Ruvion, perhaps reading through this thread it's hard to believe, but Deathjester and King of the Saltwives are complementing some things they thought were well done with Kings of the Sea as it was actually released (not some hypothetical re-release) -- namely, the neutral cards, extra King/Queens for the other houses, etc.

I have to say that if you are trying to maintain 4 even decks, based off the core set, having every useful neutral card x2 or x3 in them is not going to create the balance some of you seem to be saying you are looking for.

You may not have the experience yet to be able to recognize what cards work best in each house and balances them compared to the other houses/decks... but I'm willing to bet you could sit back and see how including every staple neutral card could actually unbalance a deck.

Let's look at your Bear Island deck versus a Targaryen deck. Targ doesn't really need location destruction in this match-up, including it would actually make the Targ deck much stronger, possibly too strong against Stark. Why? Bear Island is a Limited Response effect that can't target a character with an attachment... arguably the thing Targ does best. BI ends up failing to find traction with any of theTarg player's strong characters because they are most likely to be carrying the best attachments. So BI becomes a rather expensive way to kill off claim soak but also a deterrent forcing the Targ player not to put out those heavy hitters until they have an attachment. You give the Targ player location control too, and suddenly BI is near worthless.

Honestly I'd say it is probably easier to build fun decks for each house and then if one starts showing to much strength compared to the others, start adding counters to them. If you mostly play melee you don't even have to build all the counters into all three other decks, but give each a way of countering some aspect of the strongest deck. If you play mostly joust... then you have a near impossible task because some style of decks are just better than others and having all the best neutrals in one deck is not always enough to actually allow that deck to win. A great example would be a Lannister Intrigue strong kneel deck versus Stark. You could have event cancel, neutral events, and Bear Island, but they would still end up with important cards being pulled from hand and characters being knelt and watching Lannister rack up unopposed power turn after turn (and heaven forbid if you gave them Shadow Politics and Condemned By the Council also).

****, and here I was sure I wouldn't post into this thread again... Oh wells. =)

@dormouse: The argument really isn't to have Shadow Politics or Condemned by the Council or anything like that in each deck... It's more that there is not that much use having more than three unique in-house locations, even if you're running several decks with the same house. But if you are running, say a Martell and Lannister deck, you could nicely fit, for example, Condemned by the Council's into both of these decks, say 3 in a Winter Lannister that tries to shut your opponents locations down and two in the Martell to offset Bear Islands, Gold Tooth Mines etc. Now, if you buy three of each chapter pack, you get three of the cards you COULD utilize more of (if the card would fit into two decks of different houses, etc.). On the other hand the nine copies of that unique Location will never see use of in more than three copies. And again, if you think of friends dividing the houses and buying the chapter packs together, this also affects them.

So the point is not having power cards in several copies, but more in giving more copies of the cards which fit into a wider range of deck archetypes, and can thus be utilized more widely. This is related solely to the chapter packs of King's Landing, not Kings of the Sea (which I have no problem with, but am rather expecting quite a lot).

I think there is a sort of different attitude here with people coming from card game or board game backgrounds... Card-gamer are used to the thought that OF COURSE you get only one copy of the 'power' card. Duh. That's why you have to buy three copies, but it's still cheaper than CCGs, so all is good, eh? On the other hand board gamers seem to think of these as games they own, and that they run for their friends. And they're opposed to the idea of getting a load of useless 'extra' copies of cards, but would rather be able to use all of the cards they buy.

...in the end it feels like arguing in two different languages. =)

Hm, I thought I was pretty clear I was adressing only those talking about creating balanced decks. How often a card comes in a pack has nothing direct to do with that purpose, but people are trying to conflate the two.

As to whether a card should include multiple copies of this card versus that one... I have to say those who feel the cards they want should be x3 are probably going to be in for a long time of disappointment. This is not a board game. They will probably need to change their expectations if they want to keep playing and not be continually feeling like they are being taken advantage of. If FFG wanted to make their CP's so you only need x1 of each unless you are building multiple decks for multiple houses would be for each to have unique cards x1 and non-uniques x3, and make every CP fit that format.

At somepoint you just have to realize that with such a simple solution it would have occured to Nate, Eric, or Christian, and that the game is NOT packaged that way on purpose. It is entirely possible that enough complaints might get them to change the quantity/distribution of the cards in a pack, but then you are going to have to outshout those who want a different distribution scheme (I for example like get multipe copies of some uniques, and would prefer that and a low chapter price than an increased price chapter pack that I'm still going to have to buy x3 at times).

