Hi everyone!

I'm new to the game, just got the Core Set and the Kings of the Sea expansion. I`ve been playing the decks unchanged and been thinking about the first changes to be made. I admit that I have included the king trait character that came in KotS to the Core decks after some plays, but I`m thinking... what is the first change you would make considering only the cards on the Core Set?

I'm thinking the most obvious is pass Maester Aemon from Targ deck to Stark.

Considering the card pool you have not a lot of changes can be made... I would consider an aggressive stark including tarly, jack of all trade.

Some plot surely like the military battles.

Related to the neutral stark char (Benjen, ghost, Jon) I never used them except from the core set... reading the cards i always consider them good cards:

"Why they don't see lots of play???"

i would change the plots first as they have a huge impact on the game.

As you've already noticed, stark doesn't really like valar. If you haven't notived, condemed by the realm is a bit iffy. If you do not have an extra plot lying around i'd do 1 of two things. 1) give it to GJ, they have saves and should be able to ignore the effect in a two player game, or, 2) treat it as the 2nd copy of either The power of Blood or the Power of Arms and put it in with the hosue that has the 'real' copy.

I would answer Gualdo's question, but i don't want to hear how wrong I am again.

Lars said:

Sorry Lars but I didn't understood your point :-) Maybe it is my limited dictionary :-)

It's just Lars being Lars.

The Core Set Benjen, Jon and Ghost are all solid cards, and yes, move Aemon to Stark if you are playing with all three. Benjen does allow for dead pile recursion, which can be a double-edged sword since it also helps your opponent(s). And the Jon/Ghost combo is sweet, but at the same time somewhat limited by the immunity they give each other.

What hurts these cards is "Men With No King," from the Scattered Armies Chapter Pack. This is a card that, when a Reinforcements event card is play, can be used to take control of a character that doesn't match its owner's hosue affiliation. So neutral cards are at risk of being stolen. And if you have Jon Snow with 6 power on him, and your opponent steals him, that is a 12 power swing. And you can bet that a character with power is going to be a prime target of MWnK.

There was long debate about the power level of MWnK, and there is ne denying it is a great card. But if you are going to play with power neutrals, you have to build so that you can counter the MWnK ability. This probably isn't an issue for you at present, and depending on your meta may neer become one, but it is something to think about.

Your post triggered a question I've been wondering about. What are the deck building parameters for regular LCG play? I remember for the melee tournament the NYC meta hosted last month, it was Core + 1 expansion/3 chapter packs. Is that true for normal joust play, or can you draw from the entire card pool?

Normal joust/melee is the entire lcg card pool. Opens lots of options. But different events can call for different build restrictions.

Lavinia said:

Usually the NYC meta plays using the entire LCG card pool with 3x copies of cards permitted, but we have on occasion had nights where we used some sort of limited card pool such as what was used for the December event. That event was co-hosted with a NYC game club (the Metropolitan Wargamers) that typically plays miniatures and board games and had several members recently start dabbling in AGoT LCG. We also were trying (and succeeded) to attract a few completely or nearly completely new players to the event. The limited card pool format was intended to let people who had some but far from a complete assortment of AGoT LCG cards to not feel disadvantaged or have to worry about weaving together a "perfect/optimal" deck and to demonstrate to the completely new players who were borrowing decks that you can get some decent variety and interesting interactions from adding even just a few packs to the cards in the Core Set.

JerusalemJones said:

Except for the banned cards, Jaquen and Pyromancer's Cache.

kpmccoy21 said:

Good point. NYC plays using FFG's official card errata (which includes those banned cards and modifications to several other cards) and I presume most/all other active groups that have people posting on here do as well.

Originally I was thinking about changes in the Core Set decks using just the Core Set itself. But as I think about it, cards from Kings of the Sea, that I also have, don't stop coming in my head.

So I'm thinking in making some changes having the goal to keep every deck as competitive as it can, to balance gameplay among my friends. As I'm the only one to invest in AGoT in my circle, it is up to me to take care of the bunch of bastards.

So I'm thinking about taking some power of the Greyjoy deck and distribute it to others. Namely, I've put every king character in KotS in it's respective house deck. I'm also thinking about putting Randyl Tarly in the Baratheon deck. I know it won't be as effective as in the Stark deck, but I'm also concernet about the story flavour. (That's what you get when an RPG player start in the card game path.)