Hi...

I have bought a "Game of Thrones core set". After a few plays I started considerating buying some chapter packs... Which of those available paks are best for houses Stark and Lannister ?

Thanks to you all... " Highlander " :-)

Well, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to build a stark winter deck, then there are some cps better then others. If you want to build a stark bear island deck, well then you need the CP that has bear island in it. If you want a lanni kneel deck you should pick up the chapter pack with castellan of the rock in it. If you want lanni shadows, then the chapter packs from kings landing are a good fit.

That said there is nothing wrong with picking up a few chapter packs here and there and building your own theme out of them. For the most part all the chapter pack contents are easy to find (either here, on tzumainn.com, or boardgamegeek.com; heck its easy to find chapter pack thoughts on here there have been so many threads about them). browse around a bit and see what card(s) strike you as interesting.

If i sound harsh i'm sorry, its not my intention, but i think new posters are getting a little lazy with the chapter packs. If you like a house and want to play it i just feel that you should take it in your own direction. Me or someone else telling you which cards are good or which chapter pack to buy doesn't really let you play the game fully. You might as well just borrow decks. There are not a lot of chapter packs out there and you can see whats in each, a little research should have you answering this question yourself in no time.

Highlander, basically what Lars is saying, is until you know what style of car you want to drive, it doesn't do much good to tell you what dealership to go to. Every chapter pack has some Lannister and Stark stuff. If you describe your preferred style of play for each of those houses, we can do a better job of directing you to specific chapter packs to supplement what you want to do.

Thank you for your respond... Lars and Dobbler.

I guess you are right about that I should take it in my own direction.

We'll happily help you with thought regarding strategies and what cards are good for what you are looking to do, but every CP contains cards for every House. Without knowing what to do all you'll get is cookie cutter responses about individual cards. The LCG has progressed beyond the point where you just include the best cards of your House in a deck and your done.

A coherent strategy will beat that deck the majority of the time.

So Stark and Lannister are the two most iconic Houses with some strong cards. Have you played them in the core set yet? What do you like? What strategies and tactics appeal to you? Give us those answers (which properly speaking belongs in the Deck Construction forum) and we can give you cards and Chapter Packs to supplement and support those things and maybe give you some more ideas about build direction, strategies and tactics.

Wow, I thought people came to find help here.

The reason that many new players ask for help is because they don't know where to start. And with snarky answers like "New players are too lazy." I am sure they will stop comming here for anwers very shortly.

So either you want to help people enjoy the game or you just want it to be people who already like the game. If you just want it to be people who already like the game, keep giving that anwer and you will find that the game will end rather quickly. You need new players to buy into the game and buy more product. Any help and suggestions you can give will help promote and sustain the game. HOw is that a bad thing?

If you can't be bothered with it then just don't comment, but making someone feel bad for aksing a valid question. As a new player I don't want to search through txumain for all the cards and where they are to find ones for two or one specific house. It would be easier to ask here and have someone more knowledgable about the cards and the chapter packs. Shock maybe someone who has already bought them and has played the game for awhile. Saves a lot of time and effort when a quick question that someone says hey check this out, rather than aimlessly seaching a database hoping to come up with the right answer.

jugglingfool said:

Eh, I think you're coming on too strong here in your indignation. Lars did give some feedback on how to approach chapter packs. "Lazy" is bit provacative, so maybe not the best choice of words, but what I think the gist of what was said is valid. To enjoy the game to the fullest, you probably want to make the "journey" yourself to finding what cards are fun and work well for you. If you just take someone else's deck list and put it together blindly, you might be missing out on a big part of the fun of the game. (I realize that the OP didn't ask for a deck list.) I play a fair number of board games; I never read strategy articles written by other players. Part of what's fun about games for me are the "A-ha!" moments when something clicks in your head and your understanding of the game and how to better play it increases. I'm not saying that's the only correct way to approach games, but I think perhaps that's in part where Lars is coming from.

