So as we all know now, 3 core boxes are required to collect a full set of each card.

But then what about the statement made at GAMA?

Well, it obviously must mean something else then.

Now that we know more about the game, we know that a lot of cards are required to play. Each deck will have 40-45 cards each, and each side will have provinces and a stronghold.

Adding all of that together, each player will need to use 86-96 cards! (40-45 conflict + 40-45 fate + 5 provinces + 1 stronghold)

Considering that there are around 250 cards in the core set, that would be hard to fit in, considering that everything has clan alignments - conflict cards, fate cards, province cards, and of course fate cards.

That is split among 7 clans. If each clan would be playable, that means that each clan has less than 20 cards (with over 100 cards neutral)!

Obviously, this is not a good idea, which means...

Two boxes are needed to play competitively, because two boxes are needed to form a legal deck.

There is actually precedence for this too: In gencon 2016, there was a special "Kingslayer" format for AGoT2, as you could not make legal decks with one box with that game either.

Granted, AGoT2 has 8 factions instead of 7, but it also requires less cards to form a deck, 69 (60 deck + 7 plot + 1 faction + 1 agenda).

As such, my question is - if required - what special rules would you like to see for the release tournament at gencon?

AGoT2's "Kingslayer" format made players choose 2 factions and use all of their cards, along with a handful of neutrals which they could choose.

However, the plot deck was all neutrals at this time, so the players had some choices for that, since it was only 7 cards, and there were some variety as the game had enough plots to support 4 players.

We have already seen clan-specific provinces, so it is harder to imagine being able to have a meaningful choice there, other than being able to choose between the two clans chosen, if FFG chooses the same route.

Thoughts?

Until we know how those cards are split there is little point in guessing (though that wont stop anyone). I suspect a single box will be fine for play with 2 boxes making it more the relevant deck more consistent. They have stated that three boxes would be required for a full playset. Beyond that who knows? I am going to order 4 boxes 3 for me and 1 for my eldest son just so he has some cards of his own when hes not nicking mine..

One thing that kind of throws a whole wrench in the calculations is this statement:

Quote

Starter decks for all 7 Clans included in the core set will be playable right out the gate. -NF

Which seems to contradict Steve's announcement at GAMA needing 2 core of competitive play. Though, that was already thrown out the window the the 3 cores for full playset announcement.

It could be they are counting on the Conflict deck being a mix and match of various clans assuming they completely ported over the influence system from Netrunner for that deck.

"Competitive" and "Full Playsets" are not necessarily the same thing. You will likely be able to be just fine with 2 core sets.

19 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

One thing that kind of throws a whole wrench in the calculations is this statement:

Which seems to contradict Steve's announcement at GAMA needing 2 core of competitive play. Though, that was already thrown out the window the the 3 cores for full playset announcement.

It could be they are counting on the Conflict deck being a mix and match of various clans assuming they completely ported over the influence system from Netrunner for that deck.

I'm guessing the intention from GAMA is that you will only need 2 of of the 1 each cards to 'play competitively'. That being said, I would not assume that you can build 7 decks from one box. You might only be able to build at most 2, and one of them might be bad. Depends if they fall into the same boat as Netrunner, where you almost always ran certain neutral cards because they were just the best basic economy cards. You could make multiple decks, but the second deck couldn't use those cards.

"Competitive" does not mean "full playset". "Playable" does not mean "competitive at Worlds".

The old rule of thumb for FFG LCGs still would apply: one core to play, two cores to deckbuild, three cores for a playset.

Any game developer will tell you that things change during development. It could be that they intended to make it two sets for everything, but now they've decided it has to be 3 sets.

4 minutes ago, DarwinsDog said:

Any game developer will tell you that things change during development. It could be that they intended to make it two sets for everything, but now they've decided it has to be 3 sets.

I feel like they would have known this a month ago. I imagine that they were wrapping up the core set then and it is on its way to the printers already if they want to make the august deadline. I guess maybe they could have still been arguing over exactly what gets included, but manufacturing takes far more time than you would expect. Or he was just misinformed and someone will have to commit seppuku.

I need 3 because I am a completionist.

43 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

One thing that kind of throws a whole wrench in the calculations is this statement:

Starter decks for all 7 Clans included in the core set will be playable right out the gate. -NF

Which seems to contradict Steve's announcement at GAMA needing 2 core of competitive play. Though, that was already thrown out the window the the 3 cores for full playset announcement.

