Bannermen,

I've been away from the game for a fair bit and have lost track of how the game's doing these days.
What's the general feel from the player base? Is there a sense that the game is growing? Or at least holding steady?
(As opposed to the Star Wars LCG, where the sense is that the player base is dwindling.)

Any thoughts on that in general?

Thanks in advance.

Probably not the best forum to ask, as the official site here is a bit of a ghost town! You'll have more luck on the cardgamedb boards, or the facebook group for AGOT 2nd edition.

Relative to 1st edition, some big metas have dwindled (Madrid and DC, for instance, seems to be down), others have exploded; there's a thriving Southeast asia circuit, the Polish meta is enormous, etc. Overall, numbers are definitely up, although we're probably nearing the point where the barrier to entry is high enough as to dissuade the rapid growth we'd been seeing initially (2 full cycles, 2 deluxe, 3x core for a complete card pool).

From the competitive/community standpoint, it's certainly bigger than ever: Gencon sold out faster than every other LCG (Continental Championships), and Stahleck was, once again, the largest thrones tournament ever (despite being capped!). Community tools for tracking tournament attendance have improved .

As for the quality of the game itself, well the cardpool is still expanding rapidly (no gap between the 2nd and 3rd cycles, 3rd deluxe already on its way), so there's more depth to the cardpool and it's paying off - factions that had no chance before (NW, for instance, and GJ went through a rough patch) are now among the very best and there's more variety in playstyles. While some people object to the 'put you on the clock' dominance or NW decks, the meta's in a place where it has the depth to adjust to these new strategies. The only faction with real cause for complaint right now is Martell, and it's largely due to them being bad against specific decks that are prevalent right now.