As for chapter pack purchasing advise, the difficulty is that pretty much every chapter pack probably has a card or two at least that would be a fine addition to the Core Set decks. Which ones to choose can be a question of personal preference for which a "correct" answer can be tough/impossible. But if someone want's it, here's my advise on buying chapter packs: buy as many as your budget allows starting with the A Time of Ravens block (which starts with Song of Summer and ends with Scattered Armies). The Season theme works well, is straightforward, and has plenty of cards that build on it. After you realize how ass-kickin' awesome this game is, buy all of the rest of the chapter packs whether or not your budget can afford it.

One suggestion to the Highlander is, if he/she hasn't already, is to spend some time reading through the existing threads in the general forum and the deck building forum. Some of the conversations may give some focus to what Highlander wants to try to do with his first few chapter pack purchases. Use the existing threads to ask questions as to why people are using or not using certain cards or why they think some themes work or don't work with the currently available cards. Just my 2 cents.

For the record, let's not misquote Lars either. After some useful advice he took the time to share all he said was:

Lars said:

Trust me, there isn't a person in this community that doesn't want to see new players.

Well, for Stark and Lannister my first pick of chapter packs would be Battle of Ruby Ford: three Castellan of the Rocks and three Devious Intentions for Lannister (both extremely fun and thematic cards) ... and Old Nan, three Umber Berserkers and three Midnight Sentries for Stark. Additionally some nice neutral cards. Ancient Enemies would anyway probably be my next choice, mostly for the Fury plots, which are needed for lots of other stuff, Bear Island for Stark and Toll Gates for Lannister.

If you want to buy just one or two chapter packs, I recommend buying from the Clash of Arms set (the two I mentioned are from that one). I'd say that the Time for Ravens requires buying several chapter packs to get the most out of the season themes. Additionally both Lannister and Stark would probably want to play winter, so you would need to choose which gets to play it (or buy two winter chapter packs...;P).

To be fair, my first thoughts on reading Lars' answer were: "Well that's a bit harsh". Although, I agree with the fact that lack of a proper search in these forums causes the same questions to crop up all the time, and also it is pretty hard to say which chapter packs are best for which house with nothing else to go on. ( Although Castellan of the Rocks make this an easy choice for Lannister in my book... too useful )

Can't say anything about the King's Landing packs, since I haven't seen them yet, and I refuse to spoil myself (other thand reading the official spoiler articles...) of the cards before buying.

jugglingfool said:

easier? maybe. more beneficial to your game play experience? doubtful. Part of the game is to sort through the cards and try to use cards in ways that other people may not see (that A-ha! moment Letsgored describes). Having someone tell you excatly what cards to buy and use means you miss out on half of the game.

Experimentation with the cards at your own level and pace is also a great way to learn the game. If you have me or someone else telling you play this card, this card and this card. What are you goign to do 5 chapter packs from now when you are no longer new to the game? ask us again?

We have a newer player in our group who i'm always willing to help with his deck and his gameplay. He recently asked me, what do i need to do to upgrade my deck. My answer, find the themese you like and work them into you deck, experiement and see what you like and how things turn out for you, find the cards that you like to use and then meld them into the current deck with the stuff you like from that. Essentially the same answer i gave the OP. Find your theme, me telling you won't help you, look at the cards to find your answer.

I think the bottom line here is aside from cards, it was just a misunderstanding, and nothing to be dwelled on. We always want to expand the community, each and everyone of us, or we wouldnt be here posting. I can see why it could've been taken as a bit of a slight, but Lars didnt mean any harm, and is a great ambassador for the game.

Trust in the Heart of the cards.

As a "new" player (I started 3 months ago), I went a lot on Tzumainn's website (+ other spoilers) to see the cards in the different chapters and choose which ones will suit me best.

I think it's up to the player to get information about the cards and to decide which ones correspond to the kind of deck he's aiming for. Besides you can look for decks posted by experimented players and see which cards they use.

But the most important thing is, you must play with other players I guess (otherwise it should be very boring), so you only have to buy any CP with your friends and split the cards. Buy 2/3 or a complete set (best thing to do in my opinion, cards in the same extension have some synergy) so everyone will have access to the same amount of cards. You don't need all the best cards to enjoy the game, you only need your deck to be on a par with the others you're playing against (Castellan of the Rock, Toll Gate & Gold Tooth Mines are obviously 3 of the best Lannister cards but you can enjoy the game without them! Maybe even more, they are so powerful ).

