How do you play the westeros decks? As the official ruling says, or did you come up with something to avoid the 10 barrel-counting turns games?

I know it's not supposed to happen very often statistically, but we all know one can never trust stats.

My group plays that if you get the same card twice turns in a row, you draw a new one, once. The events alternate much more regularly, but there is still a bit of randomness left, with no extra deckmaking phase.

Your opinion?

I've never had more than 4 turns that are the same that I can remember (though with no cards on the first turn, that makes it turn 6 before any musters).

I actually like having the variety; with some games not getting any units (practically) and others with everyone having to crunch units to make room for the next muster, and barrels becoming prime targets.

Having to figure out how to conquer 7 points of cities with 4 muster points of units is actually rather fun, imo.

So we play with the rules as written, and have a blast doing it.

I think that this the boardgame equivalent of mana screw: Very fustrating, but if you win despite it immensely rewarding.

Our gaming groupe (exept some rare persons) have also enjoyed the variety in our games. It really is fun to figure out how to capture 7 settlements with only one knight and two foot-soldiers.

Last game we didn't have any auctions in the first part of the game. Then two of them came right after each other. And then a third one later on when we didn't have any power... It's so fun...

But it's not fun when You get 3 musterings strait and no carrots to feed Your army...

I had a question about that. What happens when you get the bid card (a game of thrones I think), and no one has any power to spend?

The current Iron Throne owner chooses everyones place?

Sorry, I meant the "Clash of Kings" card.

Flbbd2fl said:

First of all, instead of not trusting stats, I'd go ahead and distrust the person shuffling the cards. As in most cases, this situation probably boils down to human error. Secondly, did this actually happen to you or are you just musing about the possibility that, technically, it could happen?

Personally I strongly doubt that this would happen to you more than once, if at all. (And if it does, get someone to shuffle properly!) And if it happened to you, put it down for experience and move on.

Flbbd2fl said:

I wouldn't like that. Mostly because that messes with the whole idea of the Westeros card deck. Why draw cards at all if all you're really doing is picking what you want to happen this round? The Westeros card deck mechanic has one big up: whatever happens happens to everyone. My first game played had 2 barrel rounds followed by a mustering followed by another 3 barrel rounds. It was frustrating to see all that open land that you wanted to claim but couldn't. On the up side: nobody else could either.

My advice: Stick with the standard rules and get someone to shuffle who actually can.

The player with the Iron Throne breaks ties. If no one bids there's no tie to break. Granted, that's how I've always interpreted it since my group's never been flat broke before since we don't want anyone to win by bidding 1.

Gatha said:

This is true, though.

If all players are flat out broke and cannot bid for the 'Clash of Kings' then that would be a draw and the holder of the Iron Throne determines the order for every category.