Hey all, I just recently started playing this game with a few friends in my local area, and have so far really enjoyed the game. I've mostly been an L5R player, so I'm not totally new to CCGs or CCG-type games. Now, I don't plan on being a competitive or tourney player, but I also don't want to just play with the decks available in the core set, and I have two questions:

What is an effective way to "fishbowl" a new deck to determine if you have included a good number of resource locations and key characters?

How do you put together an optimal Plot Deck?

In addition, the sets we have available to us are Core x2, IG, KotStorm, CtB, OSaS, Wot5K, ACoS, FtC, MotM, PotS, SB, TBoBB, AE, RoW, and RotO (yeah, when we get into a hobby, we go all out). I'm interested in making a Martell deck and a Baratheon deck, however, with the cards available from those sets, what are some suggestions for making decent decks for the other houses so that everybody can be represented?

Thanks for helping, and I hope everybody who went to GenCon had a great time!

I suppose the first thing that I could suggest is to just go to cardgamedb.com and check out all the decks submitted by people. For two, usually, 30 characters, 15 locations/resources, and 15 other cards is pretty optimal. You'll want a healthy amount of draw (there are many ways to go about that in the game). What area are you playing in?

I'm in Northern Va.

I've been over to cardgamedb, as well as agotcards, and both have been very helpful. I don't have access to all the cards in a number of the decks though, and I'm trying to avoid netdecking (too much...=P).