ktom said:

That would be another interesting topic of conversation (in another thread of course, that someone else can start). What cards do people feel are worth playing OOH in the current card pool and why? The only thing that stands out to me right now is the Red Warlock in Dobbler's GJ Winter Gencon deck. Well placed IMHO.

More on topic, I think one of the things this game has been fairly good at acheiving over the years is including the personalities and characteristics from the books in the game in different ways. While I'm not a Nedly player, I LOVE Nedly cards. Keeping the feeling of Westeros in the game has done a lot for keeping me interested and envolved. It's one of the main things I get excited about when new cards come out.

I'm in the same boat as DeathJester. I make the best decks I can, but like it if the game is designed to reward nedliness.

The bigger question about OOH cards is an important one. I think the gold penalty creates a mental block that means I don't think about synergy between different houses' cards as much as I should.

Had to have Game of Thrones loaned to me twice by different friends to get past the first hundred pages, and then devoured the series as it was released. Demo'd the CCG at it's GenCon release but didn't buy in since I'd just watched the Dune CCG die young. Started playing in earnest with Ice & Fire Edition at 2nd GenCon. Night's Watch by Crown of Suns, FFG employment just before Song of Night, and GenCon winner at the Core Sets debut.

I'd played a little M:tG and loved Last Unicorn's Dune CCG (I'm a sucker for the complex) and I found the game a great way to enjoy the books while waiting for the A Feast for Crows (and perhaps another book). The game play and community have made it a wonderful hobby. I would definitely say that I'm a tripartite Ned/Jaime/Shagga players, and can find joy in all three facets of the game... though in the long run, I tend to start building decks by theme or pattern and then gradually shave/shape/amend them into Jaime-land.

On the subject of splashing... I think the 2 gold penalty sometimes scares people into not thinking Jaime enough about whether a card is good enough to use Out of House. I think a Martell deck could reasonably afford to play Iron Mines for two to save the Red Viper if you're going to invest the time and effort in him. And Greg's Red Warlock in his championship deck was inspired... he was playing for Winter, and expecting to be a gold down. If it were Summer, it "enabled" the card ability he needed to find a White Raven _and_ it gave the net 2-gold swing to afford the cost penalty.

ktom said:

i just cobbled together a deck last night, then played against OrclRob in a post tourney fun game, in which I am featuring OOH, and wouldn;t you know wht he had in his deck? MWnK in a martell Reins deck....if he drews it well big power swing... Funny, I start putting more neutral and them some OOH and almost get destroyed by MWnK.

LetsGoRed said:

It is playable now, but its still not robust. When compared to 2-3 full blocks, it is not robust, but all 6 houses are really able to build decks and Lannister is not the only really playable house, so it is definitely playable. It will be robust in 2-3 years barring rotation. I feel like we have a real Base set and 3 expansions.

Lars said:

It's funny this comes up Lars. After all the talk last summer through GenCon, I'd been off-grid and was wondering if anyone was surprising people with them. Especially if we're gonna see more NW/Wildlings in the coming Defenders.

I think that my story is quite peculiar, if not incredible.

Actually, it was watching the card's preview on FFG website that got me into the books!

In 2003 I was browsing FFG's site and stumbled in the Game of Thrones product page. I think that Westeros edition and also the following cycle were already out. I looked at the card's preview and thought the artwork was expressive. Even more expressive were the sentences on some cards, like "We think you northeners are made of ice, and that you melt when you ride below the Neck", or Eddard's classic "We hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword".

I was hit by the power of those words, bought the first book and stood even more amazed by how beautiful it was.

Yet, I didn't buy the game, as CCG games are not for me. Luckily enough, five years later, FFG was so kind to eventually switch to LCG format. YAY!

I had read the books long before trying the game. While the books were not the immediate reason for picking up the game, it played a role.

After having played both Magic and the World of Warcraft CCG, I had it with the collectible model. I figured FFG's LCG model was a reasonable as it was going to get if I wanted to a CCG experience without the annoyance of random boosters or hunting for cards on ebay. After looking at AGoT, CoC and W:I I settled on AGoT largely because of the theme, although the excellent implementation of the three types of challenges appealed to me too. Stil, all three games had interesting mechanics so it really was my experience with the ASoIaF series that was the deciding factor.

Fortunately, I also found some local players before making the purchase (primarily StagLord). Without someone to play against, I never would have bought into the game.

As for my approach, I guess I'm primarily Shagga. I like my decks to have a strong theme, but that theme doesn't necessarily have to be tied to the books. There's usually a "fun idea" behind my decks, and I build to support that idea.