There is a ton of new (and older) content up at Winter-is-coming.net for HBO's Game of Thrones leading up to the April 17th premiere. Going from oldest to newest:

Artisans: The weapons of Westeros:

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Inside a Game of Thrones airs on HBO:

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The Artisans: Armor Design:

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The Artisans: Bruises with Buster (inside the creation of fight scenes)

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Iron Thrones Teaser:

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The Artisans: Actor Maisie on playing Arya:

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Behind the Scenes: Invitation to Westeros:

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Extended Iron Throne teaser:

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First Full Trailer:

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Four new HBO posters:

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House Stark Featurette and 2nd full trailer Fear and Blood:

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House, Baratheon, Lannister, Targaryen videos, as well as video character portraits for many of the main characters from the first book:

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HBO's Maester's Path challenge which unlocks additional video previews:

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Lots of awesomeness here. Getting closer and closer to the premier and HBO is really ramping things up.

www.winter-is-coming.net has excellent daily coverage on the HBO series for those interested.

Jaime and Robb videos added along with extended versions of the House introductions:

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Have they said how many episodes are in this first season and if it covers the full book?

Darksbane said:

I believe it's 10 episodes, covering the events of A Game of Thrones.

Yes, 10 episodes for season 1 covering the first book, with tentative plans to do a season per book if the ratings are good enough to support it. Though there are rumors that they may split Storm of Swords into two seasons due to the length of the book, and the events from Feast for Crows and Dance of Dragons will probably be merged across two to three seasons since you can't really have actors sit out a whole year of filming and keep them around and the events are happening at the same time anyway. Plus, Dance is rumored to be around the same size if not bigger than Storm of Swords.

New Trailer released:

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The HBO store added the Game of Thrones games from Fantasy Flight, along with the posters, t-shirts with the images from the posters and Steins for each house:

http://store.hbo.com/?g=1&v=hbo_shows_game-of-thrones

Also the Littlefinger video profile was added last week:

Oh and if you live in New York City or Los Angeles, HBO has the tastes of Westeros promotion going on where you can sample food recipes from the books:

http://winter-is-coming.net/2011/03/hbo-to-present-the-flavors-of-westeros-in-nyc-and-la/

http://winter-is-coming.net/2011/03/food-trucks-roll-out-in-nyc/

and the recipe for Lemon Cakes:

http://www.makinggameofthrones.com/storage/got-lemon-cakes-recipe.pdf

Tastes of Westeros? That's a bit too fan-boy for me. Martin and HBO have quite enough of my money already anyway.

Though it is cool that HBO has the cards up at their site. Thsi kind of exposure is what we really need - between the book and the series.

Stag Lord said:

As a reader of the series since '96, I've been looking longingly at the LCG since I became aware of it about a year or so ago when FFG released the Horus Heresy board game. With the TV series due to hit our screens, I figured now would be the best time to jump into the game, as in a couple of weeks time when everyone says how great (I'm presuming) the show is, I can go "ta-da!" and whip the LCG out.

I've already had a friend say "I want to be the deck with Sean Bean in it" - I can't wait for him to see what happens outside Baelor's Sept

Starblayde said:

He'll be looking forward to playing against a Lannister deck with Joffrey in it, then

Starblayde said:

Shoot - it would be pretty cool if the compnay switched to images from HBO as opposed ot the commissoned art they use now- kind fo like LoTR CCG used to do. I don't care about art one way or the other - never have - adn if ti brngs in more players - all the better I say.

I wouldn't mind promo or alternate art cards with images instead of art but I'd hate the whole game to move to images.

I can understand why people would love to play with cards with images from the show on them.

However, I simply can't imagine FFG will ever uses images from the HBO series. I'm guessing there will be a huge licensing fee with HBO (and the actors?) in order to be able to use them. Maybe I'm wrong though, and I hope I am for the sake of you guys that would love it.

I'd hate to have caps from the HBO show on the cards. I much prefer to have original art. Sure, some artwork is not that great, but generally it's pretty good and then there's some really great pieces as well. Having to look at the actors would weird me out.

Dobbler said:

I'm sure you're right. I think the LOTR guys had to pay a HUGE fee to use images from the movie.

It helped make their game huge though - brought in lots of non CCG players. i remember being really jealous of them. I don't care either way though. teh "art" for the cards has never been of any interest to me. Except when it is horrendously bad - like some of those caroon-y images in AHoTa

I prefer the art, but I wouldn't care too much. I don't think it ever happen though for cost, consistency reasons, but a few promo cards could be interesting.

Stag Lord said:

Do you really think it was the images from the movies that made it popular? I never knew anyone to care about the movie images, I always attributed the games popularity with the populartiy of the movies. It is one reason why I'm not expecting much of a bump in interest from the AGoT TV show. It just doesn't have the reach of a movie and it is on HBO which means it will be seen be an even smaller audience of cable/satellite viewers.

I could see them doing a set of chapter packs with HBO images, or perhaps a special edition reprint of the core set if they worked out any licensing conflicts. The problem going in of course is that even if they worked out the license issues is that they would be limited to images from the first book until next year. But I could see the images being popular with new and old fans alike. As the post said above, his friend wants to try a deck with Sean Bean's character, and well the current cards don't have Sean Bean on them.

I hope it doesn't stray from the art.

Plus, I have worked with clients that use movie/show rights, and it is VERY expensive and time-consuming. You have to pay 100 people for each movie still it seemed.

HBO is previewing the first 15 minutes of the first episode this Sunday on HBO for those who can't wait for the April 17th full premiere.

I'm one of those that cannot wait ;-)

Karazax said:

If someone could stream that on ATDHEnet.tv that would be awesome!

Several people have said it will be posted on www.makinggameofthrones.com later tonight after it airs, but I have not been able to find an official source to confirm this.

Several reviews have been released by people who have received screeners of the first 6 episodes from HBO:

http://cultural-learnings.com/2011/04/03/a-televisual-love-letter-reveling-in-hbos-game-of-thrones/

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b233922_Welcome___i_Game_of_Thrones__i__Crazies__Please_Submit_Your_Questions.html

http://winter-is-coming.net/2011/04/first-impressions-of-game-of-thrones/#comments

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/game-thrones-tv-review-174120

http://www.denofgeek.com/television/833989/game_of_thrones_episode_1_spoilerfree_review.html