I intend to play against some friends to introduce them to the game, using the "prebuilt" decks of the Core Set.

I wish myself to play a Greyjoy deck, too... but I see that the deck of King of the Sea is structurally different from the other four.

Specifically:

- Core Set decks counts 45 cards (vs King of the Sea Greyjoy 41, if I'm to remove the 5 "kings" and "queens" of the other houses)

- Core Set decks have 2 neutral characters each, vs. Greyjoy 5

So, it looks it's made in a slightly different way than the other four... Not sure if it's really a problem, as long as competitivity goes, but what am I supposed to do? Play it as it is? Remove some of the neutrals and fill it up to 45 cards using Chapter Packs?

thanks for your help!

michel3105 said:

It has been built in a different way from the other 4 because, as a stand-alone product, it was intended to have cards that were not only useful for Greyjoy, but appealed to other Houses (and players) as well.

It might play okay at 41 (I haven't tried it), but you might want to add 4 cards and substitute some resources, depending on what cards you have access to.

I played it last night against Baratheon and Lannister core decks and I finished second. The real problem being the lack of gold producing locations or a 'Street' card I think. From first impression I would add a 'Crossroads' or two to the deck to help round it out.

hi,

how do i have to modify the decks if i only have the one CoreSet and one KOTS???

i want to play a meleegame with each of the five houses.

can someone help me to make nearly equal good decks.

thanks

chrassos said:

From the moment it was released, there was always someone saying "isn't the X deck in the Core Set just so much better than the others?" "X" changed depending on the post, but the sentiment didn't.

I say this because the decks in the Core Set were never "nearly equal good." Their balance and equality depended on the people playing them and their personal preferences, not on the decks themselves.

So, if you only have 1 Core Set and 1 KotS, you are not going to be able to swap cards from one deck to the other to "balance them out" and still be able to play all 5 decks in the same game at the same time. Contrary to popular belief, there aren't 4 locations missing from the KotS deck. There are the same number of resource locations in a Core Set deck and the KotS deck. The difference is that rather than having multiples of the +1 gold and the 1 influence reducer, 3 Kingdom locations were included instead. Even if you did start swapping cards between decks, you're never going to have the same resource curve in the KotS deck as the other Core Set decks.

Essentially, you probably aren't going to be able to do what you want without buying more cards. But you may not even need to. According to posts above, the Greyjoy deck may not be easy to play from a resource standpoint, but it still holds its own pretty well. As for modification, short of resource modification (which would be accomplished by trading the 3 Kingdom locations in the KotS deck for neutral resource locations in the other decks), what is "nearly equal good" is going to depend more on the people that pick up the decks than on the cards themselves.

(For instance, we've had people on the boards that say the Core Set Lannister can never beat the Core Set Stark deck when they play because of the military overload, but we've had other people say the Core Set Stark deck can never beat the Core Set Lannister deck because of all the tricks, revenge, resources and draw. Exact same cards, different people playing. So what is "nearly equal good" to one is completely unfair and unbalanced to another.)

Which says to me, they are reasonably balanced. Each has strengths and weaknesses built in, it is up top the players to maximize their strengths, minimize their weaknesses, manipulate the other players, and hope that all of that can be done in a way to make up for any bad luck of the draw that you may have.

That said, if someone insists on changing resources, look at pulling out a neutral location or two from Lannister and trading it with a Greyjoy neutral location. They have enough gold producers that missing one or even two will not necessarily harm their gold curve (though powering up some of their pay gold effects may become less reliable depending on luck of the draw).

In a melee game with five people, Greyjoy should be close enough to the other houses. Politics have a way of evening things out in multiplayer.