So I know form experience and from teach others and discussing it in some threads this week that one of the things that game of thrones suffers from is it being somewhat hard for new comers when it comes to learning all the nuances of the game. IE the FAQ. Now I know you can learn and play the game with little interaction with the FAQ. But what have some others done to help soften the blow when it inevitably does come up ?

I try not to force feed the entire FAQ all at once. No new player wants to hear this, but sometimes you just have to accept that it's going to take a while to learn things, and take your lumps as they come. As important as it is to learn the rules, and as much as people naturally want to avoid losing too much, just remember it's more important to have fun.

When we first started playing, I focused more on the basics to keep the game moving correctly (ie. framework actions, deadly, triggered vs. passives, player action windows, etc.). I guess you could say we focused more on the rule book from the Core Set, and less on the actual FAQ. I certainly brought FAQ situations up, if they presented themselves durring a game, but tried not to get too into it, and allowed them to take thing back if desired.

Once our group had a firm grip on the basic rules, I purposely looked for examples of tricky things (mostly timing, save/cancels, immunity) and explained what was going on durring the game, and how to take advantage of the FAQ, if possible. We also quite often went through game decisions after games, and discussed the pros and cons of what had happened. I try not to get too high and mighty in explaining the rules. Luckily our group is eager enough to learn that they don't seem to mind me blabbing on.

Now, sometimes in the middle of a game, I will ask my opponent to explain what just happened, and often find they enjoy trying to explain complex timing situations. Sometimes guys just start explaining anyways to see if they understand what's happening. People are coming up with more questions, but I find now they can answer those questions themselves, and just need confirmation. I still have no problem letting people take things back (in a non-competative atmosphere), but I encourage people to try not to.

So far, so good.

Yeah I haven't introduced it all. I do use it and know it myself and bring the stuff up but I have taken on the role of knowing it for now so the rest don't have to. yet.

I recently taught the game to a non-gamer and this is what I did (and it seemed to work):

- I used the Iron Throne Starter addition. I don't love the Core Set decks for joust straight out of the box. You can do some swapping to address melee-centric cards gumming up the works, but that's a hassle. Plus my Core Sets are broken up from deckbuilding. The ITE starter has fairly straightforward decks for the two most recognizable houses, Stark and Lanni, (she had started reading the books) and no weird resource cards or house-specific key words (that make the Five Kings Starter a little unwieldly for teaching relative to the ITE starter I think).

- I removed the events and we treated all character cards as having blank text boxes other than traits and "Limited" and "No attachments". This was based on a suggestion Lars made some time ago about how to teach the game and I think it helps a lot as it greatly reduces the card effects to have to digest (just locations and attachments) and puts the focus of the Challenge phase on Challenge basics since you're mostly just worrying about each card's stats. If you do this with the ITE starter, give the new player the Stark deck as it is now stronger.

- We played a few games like that and I narrated everything I was doing and guided her as much as possible through her turns, especially the Challenge phases. Since there are no events and characters are blank, the Challenge phase is straightforward. You can talk about when it's ok to let challenges go unopposed, the virtue of defensive attacks, the typical pattern of challenges (Int, Mil, then Pow), and whatever else helpful you can think of.

- I then introduced the Events back to the deck and we played a couple more games with them but with characters still blanked.

- Finally played with all text, thus introducing the characters' effects, Stealth, and Renown. Since she'd gotten familiar with other cards from the prior games (she was always playing Stark), having the characters text boxes was a big, but more manageable, amount of info to digest.

Another thing: The video tutorial that FFG has created for AGoT is pretty good I think. It's available on the support page for the game here and on YouTube.

I've taught the game using the Valyrian edition, which seems to manage to avoid the trickier situations. Dealing with Renown and Stealth are probably the trickiest situations that the decks I've pre-constructed would bring up in our games.

I think it's important to get the "basic rules" down, and I think it is fortunate that there are ways to build teaching decks that don't necessarily require the FAQ.

We've tried the Core LCG decks once so far; and obviously, the timing of Deadly came up, as well as the timing of the various save/cancel effects. By this time, however, we're already comfortable with the flow of the game ... and learning the "new" things added more excitement to the game.