In Spain, Greyjoy House has just come out. I was eager to have it in my hands and I know I wasn't the only one. At first, the idea of paying 30€ (42$ approx.) was uncomfortable but I love this game and Martin's world and I wanted to complete the game.

I appreciate the effort but I have a bitter taste after the shopping because I think FFG and EDGE(the Spanish distributor) should look after us and I have not felt so.

First, the useless resin item. It is not for me. Maybe somebody wants to pay for it but not me, sorry. In my opinion, it should be more like a prize for a tournament winner or a special gift for good customers.

Second, I think FFG should think about players, more in these hard times, and not only about its business... A chapter costs 10€ and it has 40 cards. I think it's a nice deal, that's why I got into lcg games. The question is how much 60 cards should be to be worth. Perhaps, the price should be between 15 and 20€. I have the worrying idea that resin house card is just an excuse to increase the price.

The last and the worst annoying thing was when I opened the box. I was happy to meet Asha, Balon,... and I thought it was expansive but it was worth to have a new deck similar to the original decks from the core. The big problem was locations. In the core set, you could find 3 gold producers, 2 location to reduce 1 gold dragon and 1 location to reduce 2 gold dragons for every house. In this set, you'll find just one of each. This makes me have a bad sensation. So are you telling me that if I want to have 3 of each one, I'll have to buy 3 Greyjoy sets? 90€? Are we crazy? Giving 3 more cards was really so expensive for you? If I am wrong, please tell me.

I only hope you can fix these problems for Martell set. If you can't, might be the chance to think if it is time to stop buying new cards and to start buying used ones from internet.

Sorry for my poor English.

I agree about the price, but I also think that a good expansion, with some new rules and great cards can be worth 30€ (even if I would rather pay half for the cards only).

But if there is only one of each GJ location, it is really bad! For 30€ you should have a playable deck, and a good one!

Can you tell us if there are some cards in 2 or 3, like attachments or non unique characters?

I´m in the mood to say "just like i expected it to be". Don´t get me wrong on this, i think it´s great to have Greyjoy back and to get an expansion that possibly (?) fixes some holes in the enviroment. But i started the discussion about the prize/ benefit ratio months ago and hoped that the pack would include more than 60 cards.

Just one obersavation: a starter with 60 fixed cards for other " collectible " card games costs nowadays around $ 10 (8 €), the greyjoy starter costs easily around 30 €. Everyone should reconsider that before purchasing the product or any other future LCG product with a comparable performance.

naizen said:

I can´t believe that the politic of "inhouse" locations was followed after that Core set misery. It would have been the chance to set thinghs straight and include enough either neutral locations (sea road etc.) or multi house locations (the north etc.) in the expansion set. This is just ridiculous.

naizen said:

Same here. And to think that you are supposed to have three of them...

Price is outrageous. I suggest selling Martell pack with tampon kit. Just one tampon of course, not three.

fabest said:

New rules?

If i remember it correctly it was announced that there is a kingsmood play variant. Also i think that new rules - game mechanics- are naturally part of a card game and shouldn´t be purchased singulary? At least i can´t remember that i payed a special price for the shadow mechanic/rules .;-)

Rogue30 said:

~ A wise move to invest in the steady growing market of female CCG/ LCG players.

There are no cards in 2 or 3. You'll just have one copy of each card unless FFG changes the set for USA players.

Of course, you can play the deck because there are other multihouse and neutral locations(just one copy, of course), but I expected to have a deck as the core set's at least. Buying a Greyjoy Set, you'll have 5 locations to reduce or produce gold in total. So you only have two options. First, take neutral locations from the core set. Second, and this is what I imagine FFG had planned, buy one more Greyjoy set... and enjoy that fantastic resin thing!!

Yeah - I'm pretty sure there's only one of each card.

Its totally not an issue for me - I have thousands of Greyjoy locations sitting in shoe boxes. i guess new players kind of got boned on this though.

I totally agree with naizen. This GJ box is very, very poor. Only one copy of each card, lots of reprints, no new rules (just a new multiplayer mode), no board and a sh*tty resin house card.

Do I have to pay 90€ in order to have 3x Gold locations? Same for 3x The Price of War? Meh...

I'm sorry FFG, you dissapointed me. I foresee that you'll lose many customers with this move.

Well... you can do this:

1. Have the greyjoy player purchase one of these boxes.

2. Have the other players chip in and buy 1 - 2 more.

Then trade.

