Okay, so I got the core a few days ago, did one three player games and has one 2-player game planned for the end of the week with my friend, who is interested in investing in it with me. WE found out that the core deck are, well, lacking. They are less cohesive decks then a big pool of base cards split in four decks just to allow for a quick and dirty deck.

So the first order of business is to have two more cohesive decks. Which means we need more cards. What would be the best purchase after the core? A premium expansion of the extra house (Greyjoy or Martell)? A premium expansion of a base house? A complete, not too hard to find chapter pack cycle? Which one?

My criteria for the next purchase is that it allows me to build two interesting, fun and cohesive deck for two different house. Which one would let me do that?

Also, could someone summarize to me the basic strategie sof each house? Basically, what is the main type of deck supported by each houses? Or maybe you know of a good support website with that kind of tips and tricks

It's generally agreed that actually buying a second Core Set is one of the best second purchases you can make. It quickly lets you pump up the decks to proper 60 card decks, it lets you double up on some of the better cards in the decks while dumping some stinkers, and it gives you a second set of the core plots.

If you're mainly interested in having two decks, as opposed to trying to build up decks for every house, it might make sense to purchase two of the deluxe expansions. The Martell and the Greyjoy sets have the cards to make some strong decks, and they have a fair share of cards that are useful in other houses. If you want to build up one of the four houses in the Core Set, at the moment you're kind of stuck with Baratheon and Targaryen as your options. The Lannister deluxe expansion isn't out yet (it's scheduled for release by the end of the year), and the Stark set, Lords of Winter, seems to be seriously out-of-print; if you can find a copy, consider yourself lucky. If Bara and/or Targ tickle your fancy though, Kings of the Storm and Queen of the Dragons are both solid purchases which provide you with the materials to make some strong decks.

I just started also and did almost exactly what alpha suggested. I also checked out some of the top decks from recent tournaments for Houses I am interested in investing time and energy in. I did this not so much to copy decks but to assess solid cards that are must haves to build the House. I think target buying of Chapter packs that are printed in x3 format can be a good investment.

As a long time CoC player buying from the FFG LCG system sits firmly in my comfort zone, I just wish I could get that Lords of Winter Expansion!!! I guess I should be thankful that I was able to get my first choice House Expansion...

I went through this pain last time. I started playing AGOT LCG and had to start quickly with competitive level. I play Martel and Targeryan both control houses. I basically checked 2nd and 3rd deck in last Gencom make a list and bought all chapter packs where those cards were. This is my suggestion for you. i spend a lot of time for analyzing all chapter packs and big expansion. My advise don't buy Stark and Greyjoy expansions if you don't plan to play those two hauses. They have almost nothing for other houses (mainly plots in Stark deck but u can get them easily because there are 3 for each)

The best expansions with useful cards are Targ and Bara. Remember that to play most of houses you need to have 3 copies of their decks from core set. You can buy them in eaglecard.org (I myself bought core set plus 2x Targ deck)

Quite good investment would be buying last chapter series: Secrets of Oldtown and Brotherhood without banners (this whole set I can even sell you haveing two) In first one you have very interesting maester agenda which rocks in last time allowing to build very nice combo oriented decks. Both come with 3 copy of each card so you need to buy only 1 chapter to have playset. In Brotherhood you can skip Ritual of R'hollor (the weakest Chapter in my opionion)

For earlier two: Defender's of the North and King's Landings just buy singles or wait until they release thyem in 3 copy format. The most usefull cards are unfortunately only in 1 copy so you have to invest buying 3 chapters.

Card rating you can check on agotcards.org and cardgamedb.com. if youre interesting with competitive Targ and Martell I can list chapters which you need. I spend 300 euro and now I have almost everything I need.

I would love to get my hands on Lords of Winter. I'm not even that big on Stark, but I feel like with what I currently own, Stark is definitely the weakest deck I have. And I wasn't that into Targ when I bought Queen of Dragons, but I am loving the crap out of that house right now, I'm sure I'd get into Stark once I had my hands on some much more solid deck building options.

Although I think Tokhuah's right to focus on the chapter packs that are available in the 3x format--absolutely hold off on the King's Landing and Defenders of the North cycles, as though will be reprinted in 3x soon--I have to give the obligatory plug for Refugees of War. It's just that good a pack. Every house gets 3 refugees, 0 cost 2 str characters that are super useful and pretty much auto-includes in virtually every deck out there. It's one of the most commonly singled-out chapter packs, and with good reason.