Well, as a new player who posted a similar question recently in the deck construction thread, I wanted to reply when I saw Lars' "lazy" comment, but I've been busy traveling and fixing my computer so I haven't had a chance until now. I can only give my own perspective, but as a new player I don't have a good sense of the power level different cards and abilities. For example, I don't have enough experience yet to tell how good Vigilant or Stalwart are on a character, let alone the more unique character abilities.

I agree that part of the fun is learning through playing the game, but I have played other card games before and have found that part of the fun is in the deck construction process and to build decks I need to get a few chapter packs to supplement the Core Set decks. Part of what lead me to ask about the chapter packs is my experience from other games with randomized booster packs. In those games, there is a great disparity in relative card quality, which perhaps is not present an LCG since the point of the LCG is to take that grab bag element out of the game experience (I had not considered that when I asked the question). Still the fact that the packs have fixed cards led me to want to make sure I was getting the "good" ones since I wasn't planning on buying all of them right away. Also, as I noted in my post about chapter packs, a fair number of cards in the LCG care about the Summer/Winter mechanic -- getting many of those cards without getting the first packs of the A Song of Summer and The Winds of Winter packs would leave a bad taste in my mouth for the game since I would feel like my initial purchase was kind of wasted (until I got those packs).

It's unfortunate that this question gets asked so often (it's been asked twice after the time I asked it), but the search feature here is just terrible. I tried to search for the question before posting but could only find newbie questions about deck construction not pack buying. As Lars noted, Highlander (and myself as well) didn't ask about what deck to build but just which packs to buy. I'm not familiar enough with AGoT to give an in game example yet, but maybe if you're familiar with Magic you'll get this analogy -- if someone asked me what chapter pack to buy for their green deck, I'd probably recommend the one with Llanowar Elves Birds of Paradise because those cards represent one of green's most powerful mechanics and can be used in a lot of different decks. I could imagine there being similar cards in AGoT (for example, it sounds kind of like Castellan of the Rock might be one of them for Lannister). I can't speak for Highland, but I was looking for an answer like the one WWDrakey gave -- he recommends one pack in particular to buy and then gives some more general guidance about the relative merits of the two expansions that have been completely released so far.

An added pressure on me for buying chapter packs was that I was interested in the meetup in NYC on the 18th and wanted to make sure I got my cards in time (still hoping to attend by the way : ) ). I could see just the pressure of wanting to play without studying all 300 cards in the chapter packs being sufficient pressure to ask for some guidance though.

i'm not asking for months of research and a 30 page disertation. Nor am i suggesting scrolling through pages and pages of threads. A cursory glance at the deck building and general thread can usually find 1 simular post in the first page or 2. Tzumainn.com/agot has ratings on the cards (5 is the best). Boardgamegeek.com has pictures and quantaties of many chapter pack contents. The spoiler threads have discussions on what cards in the new chapter packs are good, what they work well with and why. Yes the search function is rather limited, but a quick search with 'chapter pack contents' got me 4 threads (two from general, one from deck, and one from rules) talking about about chapter packs or cards and which ones are better then others on the first page.

A thread that said "I have this chapter pack this chapter pack and/or the core set. I want to do this (build a certain kind of house x deck) or this mechinic really intrigues me. what can i do to expand on it or maximize it?" would get a lot more varied and in depth responses and be a greater resource for a new player then buy the chapter pack that has all the fury plots in it and the chapter pack with castellan of the rock. With a little effort you can get a lot more valuable information.

This post will get on-topic, I promise.

Lars, your reasoning is faulty. While it's true that a person could do a lot of research and come up with which specific packs to buy, it's less reasonable to expect them to actually buy the packs to find out if they're as good as they think they are, much less so for someone who has been around for what? A month? Two months, maybe? Your point about searching and such on these specific forums is right, but we often get very abstract and hard-to-understand when we're all discussing various cards. What you've said, in my mind, amounts to telling Dobbler that he should just build some treaty decks, play them in tournaments, and decide if it's really best for his "game play experience".

