So I've really only been playing with this one friend, and neither of us really wants to commit that much financially to the game. So the way we've basically been playing is as follows, we have one core set, the martell expansion and have been picking up some chapter packs that we think look cool and effectively creating a communal pot of cards. When we want to play, we each choose a house and give each other all the cards of that house. We then take the rest of the cards (houses not being played and nuetral cards), shuffle them and divide them up evenly. We then build 60 card decks with what we have and BATTLE.

Anyway, he plays Martell/bara/targ I play lanni/stark. I've been winning a lot of the games we've been playing, and he has started claiming that with the sets we have, the game is biased towards the houses I play. I say that while there may be some variation from pack to pack it is designed to be fairly playable with any and all packs.

I can elaborate which packs we have if vital, but the question is is it possible that the packs we have could be biased towards lanni/stark? And is the way we play in anyway inherently inbalanced?

Napoleon62 said:

My disclaimer: I've only started to play the LCG.

That said, I still think that the game (especially the core set) can heavily favor a Lannister/Stark player over a Martell/Baratheon/Targaryen. And that's probably especially true for new players because the strategies around Lannister and Stark are somewhat more obvious than what you can do with Martell / Baratheon / Targaryen. And your issues are probably even compounded by the fact that you're playing "joust" (one vs one / 2 player) instead of "melee" (more than 2 players).

From the little experience I've had, I can already easily see how Lannister / Stark can be rather brutal when it is only faced with defeating ONE opponent. It's a bit different (well... maybe A LOT different) when the same deck has to contend with several opponents.

And, of course, there's also the matter of playstyle and player knowledge ... it just may be that your style best fits Lannister/Stark and you know exactly how to hit your opponent's weakpoints; and/or your friend's style doesn't really fit the Martell / Baratheon / Targaryen deck, and he's having a hard time figuring out where your Lanni/Stark deck weakspot is.

Here's my advice ... and take it from someone who plans to play the game the way you're playing it. I'm cash-poor as well, and I'm not about to buy many chapter packs or even multiples of the chapter packs. I'm treating the LCG from a "almost-just-one-set" perspective, and if any of my friends decide to get more serious in the game, we plan on pooling our resources. So, the way I treat deck building is as follows: it is a collaborative effort we build the decks together, and we try to make each deck as strong as most (if not all) the other decks. Each time we come up with a set of decks, we play them out extensively before re-tweaking.

At first, when we were new to the game, we had each player take a house as a "specialty" typically giving the Stark deck to the player who plays at that brute-strength style; Lannister to the guy who likes to play surprise tricks; Baratheon to the guy who goes super-aggressive at the start; and Targaryen to the guy who likes come-from-behind or long-term strategies. But now that we're a bit more experienced, we've started mixing it up and that's both to give my friends some experience in a different playstyle, as well as to check if a deck is failing to perform only due to player skill.

The reality I'm facing is that I'm not likely able to afford buying 3x copies of the cards (and neither do my friends). So we're treating the game almost like a "stand-alone, straight-out-of-the-box". Like you, we bought a few chapter packs ... so we're faced with the task of redesigning decks (which is part of the fun of a card game, after all). But we're hoping to come up with a final set of decks that fit our playstyles ... which will satisfy our weekly/monthly feuds until we gather enough savings to buy another chapter pack ... which will lead to another redesign cycle.

I should also note:

I'm not sure if you've read my other threads in this forum, but back when I bought the LCG, there happened to be a couple of clearance sales on the CCG. Specifically ONE edition/expansion the Valyrian edition. The LCG Core set had cost me about $30, but for just a little bit more than that, I was able to get 4 starter decks and 18 boosters of the Valyrian edition CCG. I also found someone who sold the old CCG draft packs (which can really help round out a deck) for about $1 each.

Why do I mention this? Because the Core Set only gives you 4 decks with one copy of each card (well, except Robert Baratheon). My friends and I wanted to get a taste of the game that has a wealth of deckbuilding options and getting 3 copies of the Core Set would mean spending somewhere between $80-$90. So I grabbed the chance that the clearance sale allowed me to afford, and grabbed as much of ONE edition of the CCG. It was enough to build 4 decks, and I even have a lot of cards left over for possible trades.