So I live in Canada and play AGOT LCG once a week. I've been playing for maybe a month or two with a relative/his friends and I'm at quite a disadvantage as they all have most of, if not all, the Chapter Packs/Expansions whereas I only have about 13 Chapter Packs, the Core Set and KOTS/LOW Expansions. I realize for this soon I still have a pretty sizeable amount of cards to contend against them with but at this time I can only manage to pull together decent-ish decks around the four Core decks.

For reference I have: (in no particular order) Wolves of the North, A King In The North, Beyond The Wall, The Tower of the Hand, Ancient Enemies, Secrets and Spies, The Battle of Blackwater Bay, The Winds of Winter, and all of the Brotherhood Without Banners packs minus A Song of Silence.

Now living in a city without many shops/stores that sell TCGs/LCGs/CCGs of this variety I've come to rely on a single store that stocks them (but rarely if ever gets new product once every few months except for the new monthly chapter packs).

So I was wondering (two questions) if anybody would be able to give me advice on the next maybe 3 or 4 or so amount of Chapters Packs I should be trying to pick up to make some better decks so I can actually stand a chance in a competitive atmosphere. As of now I've tried to link together scraps from each House but seem to be missing a lot of the Agendas for Wildings, Night's Watch and the like.

Second question is any online stores that I might be able to buy new packs that would have cheap-ish shipping costs to Canada. I realize there's Amazon.ca, Miniature Market, Ebay, but they seem to be quite costly in comparison to waiting a few months for my local store to get new product.

If anyone has suggestions/advice/knowledge of online shops that can help me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

Start with Return of the Others as it has a couple great cards in it. Val is great for card draw and that version of Melisandre is one of my favorites. The Wildling Horde would be my next choice. With it you should have all the important wildling pieces. After those two completing your Defenders of the North cycle and Brotherhood without Banners cycle wouldn't be a bad idea. Also consider getting Refugees of War for the refugee cards each house gets. They can really help smooth out your character gold curve in your deck and most of them have useful traits which play well with the current cycle.

As for where to buy, this might be a stupid question but have you asked the local store if they can order the packs you want for you? Many stores have the ability to order single packs so if you haven't asked they might be able to get them for you.

Well I've asked them if they'd be able to order stuff in for me but they said they've tried but are unable to due to low amounts of product they're able to order from FFG. And even if they could, like the new product/stuff they order to re-stock it would take a few months just to get my stuff in at all.

Which is why I've come looking to see if anyone knows of any online stores that might be able to offer reliable, cheap-ish help for me.

I usually buy from ccgarmory.com. I live in italy and even with intercontinental shipping cost I have great prices. I think since you are in Canada you will have better prices too ;-)

I

I think you can order directly from FFG can't you? Otherwise, like Gualdo said, CCGArmory.com has the best prices around.

Well I tried it out and tried the shipping calculator. The cheapest is 23$ just for a single 6.99 Chapter Pack. Thats shipping/handling fees/price all included which isn't really... well, good.

Any other suggestions, by chance?

I tried on CCG Armory inserting a Vancouver address and selecting

USPS - First Class International (varies by country)

I have that one CP for brotherhood costs:

9,99$

3,99$ (shipping cost)

TOT 13,98 $

if you buy the whole set the SHIPPING is ONLY 8,95 $ and so total for whole brotherhood set (that costs more than past sets cause all cards are 3x) is 68,89$

I don't work for CCGArmory, just want to promote a site that never betrayed my intercontinental card needes :-)

Starting for next month I will not use it for a while cause we will have game translated... i prefer english cards but I cannot not support localisation for the good of the game...

Rogue Cypher said:

I'm surprised your store doesn't do special orders.

Do you have a large bookstore chain nearby? You could always give them ISBN numbers for the products and ask for a special order.

And really, 16 bucks for shipping is a bit steep, but not as bad as you make it out.I routinely pay 8-12 to ship online orders, and I live in the states. Shipping is expensive these days. You need to order large orders to really make online shopping economical.

On a lark, you might want to check out coolstuffinc.com to order from. They're usually pricey for me, but to ship a single chapter pack to Vancouver was 3 bucks for some absurd reason. It might be economical to order from them. I dunno. However, USPS International will take up to a month to deliver.

TheFlatline said:

Don't know this... but usually it takes 2 weeks from USA to Italy so I hope since Canada is nearer it took lesser time... but this is only my guess...