New players asking for help is a good sign - you shouldn't rebuke them by calling them lazy; that's a great way to hurt a person's confidence and their care for the game. Furthermore, we have, collectively, probably 40 years of experience playing this game (I'm just getting back into it now that it's the LCG, but had a lot of experience back in the day). At this point, it's not hard for any of us to write a little spiel about what CPs would be good to buy for Stark and Lannister, and even give a caveat saying that those packs amount to the cards that would let YOU build the deck the way you'd want to - not necessarily their way. Finally, how fun is it to just go out and buy a bunch of packs of expensive cards, find out that most of the cards don't do what you thought they did after reading Tzu-mainn's site, and then realize you just spent a lot of money on CPs that focus on other houses? This isn't as painful with the LCG, since there's usually something for everyone, and the "distribution" is quite awesome. But with new players, it's going to happen more often than you might think, I bet. Sometimes, new players just don't even know where to start.

End rant, on to the topic!

As a new player, my first advice would be to play Lannister. Stark might actually win more (the way I have it built, it does, anyway), but Lannister is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the two core decks in the current meta that is the strongest, and has the best potential; also, I'm a long-time Lanni-fan, so naturally I'm going to think they're the most fun and tricky to play. The other deck is Targ attachment stuff.

My advice would be to buy Battle of Ruby Ford for the Castellan of the Rock for Lannister, as suggested before. If you want to make your Lannister deck Summer-based, then get A Song of Summer - you get some pretty good draw, and lots of things trigger off of Summer that can help you out quite a bit. You could make a deal with your buddy (maybe, how should I know? ) that is along the lines of: You take the Lanni cards, Black Raven, and Kings of Summer agenda, then he gets the rest, if you pay for, say a quarter of the pack. That sounds ridiculous, in hind type, but you get my point.

The core set has useful things for both Stark and Lanni - Golden Tooth Mines and Robb Stark are incredibly useful. Ser Ilyn Payne is also, in my opinion, one of the best cards in the game. He kills Robb and a slew of other characters at the cost of being knelt. He can kill the new Street Waif, which is really chapping my meta right now (i.e. just BloodyCelt and myself. Where is everyone else!?). Lannisport Brothel and Jaime should probably make a play in any Lanni deck.

The Raven's Song is useful for Samwell Tarly (in any seasonal deck, i.e. summer or winter). It also has the useful Grand Maester Pycelle, who lets you get back Valar in your time of need (after burning it earlier in the game). You also get the three events which are mildly useful in any deck, certainly at a clutch time.

Refugees of War is a good one too. Gilly is awesome. The various little guys are also awesome - all of the littlest ones went into my Stark deck and end up giving me enough intrigue icons to not be a walk-over for Lannister.

War of Five Kings gets you Jhalabar, who is a beast against any deck relying on renown, i.e. Baratheon. But I don't own this CP, so I can't advise further, except that also I think Pyromancer's Cache has been banned from tournament play (right, folks?).

Ancient Enemies for Stark's Bear Island, a total freakin' beast of a card if ever there was one. If you don't play the unaligned refugees, then this is definitely what you want to get. You pretty much need this one for the Fury of the Wolf plot anyway, but Bear Island makes it clutch for Stark as well. Toll Gate for Lannister is also pretty nice.

Sacred Bonds because To Be a Wolf is the sickness. The Heralds are all clutch cards as well, for any deck. Also includes Jaqen, so is mildly useful...

Calling the Banners is useful for Gates of Winterfell, which, if used in conjunction with Bear Island, can become incredibly powerful. I'm going to build this deck today and see how it turns out.

I don't know about about the rest of the sets (don't have setlists for them handy, although I think there's one on the forums somewhere), but this is too long already, so I'm going to cut it off here.

WolfgangSenff said:

i don;t see how this is so. if they are interested in the game enough to research cards, they won;t be interested enough to buy cards?

