Hello!

I am newer to card games, played some Netrunner casually but this will be the first card game i attempt to play competitively. That being said I find myself getting my but kicked by experienced players. It is never a negative experience because I learn a tone during these matches and am having a blast refining my deck and see what works and what doesn't.

I was wondering if anyone has written a beginners guide for Game of Thrones 2.0? Some things i'm specifically looking for are general rules of thumb. IE typically how many character cards, events and attachments should one have in their deck? What does an ideal economy look like? How many economy cards should you have? I get these may very significantly with different decks but there may be an ideal range say 32-38 Character cards in a 60 card deck?

The other thing i have really been struggling with is the setup. I feel i'm always behind the 8 ball after the setup. I typically am only able to play 2-3 cards while my opponent almost always plays 4. Does anyone have any advise as to what to look for in a good setup hand?

Thanks in advance for any feedback given!

I don't know if anyone has addressed these specifically in a formal(-ish) New Player Guide, but the topics have been addressed before, usually on the "Deck Building" board. Take a look there. Here are two threads I know have discussed some of the deckbuilding questions you ask:

FFG Board Thread/

cardgamedb.com Thread

In terms of setup, a lot will depend on how you build your deck. The more cards with < 2 cost you build into your deck, the more likely you are going to be to maximize your setup. One of the big things new players do - and it isn't a mistake so much as not appreciating the bigger picture - is try to use setup to get out their major 5, 6 or 7 cost character. Rather, experienced players look at setup as the time to drop as many cards as possible (so that they get further into their deck when they "draw back up"), and to start the economy curve. In fact, if you have no economy cards (i.e., gold generators or cost reducers) in your setup hand, it is often a good idea to mulligan, even if you could drop 3-4 other cards.

In terms of learning all this stuff, experience is often a better teacher than a New Player guide. I would suggest building a deck "publicly" by posting it in the deckbuilder on cardgamedb.com (that site gets much more traffic in the deckbuilding boards) and asking for advice on the deck, particularly regarding economy, number of characters, number of events, etc. People will give you all sorts of advice, and a lot of it will be useless because it doesn't fit your playstyle or what you want the deck to do (i.e., when you post your Stark Direwolf deck, people will tell you all the things you should do to make their Stark Direwolf deck - including abandoning the idea and building a Baratheon kneel deck instead). But if you ask "why do you say that" on a lot of the suggestions, you get a good feel for the way people think about and approach the game, which will enable you to "take the best and leave the rest" in developing your own deckbuilding style.

The other thing you can do is net-deck, building and playing decks that other people post, in order to get a feel for what works and what doesn't in playing the game.

So I am new to Thrones with 2.0 but have been playing card games for a while and here are some things that are just generally applicable to competitive card gaming and then some things that are specific to Thrones.

1. If you want to be competitive you need to know all the cards, and not just all the cards, what cards the strong decks are running, combo's, rulings, and interactions. Some of this will come by experience, some of this will come by investigation. Check the rules forums regularly, and make sure you have actually read the rule book a few times. That seems like a pretty basic idea but you would be surprised at how many people were taught the game by someone and have never actually read the rules. For Thrones nothing is more important than knowing the plot cards. The single most influential part of the game is the plot deck, know what they all do, and what the stats are especially initiative numbers, being first player can make or break a game in the later turns, you have to know what they are likely to play so you can either play a plot that will counter it, or to set yourself up to go either first or second and make the most of your challenges. When you see people posting decklists keep a specific eye on what plots they are running to get a feel for plot deck construction out of various archetypes. Essentially, if you have a good idea of what your opponent is going to play you have a better idea of what to do to counter it, this leads to the second point.

2. Play, play, play, play and play some more. Another fairly obvious point but important none the less. If you want to play competitively you need to know how to pilot your deck against every other deck out there. You need to know your decks strengths and weaknesses as well as other decks strengths and weaknesses and specifically you need to know what your deck has to do to beat every other deck. Lets take an example from the current meta. If I am playing Targaryn Fealty, I am going to play very differently depending on the matchup. Against Stark or Greyjoy aggro I know that I need to put as many characters on the table that i can every turn in order to survive to the late game to have a chance at winning. If I slam down a Danerys in setup with a Loyalist beside her, she is probably dead at the end of turn 2 if not turn 1. If I instead drop 4 weenies, and play a couple more each turn I can probably survive long enough to take control of the game. Against Baratheon Kneel, I might mulligan aggressively for Drogo in order to push through multiple military challenges early to get through their chaff and start killing the key characters so that I don't get locked down for all eternity. Against a Martell or Knights Watch deck I am going to make sure I never overextend unless I have an answer for Varys otherwise I run the risk of losing my whole board and losing control of the game. So these factors are going to affect both my setup, as well as how I play each turn, and what plots I select. The more games I play the more I will understand exactly what I need to do in each matchup and the more the deck will pilot itself leading to less errors.

Now for some stuff that is a little more thrones specific.

Deckbuilding - The 2 cost is the most important slot in your deck. The first few times I built decks I was enamored with the big people, Stannis, Jamie, Eddard, Drogo ect. I wanted as many of these heavy hitters in my deck as possible so that they could crush faces once they hit the table. My deck construction was weighted heavily to the high end, my setups were bad, and my people were dying to military challenges when they hit the table. Having those lower cost characters in your deck provide you with the opportunity for very strong set ups, let you oppose and initiate challenges in a variety of forms to grab some power or prevent it to your opponent, and act as chaff for keeping your big dudes in the battle once they hit the table. As a general rule I think most decks are looking to have 30-35 characters, some decks may vary obviously but if you don't have characters on the board you won't be able to do much. Again make sure you have a solid portion of 1, 2, and 3 cost people. I try to have at least six - eight 2 cost people in every deck as well as six or more one drops and that just helps your set up flow much more consistently. As far as attachments and events go there are no hard or fast rules, usually locations take up 11-14 slots depending on the deck so that leaves 15-18 slots for events/attachments, in most cases attachments are on the lighter side with 4 or 5 being a fairly common number or up to 7 or 8 on the high end. Events can be very powerful but you usually need to budget gold to play them, but still most decks have between 9-13 events.

Economy and Card Draw are King - You are playing to win, but in order to win you need resources. If one player has more resources they are probably going to win so you want to make sure that your deck has ways to generate strong economy, either by locations, characters, or plots, as well as having a way to draw some cards. Card draw is at a bit of a premium right now since it is just a base set but most factions have at least one way to put more cards in your hand. Summons and Building contract are very strong plots for digging through your deck for answers. Most decks are going to run probably 15 "economy" type cards, 3x Kingsroad, 3x Roseroad, 3x factions reducer location, 3x faction reducer character, 3x banner house reducer character. If you are not running a banner house then you lose 3 people, but you gain access to the Fealty agenda which is usually worth 1 gold a turn. Strong Economy plots include Calling the Banners and A Noble Cause.

Lastly there are some good podcasts out there that have a lot of card analysis of the base set as well as some deckbuilding tips and tricks so soak in as much as you can from those kind of sources, I know they helped me.

Hope this is useful, the game I think is very deep strategically and a lot of fun so I hope you enjoy it.

Fantastic response AFrede. I really appreciate it!