Gualdo said:

Just quoting the website. It probably would take a couple weeks (it takes around a week for me to get shipments from CSI) but the midwest is under permanent blizzard conditions lately so things are shipping slower than normal.

anyway if can helps I bought also from miniaturemarket USA shop and never had problem. But the prices are the same and also shipping conditions so the situation don't think change a lot.

All my regular US orders have taken 4-11 days to Europe. Yes, it's usually that quick. I've ordered a lot from Sci-fi Genre, which have about the same shipping as CCG Armory, but think I'll switch to CCGA to fill up my AGoT collection (25 pieces to go). The only slow deliveries I've had from the US were not actual orders, but promotional materials (cards and T-shirts) included due to other purchases/contests/plain old sign-up.

The typical shipping was $18 for 4 packs of cards, but CCG Armory can send me 4 old packs for $7 each + $10 shipping! Choose the slow option. It isn't all that slow, at least not if you make regular orders every other week to catch up with 3 games, like me

For buyers in Europe I recommend Thorondor's excellent webshop www.eaglecard.org . Prices are good enough, and the best thing is - you can even order single cards!

Looking into this game, and I think it will be interesting to play a game that relates to a great series I own, not to mention it seems like a good game. As I live in Australia, that means buying online. I'm just wondering if anyone has some advice, though I'll check out the sight you guys mentioned.

Anyway, as my favourite character is Jon Snow, I'm mainly interested in a Brotherhood deck. Going to have to look further into the game mechanics, but I gather the Brotherhood is an Agenda that is used in addition to your house?

Gargoyle said:

Did you confuse Night's Watch with Brotherhood? Jon Snow is part of the NW, not the Brotherhood.

As to your question, yes there is an agenda for the Brotherhood that one can use with their house card of choice.

Coolstuffinc.com is my online retailer of choice for Game of Thrones, but I don't know what they charge to ship to Canada. Free shipping in the US for orders of $100 or more though and they have always been fast on deliveries and pre-orders and good prices.

www.coolstuffinc.com/main_cardGames.php

Oops, got mixed up there, because they're known as the black brothers. I did in fact mean the Nights Watch, my bad. Anyway, think I'll look into the game more anyway, investing without actually understanding everything is probably a sure-fire way to spend money on packs which don't contribute to my deck, though I'll obviously get the Core set to start with.

Gargoyle said:

Yes. Getting the core set to get a feel for the game and the houses and then deciding what to get next is the way to go.

The Core Set and Defenders of the North cycle is the way to go if you really want to make a Night's Watch deck. Other packs and expansions may give you some specific things you are going to want after you are more familiar with the game.

Been making plenty of decks online, and haven't really been into Night's Watch as much as I thought I would be. It's unfortunate, as I'm a fan of Jon, but I don't like how you have to use The North agendas if you want them to have crests, though the 'lower cost' thing on Defenders and Wolves of the North is interesting.

I am really disappointed with the Night's Watch theme from the Defenders of the North cycle, especially when compared to the wildlings. Because most of the characters have no icons, you are forced to play the agendas, you can't splash them into other decks for their effects. And most of the card effects are not that strong or too focused on Wildlings (except Sam is great in a season deck). I think they'd have been more balanced if every Night's Watch character had at least one icon.

I agree about the lack of icons on most NW characters. It forces one to use an agenda to get much use out of most of them. In contrast, Wildling characters are useful as they are, and made more so by the agendas. I would have liked to see NW characters designed in a similar fashion. Give them icons instead of the agendas doing it, and allowing the agendas to give them other abilities (like +1 str, or perhaps keywords such as stealth or deadly).

I think if the agendas gave them bonuses to defense like "+2 Str when defending" and "cannot be bypassed by stealth" that would have been nedly and complemented the wildling agendas nicely, which are focused on attacking.

I'm with you on that, Saturnine. I think that would have made NW more fun (at least for me), since i guess I'm a Nedly player at heart. I like when the game captures the feeling of the books.

Saturnine said:

Given that, pre-errata, all 6 The North Agendas could be used at once, I imagine the game designers didn't want totally OP Wildling/Nights Watch decks. This sort of thinking does make sense in retrospect, I like the "cannot be bypassed by stealth" idea even if its not the strongest suggestion I've heard. I think many players agree that NW theme is sub-par and not even a lot of fun to play. My impression is that competitive NW decks can be built (not by me, mine was a pathetic disaster), DotN Stannis + The Wall obviously helps a lot.
Here is an example of one, older thread but built without any of the Wildling Agendas and therefore still legal.

Has anyone out there built a successful NW deck recently?