak, sometimes having almost a board wipe every turn with multiple military challenges and as soon as you are low in strength ultimately you become the whipping boy for the other challenges.

So without a board wipe or removal ability how are you meant to prevent this happening? Eventually your hand is cleared purely through repeat intrigue or you have to play what you get to empty your hand.

The Power on house dries up as you can't defend the challenges and power on characters dries up as they are killed. As soon as I even approach 8-10 power (whether it takes 2 or 8 turns, long or short) they know the game well enough to cripple my characters, but I have nothing in return other than being able to hope I draw & play some attachments? Renown on defence is an issue too, trust me with 1 Deadly in the set and not enough military stealthers I dont get to win the challenges on defence so I could claim renown, they know this and so prevent it occuring.

I have played with the Stark deck before and ultimately if a situation becomes dire you can Valar Morghulis from plot or Lethal counterattack as an event if you still have that in your hand. Similarly the one time I played Targayan I was burning threats off the board without much issue multiplayer and was able to keep people alive in front of me due to this offence as defence tactic. The Lannisters sem incredibly powerful though. I don't ever want to choose them for Summoning season (Jaime/Tywin/Bronn/Varys/Littlefinger) and the one time I managed to mount a serious military assault ever they reduced my only 2 claim to "0", but similarly Wildfire assaulted me if I (or other players) had somehow got too powerful by them leaving me alone for too long.

I do prefer a jack of all trades style deck definetly and a way to come back into the game if all isnt going well. I would much rather have a nice balance of powers too rather than being overwhelmingly Military or Power. I definetly preferred the Targaryan deck when playing with them purely for balance (and because it kinda felt like an old school Red/Black burn MtG deck) but didnt really like the flavour of that deck overall. For what its worth in the rare times that I play an MtG game I play Blue/Black (maybe with a hint of green/red)...so if there is anything more like that in AGoT please let me know.

How are you meant to rescue a bad situation with this deck?

We even tried focusing decks down to 30 cards for fun and while the deck did get a bit better, the other decks got a lot stronger.

Am I reading this wrong, it just seems like core Baratheon is incredibly underpowered in this regard and it just gets even worse (especially plot card wise) if you play a heads-up game?

1) During a recent Military challenge I had core set Renly and Stannis's Northern Cavalry onboard, suffice to say I lost the challenge but defended it to prevent a free power claim.

Stannis's Northern Cavalry had been lowered in Strength that turn due to the Lannister plot card "Hear me Roar".

Do I have to kill Renly for this claim or can I choose Stannis's Northern Cavalry and then have it be prevented from dying, thus annulling the military claim?

You have to kill Renly - you cannot choose a character that cannot be killed to be killed. This will often come up with, say, the plot "Power of Blood".

2) Core Deck balance? In a multiplayer game I won quickly with Baratheon a few times, but everyone else in the 3/4 player games is wary of this speed so the Baratheon player is often targetted to keep it deliberately weak, sometimes having almost a board wipe every turn with multiple military challenges and as soon as you are low in strength ultimately you become the whipping boy for the other challenges.

It's been so long since I played with only the Core decks, especially in melee, so I may not be much use here. In general though, Melee is often a battle of perception; you have to appear to be no threat at all, and then strike quickly to finish off while your opponent's can't interfere. This is pretty hard to do with the core decks and the core plots. One of the plots that can help Baratheon gain the staying power, both in Joust and Melee, is Power of Blood (even two copies!) - but since that's assigned to Lannister in the core, you might have trouble convincing the lannister player to part with it!

If you want to re-balance the core decks a little, consider buying a second core set and building these 4 decks : http://www.cardgamedb.com/forums/index.php?/topic/207-4-decks-built-from-2x-core-set/ . They're much closer to being balanced, and second core set is rarely a purchase you'll regret - it'll give you a lot more consistency in your decks without adding many new cards you'll have to relearn.

Great advice thanks, I thought I may have to kill off Renly but wasn't quite sure.

I appreciate that the second question is very situational as most people will probably have moved away from just playing with the core set. I think a second core purchase is on the cards (pun intended). I know the Lannister player will not part with that plot card haha.

I have bookmarked that page with the decklists.

1) During a recent Military challenge I had core set Renly and Stannis's Northern Cavalry onboard, suffice to say I lost the challenge but defended it to prevent a free power claim.

Stannis's Northern Cavalry had been lowered in Strength that turn due to the Lannister plot card "Hear me Roar".

Do I have to kill Renly for this claim or can I choose Stannis's Northern Cavalry and then have it be prevented from dying, thus annulling the military claim?

You have to kill Renly - you cannot choose a character that cannot be killed to be killed. This will often come up with, say, the plot "Power of Blood".

Note that this rule is true: A card that "cannot be killed" is not a legal target for a kill effect, including military claim.

In this exact situation, though, it doesn't sound like Stannis' Northern Cavalry was "cannot be killed" during the challenge phase. The text on the card is, "Stannis's Northern Cavalry cannot be killed or discarded from play during a phase in which its STR has been raised or lowered." If it's STR was lowered because Hear Me Roar being revealed back in the plot phase (which, since this is "Core only," it probably was), the the Cavalry was only "cannot be killed" during the plot phase, not the challenges phase. So it would have been a legal target for a kill effect in the challenges phase, including military claim.

1) During a recent Military challenge I had core set Renly and Stannis's Northern Cavalry onboard, suffice to say I lost the challenge but defended it to prevent a free power claim.

Stannis's Northern Cavalry had been lowered in Strength that turn due to the Lannister plot card "Hear me Roar".

Do I have to kill Renly for this claim or can I choose Stannis's Northern Cavalry and then have it be prevented from dying, thus annulling the military claim?

You have to kill Renly - you cannot choose a character that cannot be killed to be killed. This will often come up with, say, the plot "Power of Blood".

Note that this rule is true: A card that "cannot be killed" is not a legal target for a kill effect, including military claim.

In this exact situation, though, it doesn't sound like Stannis' Northern Cavalry was "cannot be killed" during the challenge phase. The text on the card is, "Stannis's Northern Cavalry cannot be killed or discarded from play during a phase in which its STR has been raised or lowered." If it's STR was lowered because Hear Me Roar being revealed back in the plot phase (which, since this is "Core only," it probably was), the the Cavalry was only "cannot be killed" during the plot phase, not the challenges phase. So it would have been a legal target for a kill effect in the challenges phase, including military claim.

This is why they pay Ktom the big bucks. Well.... should.

Unrelated to your question, but just before you convince yourself to get a 2nd core set, please be aware that there is an impending 2nd edition to be released later this year.

It may be worth your investigating this further before committing to further purchases