I do not really know a lot about LCG's. I have played many CCGs, and I love WH from GW. Do I understand correctly that if you buy a set of these, you get the entire run? And with the expansions you get 3x of every card? Does each player need their own set, or do you share? I play WoW TCG with my sons right now, but it is expensive.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm_sec.asp?eidm=14&esem=2

With the core set you get some copies in 1 and some in 3. You get 4 playable decks in the core set box.

With the current cycle, the Corruption Cycle, you get 20 unique cards per Battle pack, 10 in 3 copies and 10 in 1 copy. With the recently announced change to the LCG format future expansion cycles will have all cards in 3 copies per Battle pack.

If you and your sons each decided to play a single race and construct your own decks you would need the Core set x1 and then each Battle Pack x1-3 depending on how consistent you want you decks. I'd suggest since you are a single family just buy everything x1. The game is pretty well balanced and each supplement adds new cards to each side without completely overturning that balance. The next cycle of Battle Packs will include every card x3 as already noted, and becomes a very simple purchase for your family.

If you don't want to stick with only playing a single race when you build decks you could buy the Core Set and the Battle Packs x2 and that should give you enough diversity to be able to field two decks from any one race and even make some cards splashable in an Alliance deck. Either way you go, the final purchase price will be less than playing WoW if you are buying singles or mulitple boosters to get the best cards. You just decide how much cheaper you want it to be.

Agreed, I currently buy two of every BP for W:I and AGOT but when the cycles switch over I will be buying 1 of each which the occasional second one purchased if I want cards in more than one deck.

This game is much more affordable than WOW TCG, I have played it as well, right from the start but after a year or so just couldn't and didn't want to keep up even when I was buying boxes of just commons and uncommons.

Of the LCG's available currently W:I is the easiest to get into as it is the newest and therefore has the least amount of available products but catching up on AGOT has not been that hard or expensive to do, after about 2 months I have half of all the cards available to date already and everything for W:I.