Another prospective player with some questions

By tutenkharnage, in 1. AGoT General Discussion

Posted at

Howdy. I'm considering purchasing this game, but--unlike most, if not all, of the posters here--I anticipate that I'd only be playing the game "out of the box," with very few extra purchases. Essentially, I'm interested in buying the standalone game as a game for me and my wife and a couple friends, but we almost certainly won't pursue deck-building and similar exercises--it'd be good for a night's play here and there.

It's my understanding that the core set comes with 45 playing cards for each of the four Houses (52 cards minus the 7 plot cards). But the Martell and Greyjoy expansions come with 3 copies of 60 cards each. So, here's what I'd like to know:

  1. Is the core set actually playable as a standalone game, or do you need more cards?
  2. Are Martell and Greyjoy balanced against the decks in the core set? (Also: Would I need to remove all duplicates from both decks to put them on par with the decks in the core set? I assume that I'd need to, but I'd like to know for sure.)
  3. In the event that my group decided to purchase the major expansions for Stark, Targaryen, Baratheon, and Lannister (not yet released), would the Martell and Greyjoy decks be hopelessly outclassed?

I realize that most of the players here are into collecting and deck-building, so these might seem like alien concerns, but I'd really appreciate some responses while my friends and I test the free downloads and wait for the coming reprints of the core set and the Martell expansion.

Thanks!

Posted at

tutenkharnage said:

Howdy. I'm considering purchasing this game, but--unlike most, if not all, of the posters here--I anticipate that I'd only be playing the game "out of the box," with very few extra purchases. Essentially, I'm interested in buying the standalone game as a game for me and my wife and a couple friends, but we almost certainly won't pursue deck-building and similar exercises--it'd be good for a night's play here and there.

It's my understanding that the core set comes with 45 playing cards for each of the four Houses (52 cards minus the 7 plot cards). But the Martell and Greyjoy expansions come with 3 copies of 60 cards each. So, here's what I'd like to know:

  1. Is the core set actually playable as a standalone game, or do you need more cards?
  2. Are Martell and Greyjoy balanced against the decks in the core set? (Also: Would I need to remove all duplicates from both decks to put them on par with the decks in the core set? I assume that I'd need to, but I'd like to know for sure.)
  3. In the event that my group decided to purchase the major expansions for Stark, Targaryen, Baratheon, and Lannister (not yet released), would the Martell and Greyjoy decks be hopelessly outclassed?

I realize that most of the players here are into collecting and deck-building, so these might seem like alien concerns, but I'd really appreciate some responses while my friends and I test the free downloads and wait for the coming reprints of the core set and the Martell expansion.

Thanks!

2. No, these aren't balanced against the Core Set at all, and I'm guessing even with only 1x of each card, the Martell/GJ might have a slight advantage. You can probably juggle around some of the neutral cards and plots to help balance them out. (I don't have any suggestions off the top of my head.)

3. No...not really. The Stark box is very good, the Baratheon box is so-so...I'm not really sure where the Targ box falls into the spectrum if you're running it with a limited card pool. Overall it wasn't as great as people hoped, but I think some of this has to do with some slight over-costing of certain cards, and I'm guessing in more casual play the Targ box would seem very strong. Martell and GJ probably fit somewhere in this spectrum fairly well...above Bara (I think) but probably not as good as the Stark box (in my opinion).

Posted at

tutenkharnage said:

Howdy. I'm considering purchasing this game, but--unlike most, if not all, of the posters here--I anticipate that I'd only be playing the game "out of the box," with very few extra purchases. Essentially, I'm interested in buying the standalone game as a game for me and my wife and a couple friends, but we almost certainly won't pursue deck-building and similar exercises--it'd be good for a night's play here and there.

It's my understanding that the core set comes with 45 playing cards for each of the four Houses (52 cards minus the 7 plot cards). But the Martell and Greyjoy expansions come with 3 copies of 60 cards each. So, here's what I'd like to know:

  1. Is the core set actually playable as a standalone game, or do you need more cards?
  2. Are Martell and Greyjoy balanced against the decks in the core set? (Also: Would I need to remove all duplicates from both decks to put them on par with the decks in the core set? I assume that I'd need to, but I'd like to know for sure.)
  3. In the event that my group decided to purchase the major expansions for Stark, Targaryen, Baratheon, and Lannister (not yet released), would the Martell and Greyjoy decks be hopelessly outclassed?