It could be they are counting on the Conflict deck being a mix and match of various clans assuming they completely ported over the influence system from Netrunner for that deck.

I strongly suspect that's a technically correct but incomplete answer (as in, Nate didn't get chance to answer it fully). I think there will be a qualifier of '...against each other' added to it, so you can pick up a core set, split the seven Clans up, and run them against each other (in a similar fashion to the suggested two-House mashups in the Thrones 2.0 core set), but they won't actually be fully 'legal' for tournament play...I'd expect them to be slightly stripped down versions of fully working decks, maybe even 30/30 for the nostalgia feel.

All of their LCG Core Sets follow roughly the same pattern. He doesn't mean you can have all 7 starter decks built simultaneously. Just the Core Set contains enough to build each of the 7 decks from one box. Generally the Cores allow you to have 2 pre-built decks at one time.

Game of Thrones allowed you to have four - you could mix and match any of the eight factions together, and it gave you suggestions for four pairings.

So basically:

1 box = playable

2 boxes = competitive

3 boxes = completionist

10 minutes ago, Yandia said:

So basically:

1 box = playable

2 boxes = competitive

3 boxes = completionist

I would describe it as:

1 box - Demonstration

2 boxes - Playable

3 boxes - Competitive

53 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

I would describe it as:

1 box - Demonstration

2 boxes - Playable

3 boxes - Competitive

I suppose it depends whether you consider deck-building to be an integral part of the game or not.

6 hours ago, Danwarr said:

One thing that kind of throws a whole wrench in the calculations is this statement:

Which seems to contradict Steve's announcement at GAMA needing 2 core of competitive play. Though, that was already thrown out the window the the 3 cores for full playset announcement.

It could be they are counting on the Conflict deck being a mix and match of various clans assuming they completely ported over the influence system from Netrunner for that deck.

It does not have to be strictly contradictive, if you e.g. assume "playable" means "playable without using competitive rules" (aka e.g. 30/30 or even 20/20 decks sizes) , which seems a nice way to do starter decks to teach the game. Then you can define "competitive" = use the full non-starter rules of 40/40 deck size now. I think FFG suggested to start with lower deck sizes when the LotR LCG started out as well.

Theres a good chance that there will be an influence system like you described as well, yeah.

My take would be:

1 box - test version

2 boxes - constructible options

3 boxes - complete access

9 hours ago, Mirith said:

I feel like they would have known this a month ago. I imagine that they were wrapping up the core set then and it is on its way to the printers already if they want to make the august deadline. I guess maybe they could have still been arguing over exactly what gets included, but manufacturing takes far more time than you would expect. Or he was just misinformed and someone will have to commit seppuku.

They knew the print runs of the core set at least six months ago, if not before. They certainly didn't change anything in the last few moments as to print quantity for individual cards.

Horvath's comment that two cores would be "competitive" is what FFG always says about new LCG releases, and he meant exactly what he said. Two core sets will let you deck build effectively, which will let you get better decks lined up than just playing the default decks from one core -- which will be perfectly playable, but won't be easily customizable (because there won't be enough spare cards to go around). Competitive does not mean complete. Playable does not equal easy access to deck building.

Three cores will give you a full playset of every card. So, once again, it's like every competitive LCG they've had (except Star Wars, due to its modular pod deck construction, which you could get a full playset with 2 cores).

What I'm wondering is if I just want a game to bust out on game night with a friend, how many boxes am I going to need for each of us to have a fully playable 40/40 deck?

It sounds like if we want to change factions between games we are going to have to spend some time fishing cards from the decks we just used, but I can live with that.

7 minutes ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

What I'm wondering is if I just want a game to bust out on game night with a friend, how many boxes am I going to need for each of us to have a fully playable 40/40 deck?

Assuming distribution of clan and neutral cards will be roughly the same as their distribution in Netrunner and Game of Thrones (reasonable, but not confirmed)...

You will probably be able to build any two clan decks at the same time in the core set, but that will be by shuffling all given clan cards in the core with a full playset of the neutrals. Then if you want to change to a different clan, fish out the neutral cards and shuffle them into that clan's core set cards (this is how Netrunner was with just one core).

