As my wife and I have both fallen deeply for this game over the past month, we have now begun to want to start expanding our collection in order to have more variety as we play (Most often, her and I joust against one another. I play melee with a group of guys from work, but she wants to feel more comfortable with the game in general before getting into any type of group play.).

Yesterday we ordered Kings of the Sea (I myself really like the Greyjoy culture in the books, and have played a couple of varieties of Greyjoy decks in our groups melee games, and I really like the way they play.) and Lords of Winter (My wife is a Stark fan, as the first book is all she has read, and she feels most comfortable playing with characters she knows). However, Lords of Winter was sold out, so she elected to give the Princes of the Sun expansion a whirl instead, again, just to add variety into the houses/styles we can play.

Now, I've read much on these forums about these two houses, and how lethal they can be. Will these two decks, from the expansions only, be overwhelming for the core set decks? Or will they be competitive with the core sets as well as each other? I know that sooner or later, an additional core set will be a must have, but I'm just wanting to know if you kind folks out there feel there are any other chapter packs or what have you that we should add in order to make things more immediately even across all the houses?

With one just the cards in the Core Set to choose from, yes a deck built from the best parts of the Mart and GJ expansions will more than likely cream anything you've got already.

However, that lethality only comes from building the GJ & Mart decks with two (or three) copies of certain cards. Just use one of the three provided packs (providing you got the 3x copy versions of the deluxe expansions) as is, and it should be roughly the same strength, although there's no way to properly balance every House against every other one.