So, my buddies and I used to play AGOT all the time from Westeros to Iron Throne Block. Some of you may know me as doctorofstyle. For those who don't, I used to play AGOT pretty heavily until Iron Throne block then pretty much quit when they announced that they were not doing full sets anymore. Our group has been through numerous TCGs getting canceled and thought that this was a sign that AGOT was coming to it's end. We were into WOW TCG at the time, so we decided to drop AGOT and invent fully into that game. Hindsight, right?

Anyway, with UDE dumping WOW, we have been looking at some of our old games, and I have been pushing our group to pick up AGOT again. We all busted out our old decks last Friday and played a few games. I think that we may be looking to get back into the game, but we have no idea where to start. There are all sorts of new cards, icons, keywords, rules (what the heck is the Treasury?) and its all a bit daunting trying to figure out what we need. So, I have a few questions:

1. How exactly do the Chapter packs work? Are they fixed? If so, do I need to get 3 for a playset of all the cards?
2. Do the rules that come with the current starter decks/chapter packs cover all the new keywords and rule changes? Is there an updated FAQ that I can look at to get the current rulings on stuff like Moribund (is that even around anymore)? Where can I find card errata these days?
3. If I get back in, I will probably buy up to where I left off, cause when I get into a TCG, I really get into it. But, for my more economical buddies, what should they worry about getting to get current in the game? Are there particular chapter packs that have the basic cards they will need? How important is Core; especially if you have all of the old cards to build from?
4. Is it worth it to get back in? How balanced is the game these days? Do the new rules make the game better or worse? Are there different viable strategies around or is there one or two broken decks tearing everything up? We are more casual these days than we used to be, but there are still those of us in our playgroup (myself included) that just cannot help abusing broken decks on occasion.
5. Are there balance issues using the old cards with the new? There are often cases where the new cards have some drawback that only new cards can take advantage of, and they tend to wipe the floor with the older decks that can't meet those requirements. Is that the case with AGOT? Spot checking some of the new cards at Tzumainn, I ran across a Robert Baratheon card that suggests this may be the case, since he stands any phase as long as there isn't a Shadow card or something. Not sure what that means and that doesn't seem overly powerful, but if this is just one of many cases, I can see where it would be disheartening for some of our meta who may not want to dive into the new cards and just want to use old decks.

Hope to cover all your question :-)

I'm italian so forget my bad english!!!

Here you can find game rules and updated Faq with card errata:

http://fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=10&esem=4

Chapters work in this way: each month a pack is released with 20 new card (10 cards 1x and 10 cards 3x = 40 cards). From next cycle (every cycle is set with 6CPs) the package will be different with 20 cards 3x!!! In a week should be in stores 3rd Cp of the cycle "Defenders of the North" so In june with next cycle new packaging will be applied.

Core Set is really important and then you can buy particular Cp if you want a particular house to build with. I suggest you to look at the LCG web search I have in the signature to have a look on the composition of each CP with quantities (1x 3x).

In signature you will find also the link of the engine to play online with all legal sets LCG so you can have a look on all cards (6 months newer have only images without text but with che lcg searcher you can easily find text missing).

So at the end LCG sets are:

- Core Set
- A Clash of Arms ( 6 chapter pack )
- A time of Ravens ( 6 chapter pack)
- King's Landing (6 chapter packs)
- Defenders of the North (ongoing)
- Kings of the Sea (Greyjoy exp)
- Princes of the Sun (Martell exp)

The game now is balanced with Lannister a little higher than other houses but I think the situation is balancing with latest releases (Martell and new Cycle)

Mixing old cards with LCG ones (for my experience) is too bad... because you don't have possibility to counter certain situations... Now the game has seasonal mechanics and shadow ones that in the past were not in place and most of old cards in many cases are too heavy for the actual game.

Hope to have clarified all your question ;-)

Hey doc. Welcome "back."

tjstyles said:

Currently, yes. All Chapter packs are fixed (so you get the same 40 cards in each one with the same name), but as Gualdo says, they are packed 1x10 and 3x10. So you need to buy 3 to have a full playset of half the cards (and 3 playsets of the other half). Still, $30 a month, right?