If you haven't already, make sure to check out some of the other sites out. Three of the big ones are:

agotcards.org

agot.dblr.com

cardgamedb.com

You have to register to use AGOTCards, which puts some people off, but they do a fantastic job of ranking cards, and most cards have some useful discussion going on. Getting a sense of what's in the packs can go a long way toward figuring out what's worth buying. One of the nice things about the other sites though is that they will list how many of a given card come in a pack. It's not information you need for the more recent cycles or any of the Deluxe Expansions where all the cards come in triplicate, but knowing which cards you'll be getting three of in the older packs is valuable information.

Collex said:

Since alpha covered purchases I'll try to answer this.

Stark: Starks are all about character control. Most games I've played with Stark, they always have more characters than anyone else. They generally tend to have the highest military strength and can win simply by punishing their opponents with some high str military cards whilst leaving great defensive cards like Hodor and Cassel standing for defence later in the challenges. In the core set there's two different strategies offered which revolve around the Building Season plot: Winterfell Castle (which gives you immense brute force strength) and Winterfell Kennels (which improves your character synergy but is more costly and slower than Winterfell Castle). Expansions to House Stark tend to build on this, though some variants include House Bolton (which allows for lots of character control change) and Night's Watch (which requires more power to win the game, but gives you great synergy of characters and locations).

Lannister: Lannister are all about the billions of gold dragons that Tywin ***** out on a daily basis. Lannister effects need gold to pay for them, so you're looking to maximise your production of that with extra copies of Steward/Weaponsmith. They have some of the better control effects in the game like forcing opponents to kneel characters. In terms of win strategies there's two which are almost entirely opposite. In the core set and most of the expansions, Lannisters use intrigue challenges to reduce their opponent's ability to play the way they'd like to and reduce their hand size. However, you can go a different route, playing Clansman characters which are the exact opposite. You want to reduce your hand size, because if you have less than anyone else your Clansmen become machines.

Targaryen: Dragons! Dragons everywhere! Targs are a fairly well rounded bunch with strengths in all the different kinds of challenge. They specialise in two things, attachments and strength reduction. They have some of the better attachments in the game and ways to improve your ability to get and play attachments (Dany's Chambers, for instance). You can also control your opponents attachments and get rid of them if they are troublesome. They have also have "burn" mechanics, which reduces opponents character strength through (more) attachments and also event cards like Forever Burning (which you definitely want more than one copy of). Dragons offer very cookie cutter strength/power characters albeit at a fairly high cost, and Dothraki offer great military strength and synergy at the cost of the Targ's well-roundedness.

Baratheon: Baras often tend to win in coreset games because their major mechanic is already in full force: renown. You may have noticed that there are tons of Bara characters with renown, and that's what they do. They gather power over time on characters, which often means they are a target but short of tactical nukes, it's hard to stop a fully fledged Bara-army from out-powering you unless there is a concerted effort to kill their characters. They also have a fairly well-rounded set of icons and great attachments for reducing an opponent's abilities. There's three different basic routes to go with Bara, playing with their nobility characters like Robert and Renly, which gives you the most renown, Asshai, which could arguably be seen as one of the better synergies in game with both cost reduction and strength addition plus some pretty powerful attachments, and the Knights route which tend to interact well with Weapon attachments and gives you some fairly good defensive abilities.

Greyjoy: Greyjoys are probably second to Starks in terms of military strength. They have some of the best locations in the game and play almost exactly opposite to Baratheons. With two or three of the right characters they can pull off a turn which results in you jumping from 3 power to 15, and no one sees it coming. They specialise in three things, winning unopposed challenges (through combinations of stealth, warships and various character abilities like Intimidate), discarding from opponent's deck (through Raider traited characters, more warships and event cards) and crest control (Greyjoys have a huge amount of unique characters with crests, and the ability to control other opponent's crested characters.)

Martell: The vipers are all about losing battles to win the war. They can turn losses around their opponents with ease (their house-specific keyword is the opposite of Baratheon's: card stands if a challenge is a lost). They have some great intrigue characters and some of the best events in the game (you'll see Red Vengeance and Burning on the Sand pop up a lot around these parts). They also have the ability to control icons, adding them, removing them and messing with abilities based on icons, and they also get some great cost-reduction synergy with House Dayne and Hellhot cards.