I realize that most of the players here are into collecting and deck-building, so these might seem like alien concerns, but I'd really appreciate some responses while my friends and I test the free downloads and wait for the coming reprints of the core set and the Martell expansion.

Thanks!

tutenkharnage said:

Howdy. I'm considering purchasing this game, but--unlike most, if not all, of the posters here--I anticipate that I'd only be playing the game "out of the box," with very few extra purchases. Essentially, I'm interested in buying the standalone game as a game for me and my wife and a couple friends, but we almost certainly won't pursue deck-building and similar exercises--it'd be good for a night's play here and there.

It's my understanding that the core set comes with 45 playing cards for each of the four Houses (52 cards minus the 7 plot cards). But the Martell and Greyjoy expansions come with 3 copies of 60 cards each. So, here's what I'd like to know:

  1. Is the core set actually playable as a standalone game, or do you need more cards?
  2. Are Martell and Greyjoy balanced against the decks in the core set? (Also: Would I need to remove all duplicates from both decks to put them on par with the decks in the core set? I assume that I'd need to, but I'd like to know for sure.)
  3. In the event that my group decided to purchase the major expansions for Stark, Targaryen, Baratheon, and Lannister (not yet released), would the Martell and Greyjoy decks be hopelessly outclassed?

You can definitely play the Core Set straight out of the box. The game is best balanced in Multiplayer, each house's strengths and weaknesses best being covered. If you choose to play two of them on a head to head basis, there may be some uneven match-ups, given the 1x nature of the cards, and the varying strength levels. You may need to consider tweaking them as you play, knowing they are easily sorted by card number. Of the 220 cards, there are 6 Multiplayer Titles, 6 house cards, and 4 playable decks @ 7 plots/45 cards with varying numbers of neutrals in each.

The Greyjoy Box only has a 42 card house deck, after you remove the 7 plots, 6 titles and 5 out-of-house Kings/Queens that were included. The Martell deck would cut down to 48 cards if you take out the 5 multi-house cards that don't share the Martell affiliation (leaving Ser Arys Oakheart & Summer Sea). From there, you could go two ways. Give the other 5 houses the Kings/Queen and Multihouse Cards and that brings you up to 47 for the core decks, 43 for Greyjoy and 49 for Martell. You can pull 3 neutral cards from Martell to give to the Greyjoys and have all the Core Decks drop a resource location (Fiefdom/Crossroads) to even things out. Or, keeping in mind that they Martell and Greyjoy sets come in 3x... if you want to have the same basis for mixing and matching, you'd need 3x of the core set as well. In the mean time, you can use the spare neutral cards in the extra Martell & Greyjoy decks to even out all the houses card-wise.

Keep in my, I haven't played them straight out of the box, but here's the breakdown of card types Attachment/Character/Event/Location if you distribute the 10 cards I mention. I'm adding (resource) to show roughly how much non-plot income they might have.

Stark: 3/23/7/12 (10) + 1 repeatable save

Lannister: 3/22/7/13 (10)

Baratheon: 5/25/6/11 (10) + 1 repeatable save

Targaryen: 6/25/4/12 (10)

Greyjoy: 3/22/7/11 (5) + 2 single-shot saves

Martell: 7/22/11/9 (6)

You'll notice that Greyjoy & Martell are a little light on their resourcing. You might also consider swapping a neutral event from those houses for a neutral resource out of one of the core four.

If you are going to get the other 3 (and eventually Lannister, I presume) Premium Expansions, and you're aware they all come in 3x format... you're conceding the point that you'll be doing some customization The Stark, Bara & Targ boxes all follow the G&M formula for resources, so they are less designed to be played straight out of the box, but again you have multiple copies. Martell & Greyjoy will be at a small disadvantage, but assuming you're willing to mix things up (literally) you should be able to flesh them out well with some of the neutrals, even if you need to take from the core set. Given the 3x nature, you should probably considering purchasing 2 additional core sets to round things out... a couple of events, and duplicates of plots will be a big help.