That setup is going to change, though. After the current set of Chapters is done, the next one will be packaged as 60 card CPs (3x20) for $15 each. So starting in the July/August timeframe, you'll only need to buy 1 - although it will be $5 more expensive.

tjstyles said:

The basic rules are only included in the Core Set, which covers everything except the Shadows mechanic. The Shadows mechanic is packaged in each of the King's Landing edition Chapters. All of it can be found on the Game of Thrones support section of the main FFG site (these are just the message boards). Follow Gualdo's link, or follow the "Living Card Game" path from the "products" section of the main "fantasyflightgames.com" page.

tjstyles said:

The Core is important because a lot of the reprints are modified. You cannot, for example, bring a copy of WES-Eddard or Robb and say it is the same as the Core Set version because there are small differences. Whether certain Chapters are more important than others for "basic" cards is going to depend on the House and strategies you like to play. There are a bunch of threads on the forums devoted to this question.

tjstyles said:

The most important thing to know is that the game is considerably more "grass roots" than it was in the past. There are certain decks that "tear up" certain metas that never see any play in other metas. The game is pretty well balanced overall, but there are still certain inequalities between factions, so some people get caught up in that. It is a lot harder, though, for any one House to have an answer to everything. That creates a lot of possibilities for different strategies and vulnerabilities, even in the strongest decks.

tjstyles said:

Yes and no. Like anything, there has been some power creep and there has been concentration on new mechanics that cannot be matched by the old cards. However, some of the old power cards still crush anything in their sight. Certain CCG cards, that are just not available to most LCG players, can create an unfair advantage. However, a lot of old players left and a lot of new players joined when the game went to the LCG model. As such, almost 2 years out, most places have gone to an "LCG-only" format. There isn't much mixing of CCG and LCG cards - and certainly none for the little cross-meta competitive play that is out there.

To answer your question about the "treasury," that's just a fancy name for where you take your gold from when you count income. (I think FFG introduced this name to help new players more intuitively understand the rules when FFG introduced the LCG/Core Set.) The treasury has a couple other applications, for example there are cards that let you take gold at times other than the marshalling phase. Overall, the gold mechanic is the same, except that now you keep the gold throughout the challenges, dominance, and standing phases, returning it during the "taxation phase" and can use it in a similar way as you use influence to pay for card certain effects. (For example, Targ's Forever Burning pseudo-reprint allows you to pay gold or kneel influence to return the event during dominance.)

In addition to some new cards that require gold, every unspent gold you have at the beginning of dominance counts as +1 strength during dominance, so you can win dominance if you have a lot of leftover gold at the end of the round, even if you don't have any characters on the table. Another application is paying for shadow cards, which is a new mechanic that came out in the King's Landing cycle. (Basically, these characters go onto the board face down and are otherwise out of play...but also not in your hand. At the beginning of each phase, you can pay a certain "shadow cost," which is identified on the particular card, to flip the card right side up and into play. The benefit is that these cards tend to have neat effects when they are flipped right side up, and also that they can't be discarded from lost intrigue challenges, since they aren't in your hand; the downside is that they tend to be expensive and require gold at different times in a round, so you really have to budget each round to be able to afford to pay for them later.)

For the most part, there aren't a ton of new mechanics (the shadows being the main exception), and those that are new tend to be very easy to pick up. (There's the "seasons" mechanic, but I would say that this mechanic is really more like a series of cards that have synergy with each other...the effects are all explained on the cards and it doesn't really take any rules/explanation to figure out what's going on.) As far as the new gold rules go, after playing with the treasury/taxation for the past year or so, I find it makes more sense and allows for more variety than the old rules that ignored gold after the marshalling phase.