LOL, alpha has once again suggested something I did as a new player. RoW seemed too phenomenal to wait on as those namesake cards are so useful. To have a pack that gives you x3 of a card theme represented in multiple houses is a good investment.

I am really itching to get is A Sword in the Darkness in the x3 format. Can you tell which House is my favorite yet?

Agree i even requested from Andrea this change. It is easy to implement let's hope it will come soon.

BTW I forgot to say that I have a lot of cards from other houses than martell and Targ. I can sell them if you want. They come from following packs:

Bara, Lanni, GJ and Stark from:

The War of 5 Kings CP1
2x A Sword in the Darkenss CP21
Ilyrio´s Gift CP25
Mountains of the Moon CP27
A Song of Silence CP28
Of Snakes and Sand CP29
Dreadfort Betrayal CP30
Gates of the Citadel CP31
Called by the Conclave CP33
Isle of Ravens CP34
Mask of the Archmaster CP35
Martell Expansion revised
Core Set
Targeryan The True Queen Expansion
Baratheon King of the Storm Expansion

It includes all haouse cards plus house related events. It will allow you to build much more decks and I can sell them very cheap. Let me know if you are interested.

Tokhuah said:

Hnh. If it's Bara, be warned that The Iron Throne is not quite as useful as it sounds, much as I like the card.

If it's Targ, you're gonna have a lot of fun with Hatchling's Feast. Awesome card.

I'm gonna go with Targ. Nobody really needs The Iron Throne x3.

For sure Targ. I have to buy two of them for Hatchling's Feast, 1 I got from singles at eaglecard.org.

Ratatoskr said:

One for my Asshai deck, one for my Knights deck, and a spare for Out-of-House or Stannis-boosting-NW hijinks. I really hate swapping cards back and forth between them.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. A friend and I already discussed the possibility of him buying a core set, give half to me (Bara and Lannister probably) and I give half mine. Mainly because of money - we are both university student (at Master level), so our finance are a bit limited and we also have more than one geeky hobbies.

As for the expansion, I will look into the chapter pack.

ALso, some seemed to think I wanted to go competitve - no way. First, the numbers of players of this game in my area is below 10, and second, I'm just not a tournament player, of any game. So I'm more looking for fun and easy to come by ways of adding cards than competitive ways. Does that make sense? Basically, looking at world champions' decks and emulate them is really not interesting for me. The fun of discovery strategy and stuff is more important.

Lastly - Baratheon, best deck of the core? Really? We played a three players deck, I had Bara and my opponents were Stark and Targaryen, and I got completly screwed over time and time again. At first I tried to do a power-challenge strategy, but it never really took off, and then when I started building a fair group of renown character, Valar Morgulis and the Targaryen "discard every characters" event hit. Ouchie. On the contrary. Targaryen seemed to dominate - in fact, it seemed really overpowered, what with being the only one to have a majority of Military/Intrigue/Power cards.

Which leads me to a question - how can a Stark deck survive against an Intrigue deck? Or a Lanni deck against a Stark? From what I see, if you have a weak spot in one challenge, you're dead.

And another question - we felt that three players was suboptimal for this game. Which is better - two or four? The titles seems an unnecessary complexity, so two seems ideal, but thoughts?

Collex said:

The two player game ("joust") and the 3-4 player game ("melee") are very different beasts. The titles aren't really needlessly complex... but you're right that a 2player game is probably best to learn the rules and flow of the base game. The game is a lot of fun with the titles - and far more Game-of-Thrones-y. You never know when everyone will turn on you, and you have to carefully pick your titles to redirect titles, pick your ally (whomever "supports" you) for the round, etc. You have to plan not only for the cards in play and in each deck, but for the players.

Stark vs Intrigue. Stark is all about character control, and excellent with military challenges. Early on, most newcomers to the game find start to be the most powerful because they see the game as revolving around characters and military challenges. You've correctly identified one of their main weaknesses; intrigue challenges. With few ways to block them, their hand is typically depleted and they have trouble recovering from a "Reset" (valar morghulis or wildfire assault). In the core-set decks, there aren't too many ways around it except putting heavy pressure on players who have intrigue characters to limit their character-presence on the board. Think of a military challenge as not only stripping them of a card, but of the gold they paid for it and you might not feel quite as bad losing an intrigue challenge... until you're cardless and someone valar's you.

Edit: Oh wait, valar is in the stark deck in the core set. Forgot that. Makes things much easier to handle!