OR simply buy 3, and have the other players chip in a little for the non greyjoy stuff. I mean for those of us that want/need 3x of the events you're going to get 3 of them. Just like the core set. I would say $5 - $10 for a set of plots and kings/queens, and throw in some of the neutrals.

/sign

As a Martell player, i have bad expectations. So, i must spend 90€ for a complete playset of must-have cards as locations and basic characters. Maybe its a good time to leave behind the game before i regreat buying it. Or maybe its time for FFG to reconsider what they are selling. OK, 40€ each core set is a good deal, i have 240 cards, and lots of them to trade, but what about the GJ core?.

bloodycelt said:

If you get the queens/kings and plot set, what are getting the others? I dont think people is going to pay 30€ for plot set and a king or queen of each.

So please please please, dont do it again with the Martell core. Just cards, not stupid useless resin items that doesnt worth.

These are legitimate concerns, and while I hate that there are some players genuinely upset by this, I do know that FFG has heard the complaints, even before the set was released. The question becomes, will we see the proper changes made in the Martell expansion?

For the new players out there, there are still many of us playing who have older copies of the income locations that were reprinted. I'm sure you if contact us we can send you some of those if you are unable to buy multiple copies of the expansion. Personally, I probably have 30+ iron island fiefdoms and I'd be happy to send some out.

Hmmm, well I saw the set briefly but I have to admit to being dazzled by the "power" cards and the plots such that I wasn't paying attention to the vanilla resource cards. I guess I was assuming that the set's Greyjoy deck would mimic closely the Core Set decks so that it could be plugged right into it for playing five player games. Maybe for FFG the thinking is the Core Set alone is the only "play it straight out of the box" offering for AGoT --some folks have speculated that they take a loss on that set-- and the Greyjoy expansion is meant to promote deck building (and in turn push people beyond the Core Set only and into Chapter Packs if they haven't already). My concern is that if that's the case I'm not sure it's been communicatd and as a result the "board game" crowd that buys this thinking it is a straightforward expansion of the Core Set is going to be very dissappointed. For the hard core deck building crowd (which I think most of the vocal people on this forum are), we can grumble about the price but the lack of multiple copies of the resource cards probably isn't much of a issue since we were all likely going to buy the set 3x since there'd be some cards that we'd want multiple copies of that we wouldn't expect (based on the Core Set pattern) to have more than one copy in the set anyways --for example an event or some useful non-unique character. As for the resin house card, that's just gimicky and hard to defend; the competive deck builder buying three copies of this set isn't happy with the three GJ house cards and the casual, at home player who might like the extra "chrome" for the game when playing with friends isn't going to be thrilled when none of the other houses have a corresponding resin house card.

We pretty much unanimously pleaded with FFG to give us this. It's got some warts for sure, but I think once it is finally in hand I'll be much happier for having it for the game's environment than not. ~When I start losing consistently to GJ decks, I may change my mind.

Dobbler said:

I wonder if they would probably release a "cards only" greyjoy expansion set. It´s really hard for me to imagine that the sales of the box will be satisfying. And i´m still musing about the nonsense of releasing the product in a big box, FFG also released other board game products in small packs/boxes e.g. "the king in yellow" arkham expansion.

LetsGoRed said:

which will be soon my friend. Sept 1st....

As a greyjoy player (started with greyjoy and love it still) I'm happy that I have cards. I'm not as happy as I would be, knowing that there isn't the location support, or that I have to buy 3, but none the less, having cards and being able to build a deck for real now is more than worth it. I won't be buying 3 of it all at once, maybe one every couple months. And I'm sure FFG will fix it for the MArtells, well, I hope anyway.

September 1st??? Did I miss something? Are we not going to have this for GenCon?

Sorry, no new rules but new multiplayer mode. I typed quickly and in my mind it was (almost) the same. Well it's new rules for multiplayer, isn't it?

I was planning to buy 2 of them so I would have almost all the cards, and then trade for the others but now I know it won't be possible (nobody will have extra locations, nobody will trade them, that's the LCG main problem : I wasn't able to trade even 1 card as you never have extras and/or you split them with your meta players).

In France it will cost (I guess) 30€ (so 42$), so I would need to spend 120$ in order to have one playable deck (let's not talk about the chapters I was planning to buy for GJ cards - Winds of Winter for example). You can find the Core set, new, for 32€… I guess I'm gonna buy 2 more of it and play another House, or not buy anything else and stick with my Targ deck.