As far as the game itself goes, I would say now is the perfect time to invest. Since the Martell expansion was released a few months ago, the game has been more balanced (in terms of house strengths) than it has been since the transition to LCG. The problem for the past year has been that the card pool was too small to allow a lot of variety, and the decktypes that were typically considered competitive were generally just less efficient than Lanni's draw/gold dominance. Over the past 4 months or so, this has changed a lot. Lanni is still probably the most competitive all around, but it no longer wins every matchup. More importantly, as the card pool expands, other houses' mechanics are becoming more consistent, allowing for MUCH more variety/flexibility even within houses, so the environment is beginning to feel a lot more like the pre-LCG era with fun/interesting deck lists and many more surprises during games than even 6 months ago. I suspect that in another 3 or 4 months (another 3 or 4 chapter packs), there will be even more variety, as most houses are just missing a few cards to make a particular theme playable/competitive. At that point, I think most (if not all) houses will have options for competitive builds, and games may be more fun than even the ITE era.

Thank you for the responses everyone, that is very helpful information. I will probably pick up one of each chapter pack to start with, then fill in more of them as I decide which cards I need more of.

How is the tournament support these days? I remember back in the day it was pretty decent. Does FFG still send out special promos and what not for special events? Is there any type of redemption like back in the day with the gold dragons off of packs? (When I ended up quitting AGOT before, I had about 1,000 empty packs of cards that I had saved for the gold dragons.)

Also, how is core distributed? Is it a boxed set or is it random like while it was a CCG? If it is a boxed set, do you get 1 of each card or do some come as multiples?

tjstyles said:

Well, there hasn't been much in the way of tournaments for the last 2 years, so there hasn't been much in the way of support. FFG is trying to get things going again with their new Events Center in MN and the rebirth of the Regionals program announced about 2 weeks ago.

Support in the way of "gimmies" is still pretty good, all things considered. They are doing things like pins, playmats, counters, art prints and the like rather than promos. Promo cards don't really fit into the all-fixed, "everyone has equal - albeit retail - access to all cards" format of the LCG. There is no redemption program, either. But FFG still finds ways to take care of their players.

And the closest thing to "Enforce teh Borken" is this whacked-out champion's card*. ]ut you have to win it's a(n effectively) 2-cost, self-recursing attachment where you have to win an INT or POW challenge by 3 or more to trigger it. And now a day's dupes can save from "Return to hand" effects.. so it's not quite so unbalanced.

*I don't know if "whacked-out" describe's the champ or his card. >:]

And the closest thing to "Enforce teh Borken" is this whacked-out champion's card*. ]ut you have to win it's a(n effectively) 2-cost, self-recursing attachment where you have to win an INT or POW challenge by 3 or more to trigger it. And now a day's dupes can save from "Return to hand" effects.. so it's not quite so unbalanced.

*I don't know if "whacked-out" describe's the champ or his card. >:]

ktom said:

Yeah, I can see the tournament scene being pretty weak these days. Seems to be that way with most TCGs. WOW was pretty popular and we couldn't find much local tournament support for it. Vs was dying before WOW came out. Magic seems to be the only TCG that is still running events, and the turn out to those do not seem to be what they were back when I played it competitively either.

I certainly understand the idea of not wanting to print powerful cards that you have to attend a particular event or send in points to get. That can really break a game. And, if the card sucks and you would never use it in a deck, who is going to bother going through the extra effort to get it. But there is another option that rewards players and does not conflict with either of these issues (especially for a format like AGOT has with fixed sets). Alternate Artwork. It is pretty easy for FFG to print an extra sheet of cards with different art or styling on them. A lot of collectors love this sort of thing cause they get limited edition cards. I personally don't care about the alternate art, I just like being able to get an extra playset of cards without having to buy a bunch of sets. That is a win-win scenario for the company and the players. Everyone gets something relevant to the game that they can use in tournaments to show that they supported the game. Nobody gets an unfair advantage by getting access to stuff other players don't get. FFG doesn't incur extra costs cause they already pay to have cards printed. And collectors get a chase card.

It is good to see that they have looked into Regionals. One of the big things that our group misses are the road trips we used to take for big tournaments. Our wallets don't miss these trips, of course. But, we have talked about going to GenCon this year, but there are no TCG events there, so we would be spending a ton of money to walk around to different booths. One of my favorite parts of all of our road trips (at least in the top 10, if not the top 5) was participating in the AGOT tournament at the last GenCon I went to. I got to meet a bunch of people I got to know from the boards and play some AGOT with people from different metas. I do hope that eventually FFG gets back to that level of tournament support.