Hi guys, I am strongly considering buying this LCG because I quite enjoy the books so far and find the mechanics of the game pretty fun. I am only through a clash of kings at this point and wanted to know if the core set had cards that spoil plot events and the like. Please do not leave spoilers in this thread but feel free to tell me how far I need to read to be caught up with the core set of the game.

There are a good number of characters that have not been introduced, but I don't recall anything that outright spoils that book.

There are some spoilers (mostly via art) from book 1, and maybe some minor spoilers from book 2. But if you have read book 2, the core set will be safe for you. Like Kakita said, there will be some characters and locations that aren't introduced in book 1 or 2, but certainly nothing that spoils the plot.

The game is generally pretty good about not having outright spoilers, or they are only really spoilers in context (E.g. The Things I Do For Love shows someone getting pushed out a window; while this is a spoiler it doesn't really mean anything because you don't have the necessary context if you haven't read up to that part yet). Some things may get through, but again they are generally pretty good at keeping things under wraps. My friend played through a large portion of first edition without getting majorly spoiled, though he intentionally didn't read flavour text.

The main exception to that is that traits some characters have, specifically the King trait. Kind of unavoidable gameplay wise, but it's at least a partial spoiler. In the Core Set, this isn't an issue as there's only one character with the King trait (Robert Baratheon).