I was really looking forward to this expansion, since my first decks were the Winter Premium ones (Targ' & Greyjoy). So these are the 2 Houses I like the most. Too bad for the krakens…

Honestly, I'm fairly happy they didn't clog up my $30 investment of just 60 cards with 3 Gatehouses, 2 Iron Island Fiefdoms and a Bloody Keep, I'd much rather have 60 new cards. PLUS, they did kind of warn us up on the product page:

This is not a stand-alone game; an A Game of Thrones: The Card Game Core Set is required to play.

foxpillow said:

Because you´ll find all the necessary resources in the Core Set to play Greyjoy? Just like an OOH Great keep or an OOH Hall of heroes?!

As a long time player i´m also somehow happy that i don´t need to buy an expansion with 6-7 locations i have plenty of. But it´s a more than valid argument for players that get into the game. And finding new customers was supposed to be one of the major arguments for FFG to change the whole CCG into an LCG.

On the location thing, the typical Core Set deck held 8 resource locations:

- 3x House +1 Gold reprint (Gate House for Greyjoy)

- 2x House Fiefdom (Iron Island Fiefdom for Greyjoy)

- 1x House Unique Chamber (Aeron's Chamber for Greyjoy)

- 1x House -2 character reducer (Bloody Keep for Greyjoy)

- 1x Dual-House Sea (Sunset Sea for Greyjoy)

So that's 8 resource locations. From what has been said here, it sounds like there is 1 copy (5 resource locations) of each "type" of location, meaning that there are 3 "missing" resource locations. But if there are 3 Kingdom locations in the expansion, the card slots may have been 2x Gate House and 1x Iron Island Fiefdom. Are the 3 Kingdoms unplayable in Greyjoy, or are they just not as good/basic as the Gate House/Fiefdoms they seem to be replacing in the GJ "deck"?

So it sounds like the playability of this as a "GJ Core Deck" suffers from the parallel purpose of trying to fill some of the LCG "holes" for Kingdom locations, Kings/Queens, traited plots, etc. This shouldn't surprise anyone too much. It's not a particularly easy balance to find.

As for the price, yeah, that's an issue. It's also not a new issue....

longclaw said:

GreyjoyChris is away from New York for the summer, so the date just refers to when he'll be back with the NYC meta to terrorize us with his GJ deck.

Whew. I hoped it was something like that.

As for using old locations, since that's not legal for tournaments, I'm not sure how much of a solution that is. Obviously a fine one for those who aren't going to play in sanctioned tournaments, and I'm sure that's the assumption here. Part of me really wishes we could use older copies of straight reprints. I know most of us don't really like the thought of buying three core sets for that third Flame-Kissed or Golden Tooth Mines.

longclaw said:

Why can't you? It's only modified reprints that you can't use. Straight reprints are still legal, as far as I know. Of course, you have to be really careful about what is a straight reprint and what is modified.

Well, it's not strictly a matter of price. 30€ would be fine depending on the contents of the box. Let's do some maths.

Core Set: 220 cards + multiplayer board + 6 multiplayer resin titles -> 40€

Greyjoy Expansion: 60 cards + resin house card -> 30€

Excluding the extra items, which are all but the cards, we have the following:

SC: 220/40 = 0'20€/card (rounding up)

GJ Exp: 30/60 = 0'50€/card

IMHO, the resin house card should not be included in the box if that's the reason to increase the price. In fact, if all the cards in the GJ expansion would cost the same as the Core Set's cards, we would only pay 12€ (rounding up) for the pack. Even if we consider the new multiplayer mode and a random added cost... Let's say the cards in this pack are worth 15€. Do I have to pay 15€ more for a resin card?

Also, there's only 1 copy of each card. This is not a problem if the price is right... but I'm obliged to buy 3x boxes if I want 3x copies of every card (which is just fine if we speak about buying chapter packs, 'cause the price is ok). That means I have to pay 45€ in exchange of 3 useless resin cards I won't be able to sell, because everyone else has one.

ktom said:

Apparently, based on some of the responses in this thread, many players are under the impression you may only used cards issued since the Clash of Arms CHapter Packs in LCG format.

It is legal to use any direct original copy of a card reprinted in any of the cards printed from Clash of Arms up to the Tower of the Hand Chapter pack.