Hi, my name is caver and im a wargamer. Most of the time I tend to play wargames or very miniature oriented board games.

But i have decided to splash into this lcg because i need some light game for my non wargaming friends and me to enjoy.

My idea would be to have 4 decks pre made and then invite my friends to play with them. I have decided that 2 core sets should be plenty of cards to do that, especially if i house rule fealthy to allow more neutral cards than normal.

My questions are the following. Which factions are better for casual play? Which plot decks are easy for beginners?

I know there is a list for starter decks but that one is with 3 core sets and as a man of limited resources i can only reallisticaly get 2

Light game, huh?

Anyway, it should be doable. But a note on the Fealty agenda: It sets an UPPER limit on your neutral cards! There's really no upper limit on neutrals otherwise. You pick a faction as your primary, which you can get loyal cards from, but there's no rule actually stating this needs to be the majority of your deck. The point of the Fealty agenda is to give a benefit (cost reduction) at the cost of a drawback (neutral limit).

I think the most fun for beginners would be any house with a nice spread of icons, as they have the opportunity to participate in any challenge once they get some units out. But that also usually means slightly more complicated (choice paralysis is a real thing). I think the game's fun scales with how complicated the decks are.

You should use ThronesDB to find decks for inspiration. Use the decklist search with expansions turned off to narrow it down to decks you can possibly build. If the results require 3 cores, copy the decks (you need an account for this) and edit them. Then you can choose to only use 2 cores, and add alternative cards to fill in the holes left when removing a third card. Note down the graphs and counts before adjusting the core count though, as you want to keep the cost/strength/icon spread about the same.

(I dunno how many core-only decks there are in the DB, but unless people have upgraded/deleted their first attempts there should be some.)

Plots are a bit of a puzzle at times. Do you pick them according to economy, destructiveness, defensive/utility effects or reserve? Do you pick the plots first and build the draw deck around the plot deck, or build a themed deck and find appropriate plots after? Many opinions exist on this, and they're all valid

If you end up building your own decks from scratch, maybe for beginners you should pick the "friendly" plots - the ones that give you benefits over the destructive ones, just to ease people into the game. But if you want the true AGoT flavour you sometimes go on a killing spree, so Wildfire Assault, Heads on Spikes, Marched to the Wall etc. would be your primary picks.

There's also a nuclear option: Sell one miniature-based game to fund a third core and the four chapter packs so far

Thanks for the answer. My idea would be to play with friends and offer them to play with the house they choose. If i play with 4 friends offer them a primary and a secondary house with an assortment of neutral cards such as superior claim, the kingsroad, varys, littlefinger and superior claim to each.

If one doesnt wnat to play with a secondary house, I would offer him to play a fealthy deck in a modified way so he could use more neutral cards than the original fealthy deck allows, because this is a casual game after all.

The thing about plots is that it would be hard to make a plot deck, since the plots dont obey such a house especific mechanic. My idea would be to have some generic plot decks with a certain theme like, this is an aggressive plot deck this is a defensive one, this is a resource one, etc. To have ready and make deck choosing easy

Yeah, having themed, generic plot decks could work. You'll have to experiment a little. Some high income and some low income with a really useful effect, maybe?

For the main decks you can make slots for a set of roads, Tears, Milk, Varys and Littlefinger, then just make 50-card decks that combine with one of these "standard sets". Superior Claim is a Power-based card, so you could set aside a space for that and the matching cards for other challenge types based on each deck's strength. There could be more than one card that fits a military-heavy deck, for instance.

Thanks for providing me a spine for the generic deck, i'll modify it a little according to the other decks being power or military based.

I'll see the plot deck when i have the core set at home.

If it is any help I bought one core set and used the default setup for four decks for a few test games before investing in a few more cards. Thus far I have bought 1 extra core set, one copy of Taking the Black and also the Wolves of the North.

By splitting the House cards from the two core sets, giving each a set of the Neutral cards and plot cards as listed and making about 3-4swaps across the deck I found I was close to 8 legal decks. OK not tournament decks as each was light on cards had 4 copies of a House location and only 2 copies of Kingsroad/RoseRoad but not far off. As soon as I took out the 4th copy of the location and I added in the house cards from the Taking the Black and some of the house cards from Wolves of the North plus some extra neutrals I found I have 8 decks that met the rules and seem not completely unbalanced so far.

I also have a stash of Stark cards that I think I can use to make a Fealty based Stark deck (most of the cards from Wolves of the North and maybe make a few swaps with the existing 'core-ish' Stark deck to turn it into something similar to the Direwolf deck suggested in the Wolves of the North. So 9 decks from those cards with some spare cards left over.

The games so far have been melees with 4 or 5 players and have been fun to play. I intend to tweak decks as we play more and understand the deckbuilding side. However, 2 core decks while not meeting tournament rules would give you 8 occasional play single house decks and not many more cards has given me 9 casually playable decks.

No, these will not be good decks by tournament standards, but they do get casual players to the table at my club. My situation will evolve as I get more cards.