WolfgangSenff said:

Thats excatly what i would tell him, and excatly what he would do. Dobbler usually uses cards differently then i do, so any advice i give him would pale into what he learns by doing this. There are tournaments like GenCon where people usually have decks they have tweaked forever, but a new player would not have a good shot at winning. then there are weely or monthly tournaments w/ local play groups wherre you can do excatly what you descirbed and where a new player hasa a 50/50 shot of doing well.

WolfgangSenff said:

never said it wasn't, never said i wouldn't answer the question (in fact i did give some advice, it was just general). Lazy wasn't ment as a rebuke, in fact i said that as well. All i said was that the information being asked for is out there in spades already, just have to look a little.

WolfgangSenff said:

Kennon things buying and opening a lot of packs if fun, so i guess it can be fun. How does castellan of the rock or bear island not do what it says it does on Tzumainn? If jalabar xho was the only lanni card in a CP, and the pack focused on house targ, would that be a waste? As to where to start, nothing wrong with starting at the begining of the chapter packs (especialyl since you suggested all of the clash of arms cps anyway) or to start with the newest cps. Look i'm not saying not to ask questions, i'm saying you will get much better answers with a little work of your own first.

BTW jaquen is also banned.

Ah, did not know about Jaqen! Interesting, and cool. I'm not going to bother quoting - you made some good points, and you'll see what I'm responding to.

The reason for having it as an LCG (from my perspective, anyway) is to make it much easier and cheaper to get into the game. If they end up buying the wrong packs, it's going to severely limit their ability to keep going with it, and that's an NPE (negative play experience) if ever I've seen one. They might not have a good understanding (especially if completely new to CCGs) how cards interact, or they may not know specific rulings, and such. That's less of a problem with LCGs, again, but since it's a new player, you can't expect them to understand Tzu-mainn's site accurately the first time. Looking at the ratings doesn't necessarily help - if the card doesn't seem to do what you want, but is rated really high, then getting it may not be the smartest thing.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound angry or anything - just trying to state it like I see it.

Also, yeah, obviously Dobbler would go ahead and do that, but he's an old hand at the game! Think about it from a completely new player's perspective, and maybe someone who doesn't have much money to buy cards with.

The problem is the question is flawed IMO. I get why it is being asked, but it is being asked more from the CCG idea than the LCG. I haven't seen a Chapter Pack I would not want at least one of (actually two of) regardless of what House I play. So here is my advice. Suck it up, and buy one of every pack. Play with the cards you want from your house and then buy multiple chapter packs of those that you like the best.

THAT is honestly the best advice I can give someone who asks such a general question. Every Chapter pack has at least one card, that without a specific build in mind, I'd want and most contain at least two. Others may disagree but when you ask them why it is because of a specific build in mind or to fight off a specific build (which for all intents and purposes is the same thing).

So for any future person who is planning on asking what packs to buy for your house, got to the deck constuction forum and read what threads there are for your House. You'll see discussion of various cards and builds that use them. Go to Tzumainn and check out the top rated cards for your House in the Coreset and Chapter packs and what decks use them. Read the comments. Then if you want to get specific opinions for you and what you intend on building, go back to the Deck Construction Forum and ask questions there about your theoretical deck and what cards will help you accomplish what you are looking for.

Lars statement about being lazy has been taken pretty much out of context and seen as being unproductive rather than as a warning to not be lazy and that doing some legwork in the end will give you not only a better answer to your question, but lead to more satisfying gaming experience.

I think we can probably just drop the conversation on that end, he apologized for any misunderstanding and explained what he meant by it. Anyone else who still feels that he was rude or unfriendly is not going to be convinced. And those of us who play the game and have dealt with Lars in RL or through the forums understand what he meant.

I think this thread might be better served to just name what cards are in the various Chapter packs and what they do. There are so few that aren't worth owning, I feel that this is a more thorough (and of course correspondingly time consuming) and honest answer to the question. Some Martell players swear by Open Market. I have never built a deck that I've felt that I got any real use out of it and end up cutting it within a week or two of playing. So someone telling you buy the pack for this card, and the awesome recursion it gives you is someone who would be making me waste my money... except is has Knights of the Sun which is a card I feel every Martell deck should be running, even if it isn't a Summer deck because how do you go wrong with these traits: Knight. Army. House Dayne. ?