Hey all-

Two of my friends and I all went in on the starter set and absolutely love it. We play Targaryen, Stark, and Baratheon and have even cannibalized House Lannister to add to our own respective decks. We're all on fairly strict budgets, so we don't have the scratch to go buying lots of new cards, but we've agreed to pool our resources and buy three of the smaller expansion packs.

My question to all of you is which packs would you advise we go after, if we're only after those three houses?

Thanks!

I did a little more reading and realized that I'm using the wrong terminology. What I meant to ask about was chapter packs. I knew that the expansions were larger, house specific, and more expensive.

Sorry. Hope I haven't mutated from newbie to n00b.

One piece of information you should know is that by cannibalizing your Lannister deck into the other 3, you will be faced with a gold penalty of 2 extra gold when playing a Lannister card. When you play a card who' House affiliation (the shield with the sigil in the top right corner) that does not match your House card (the actual physical card with each House printed on it) then you must pay 2 extra gold to play it.

As far as good Chapter Packs to look into:

A Clash of Arms Cycles gives you all 6 House's, in my opinion, best individual Plot cards that help neutralize other specific Houses along with big House-centric armies and tightens all House's strengths.

A Time of Ravens Cycle gives you some versatility in incorporating the two Seasons, winter and summer, into your decks as themes.

King's Landing Cycle gives you the Shadows mechanic to work into your decks.

Defenders of the North Cycle gives you the Wildlings and Night's Watch themes to play with.

Brotherhood Without Banners Cycle gives you the Brotherhood theme along with additional cards that strengthen other themes.

Secrets of Oldtown Cycle gives you the Maesters as a theme to play with which lately have become popular due to their helpful support and primary firepower.

I would look into which of these Cycles interest you both the most and then try to pick up the Chapter Packs from that Cycle for the complete effect. However, remember that all the other Cycles also provide a few cards that boost the power of the other Cycles' provided themes.

Use agot.dbler.com/ this site to look up each Cycle and it's cards to see which ones you think would work towards both of your play styles.

I have three suggestions for you.

The three awesome chapter packs.

The issue with the chapter packs is that they are designed for all houses. Brotherhood tried something where each pack was skewed towards one House, but the interactions of the cards contained in the Brotherhood cycle are extremely co-dependant: for example, you simply couldn't build a working House Bolton deck without owning all 6 Brotherhood packs. So steer away from those.

In all honesty, you're best off just going for the chapter packs that are fairly equitable for all 6 houses. In this, there are three chapter packs which are considered to be the Gold Standard.

Ancient Enemies from the Clash of Arms cycle gives you the awesome Fury plots, which help to cement the alliances established in the books. Each plot is directed to the two houses which are most at odds with the Fury plot's owner. In addition, they grant you 5 gold and 7 initiative, which can make for some real game-changing turns.

Sacred Bonds, also from Clash of Arms, compliments the Fury plots by playing off their traits (Battle/Gambit/Struggle), as each House gains a powerful event card that allows you to both stand a character and trigger some effect, on the proviso that you have played your Fury in a previous turn.

The final chapter pack which is pretty much an auto-buy is Refugees of War. It gives each House 3 refugees: 0 cost 2 str double icon characters. They generally only last a turn, but they allow you to field a larger force most of the time. The utility of this chapter pack cannot be understated.

The only caveat I would add here is that these chapter packs may, in the not-too-distant future, get reprints (where they are upgraded from the 40-card model to the 60 card model). This would especially benefit the Sarced Bonds pack as there is only one copy of each To Be A ____ events, when really you could do with 3. If you're really looking to get the best deal as opposed to the best utility, might want to look elsewhere.

Another core set.

It probably costs no more than three chapter packs, and the utility of another core set is perhaps unparalleled in your early AGoT experience. It allows you start switching up your plots which makes the games a lot more varied, and you can start aiming at the 60-card minimum required for standard play. You also get saves on your key uniques and a good set of resource-locations to play about with. There's something in it for each House as well: Starks benefit from more Dire Wolves and Kennel Masters, Baratheon's get more of those annoying attachments and Targ's pretty much need all the Forever Burnings they can get.

Whatever works.

If you join agotcards.org and browse through the Cards page there, it has links to all the different Chapter packs and a rating for each card contained therein. That might give you some indication as to what packs are particularly useful for your specific Houses, but make sure to read the rules text carefully on each card as they might be highly dependant on some other combo of cards which will cost you a lot more to obtain.

Good luck!

I would say that the House Expansions aren't that much more expensive for what you will be getting. Remember every chapter pack will come with cards for Greyjoy and Martell which are useless to you until you pick up PotS and KotS, but if you were to buy an expansion you would get 50 cards that are either house specific or neutral plus plots.

i wouldm really recommend for you to try and save cash by picking your favorite houses expansion either queen of dragons, lords of winter or kings of the storm. it will give you more options than the amount of chapter packs you would get for the same price

so you can find the expansions for like $25 each so for $50 you will get 14 new plots and over a hundred cards (3 copies of each) the majority of those cards will be House specific and helping out with 2 themes for each house, along with a handful of neutrals.

as oppossed to getting 4 chapter packs where only half of the cards will be of the 3 houses you guys enjoy playing and most likely less than that when you consider neutrals

I agree with Jack.

If those are the only houses you're playing, it's worth it to just go ahead and invest in the three respective deluxe expansions. When you consider a deluxe expansion will run you around $25-30, depending on where you buy it and gives you 180 cards. Where as a chapter pack runs around $12-15 (the revised ones atleast, but you'll want those instead of the old ones), and only gives you 60 cards spread across a number of houses. The Deluxe expansions are the more solid investments and give you a lot more bang for your buck.

We started playing a few months back. I can't possibly recommend the deluxe expansions enough. Gave each of us two or three solid deck options to really get us started and understanding what games look like beyond the starter.