If the rightmost stronghold stat is a Netrunner-esque "influence" cost, then you will probably also have to shuffle in the splashable cards from a second clan to complete your deck. Which means, for instance, if you want to play Crane and your friend Dragon, each of you would have to splash a second clan with your "influence" to finish getting a legal deck size, and there won't be enough cards for you both to splash the same secondary clan (that's how Game of Thrones 2.0 was with just one core).

There will probably be no deck building with just one core. It'll be your clan cards + all the neutrals you can play (+ the splash, if that's a thing).

13 minutes ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

What I'm wondering is if I just want a game to bust out on game night with a friend, how many boxes am I going to need for each of us to have a fully playable 40/40 deck?

It sounds like if we want to change factions between games we are going to have to spend some time fishing cards from the decks we just used, but I can live with that.

If you dont mind waiting abit (until the first expansion packs hit), then I'd bet you need ~0,5 boxes for each of you to have fully playable 40/40 decks each.

I'd up that to 1 each if you want to change factions between games freely w/o having to fish cards - unless you want to severely optimize each of your multiple decks.

58 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

They knew the print runs of the core set at least six months ago, if not before. They certainly didn't change anything in the last few moments as to print quantity for individual cards.

Horvath's comment that two cores would be "competitive" is what FFG always says about new LCG releases, and he meant exactly what he said. Two core sets will let you deck build effectively, which will let you get better decks lined up than just playing the default decks from one core -- which will be perfectly playable, but won't be easily customizable (because there won't be enough spare cards to go around). Competitive does not mean complete. Playable does not equal easy access to deck building.

Three cores will give you a full playset of every card. So, once again, it's like every competitive LCG they've had (except Star Wars, due to its modular pod deck construction, which you could get a full playset with 2 cores).

There are a few things wrong with this statement. Firstly, if you count the number of cards in the core set, it is highly unlikely to be able to build full clan decks from one box, unless you make most of the cards neutral. You mentioned Netrunner earlier, where single faction decks required more than 30% of each deck to be neutral. Also, each player played with ~45 cards, not even comparable to the ~85 required here.

Secondly, their most recent competitive LCG, AGoT2, did not come with legal decks possible out of the core set, so your last statement here is wrong.

1 hour ago, Gaffa said:

Assuming distribution of clan and neutral cards will be roughly the same as their distribution in Netrunner and Game of Thrones (reasonable, but not confirmed)...

You will probably be able to build any two clan decks at the same time in the core set, but that will be by shuffling all given clan cards in the core with a full playset of the neutrals. Then if you want to change to a different clan, fish out the neutral cards and shuffle them into that clan's core set cards (this is how Netrunner was with just one core).

If the rightmost stronghold stat is a Netrunner-esque "influence" cost, then you will probably also have to shuffle in the splashable cards from a second clan to complete your deck. Which means, for instance, if you want to play Crane and your friend Dragon, each of you would have to splash a second clan with your "influence" to finish getting a legal deck size, and there won't be enough cards for you both to splash the same secondary clan (that's how Game of Thrones 2.0 was with just one core).

There will probably be no deck building with just one core. It'll be your clan cards + all the neutrals you can play (+ the splash, if that's a thing).

This game has a larger deck size per player than any other recent game FFG has done before.

Even with this in mind, Netrunner, with half the required deck size, still needed a decent chunk of the core set to be neutral. With more cards needed to play, the amount of neutral cards required increases.

Game of Thrones does not even have the potential for a legal deck out of one core box, hence the need for the "Kingslayer" format at the gencon tournament. (In fact, even using all the neutrals in the game, you can't even make one legal deck). (Edit: It is in fact possible to make 1 deck out of a core box.)

Warhammer Conquest allows for full legal decks, however they require splashing, and the splashing in Conquest allows for a lot more cards from the secondary faction, as it's not limited by influence.

Actually, it is (barely) possible to make a (probably really bad) tournament-legal deck out of 1 AGoT2 Core Set. There are 20 cards for each faction, of which 12 to 15 are usable out of faction, and 28 usable neutral main deck cards (excluding the 4th copy of the economy locations). Depending on your choice of secondary faction, you'd have between 60 and 63 usable cards. The demo decks are not tournament-legal, because you need to be able to build 4 of them out of 1 Core Set. And the Kingslayer tournaments used alternate construction rules to leave a bit more room for deckbuilding.

I stand corrected