@dormouse: Sadly, I think you may be right. Sorry about misunderstanding who your post was aimed at. I was sort of hoping they'd keep up the way they did with the two previous expansions, where there weren't that many obvious choices dictated by such logic, but so far King's Landing seems to go in a worse direction.

...perhaps I'm just grumpy when people bring 'business' too blatantly into my 'fun' part of life. On the other hand, I would think that the newfound popularity of the LCG would be in large part due to board gamers taking it up... So there's at least some hope that FFG would try to please both crowds.

I agree that it would be nice to have a cheaper expansion version without the housecard. Don't get me wrong, the house card looks great...I just don't want/need 3 of them. (My budget is tight these days, otherwise I wouldn't mind that much.) In fact, most people who are interested in a Greyjoy house card would probably be interested in house cards for other houses, so selling each card individually (or cards for all six houses together) might be a better way to go.

For reference, I am one of the players that is saving hundreds of dollars a year on cards thanks to the LCG switch. Though I know not everyone will save that amount of money, I suspect that most people are saving at least a little bit. From those I've talked with, and especially new players, the switch to LCG is a positive change. (The problems I've heard have less to do with the change in distribution than the early rotation of ITE/5KE blocks.)

As far as including singles vs. multiples of the same card in the expansion goes, I'm glad these are all singles. This way, players get the most number of new cards to expand the cardpool, even if it means they have to buy multiples to get all the cards need to play a deck. Once the novelty of GJ wears off, people won't all be playing GJ, so casual players will be able to borrow extra copies of cards they need from friends. And like others mentioned above, many of the resources cards are reprints, and most of these aren't that hard to find if you track down someone with older AGOT cards.

Sorry to be a thread necromancer, but i was busy/away most of the weekend/week.

Rogue30 said:

I comletely understand. I'm just saying that you don;t need to have 1 deck per hosue built at the same time for one person. If you are building decks for more then one person you don;t have to give them all the cards you would give yourself (see Dormouses posts about baalnce not needing 3x of every good card) and if that person wants 3x of the cards you have in your deck tell him politly that that card comes 1x in {insert name here} chapter pack and there are 39 other cards in there too if he wold liek to pick up those cards himself.

~well if we are condemning the LCG for wasting cardboard then we should start with the cardbaord inserests in every chapter pack that dobbler's kid sticks in his bike tires

dormouse said:

This is really all i've been trying to say.

All I've been trying to say is that if some neutral important cards suited for every house would be x3 it would be better.

You did hope that The Hand's Judgement would be x3, did you?

Lars says that because there are 3x Men With No King in the Reinforcements CP. Would like to see him if there was only 1x MwnK

Lars said:

Hey, I like those cardboard inserts, leave them alone!

eloooooooi said:

well heres me with there only being 1x of the stealth/renown reins events. I've bought 4 of that CP (giving me 12 MWnK which doesn't bother me either) and could easily buy 5 if i felt the need (i've found i'm okay shuffling 2 copies of each in 4 decks), but no i'm not advocating doing something that i wouldn't do myself. I buy 3x of every CP because i like having the option of using every card at maximium and i have and will probably again buy more then 3 of chapter packs.

jmccarthy said:

Me too, they're the perfect size to use as dividers in my boxes. I'm trying to collect enough to sort all my Cthulhu cards by faction and then by type. I want to do the same to my AGoT collection eventually.

@damon: I don't think he's complaining about bying three, or maintaining multiple "even" decks. (I hope I'm not wrong here, I should let him speak for himself) But if you're gonna buy 3x a chapter pack, (does FFG realistically seeing many people buying more than that? would you describe that as an ideal "sales" goal?) would you rather have 9x Hands Judgement & 3x Storm Dancer? Or vice versa?

FFG would get there sales either way, and I'm not sitting with graphite-laced cardboard that I can't recycle and am just too compulsive enough to abe able to pitch. It does indicat a valuable point aobut marketing a product liek this to multiple audiences. I do not envy the choices Nate (and whoever else might be involved) has to make to balance the interests of post-AGOT-lcg players, board gamers, returning CCG (non-AGOT) players and GRRM fanboys who might see the new box format as cool. When marketing begins to interfere with design, things get complicated.

Werd.