I agree with Kingsguard. These are established themes in the game that won't throw off the balance of the game, like adding a 7th House. There are Agenda's present in the game that support these traits and that makes sense. I would like to see the Nights Watch Agenda's have an errata that says the cards are considered to have PRINTED ICONS and all the benefits that entails (eligible to be reduced by Streets, Etc). Not being able to reduce them is BS and takes them out of contention for being competitive as it stands right now.

I don't think we'll see one that buffs the established neutral themes. The deluxe expansions are supposed to be standalone (well, plus a core set). It probably wouldn't be Night's Watch, for example, because you would need the agendas from the chapter packs unless they completely overhaul the iconless theme NW have.

But do they really need to stay stand-alone? Obviously that's been a key part of Deluxe Expansion design up till now, but does it have to stay that way? There's six expansions now that all can be used with nothing other than the Core Set, I don't see any reason they have to stick with that forever, particularly if it could hamper future design decisions. FFG has all kinds of notifications on its products ("Not a standalone product. Yadda yadda.") they could easily express that a new expansion is not recommended for absolutely new players.

Also, who's to say they couldn't do a neutral box that doesn't work with just the Core Set? A neutral box pretty much by definition is going to be augmenting the existing Houses. How about Night's Watch or Kingsguard characters that play well with their established mechanics but can also be splashed into other Houses.

I'm pretty sure they need to be standalone (barring Core Set). Requiring a player to buy 3 chapter packs just to use the expansion they bought is, well, stupid. They'll lose casual players left and right. I don't know if you ever peruse boardgamegeek.com buta number of reviews about the game go crazy about how you have to buy other stuff to have the full deck making experience and that the core set play is not compelling enough by itself, but because of that they refuse to buy anything more because it is a money sink... and all sorts of other bs arguments. An expansion like this would cause the internets to explode in nerd rage.

If there are anymore I'm sure that an NW box will either include new agendas, reprinted agendas, or entirely different way for NW to come together.

I wouldn't mind some type of an "in-between" chapter pack and deluxe expansion size released. It would not be like a chapter pack, and it would not be of the same size or degree as a deluxe expansion. Maybe 32 new cards to reinforce a particular theme or house. This being released more frequently than a deluxe expansion, but also less frequently than a chapter pack.

Chapter packs are a mixture of different houses, and don't necessarily support the same theme(Clansman, Sand Snakes, Brotherhood are examples where CP's contained unrelated themes).

I know, it's probably not cost efficient to start something new like this, but I think it would be relatively exciting to get something more frequently than a deluxe expansion but isn't always stale like some chapter packs can be because they don't support some of your favorite houses all that much.

Penfold said:

I guess that doesn't seem like a very compelling strike against the idea though. I mean, if FFG did release a Deluxe Expansion that expected that you owned at least a few chapter packs, who does it alienate? I don't think any of us would mind too much. It pisses off some of the BGG crowd I guess, but there's already dozens of chapter packs they don't want to buy if they want the AGOT experience to come in as few increments as possible. I have a hard time believing that the segment of this game's player-base that refuses to indulge in anything beyond the Core Set is large enough to cause much fuss, or would even care too much what FFG releases.

And then there's new players, who maybe aren't going to know how to progress with their purchases. Again, it doesn't seem difficult to make it clear that this hypothetical Neutral Expansion is not the recommended course for those starting out.

It just seems like now that there are Deluxe Expansions for every House, whatever box FFG does next, it's going to be quite hard to produce anything that works with just itself and a single Core Set. If they're just starting over with the Houses, do they have to come up with a whole new set of cards with which to build a self-sufficient Greyjoy or Martell deck that doesn't rely on Princes of the Sun or Kings of the Sea?

alpha5099 said:

Any primarily neutral theme would work by itself if its a new theme and not an expansion on a pre existing one, they could do a whole box dedicated to Fools, Bastards and Storytellers and as long as it was mostly neutrals it would work with the core set

i just have to chime in with amusement about how a few months ago there were a bunch of complaints about too many neutral themes e.g. wildlings and maesters. now there is discussion about which neutral themes people want in a deluxe box. i guess that is the fickle nature of us gamers, myself included.

I was also thinking, why can't it be like a 6 house expansion? 60 cards x 3 for a total of 180 cards. Each House would get 10 (3x copies) new cards. They could be Characters, Attachments, Locations, or Events. It would also have 10 cards that were 3x and were only plots or Agendas that weren't house exclusive, but played to the theme of the cards in the box. And the box would be themed to a trait that either reinforces an existing trait synergy within each house, or is shared by all.

A basic example is Lords and Ladies . Every house has at least one of each. Call the set, High Born of Westeros and the Far East. The box set would try to focus on these traits within each house making them stronger for each house.

The 10 other cards, (in this example) could help make Lords and Ladies be buffed while they are being used. Like an Agenda card called, "Scheming Vassals" and it says something like, " Response: All kneeling characters under your control are considered to be participating in the challenge that your Lord or Lady is participating in (Limit Once per Challenge Type per Phase). If you control no Lords or Ladies, your overall strength in challenges is reduced by 1 for each Lord or Lady your opponent has participating in a challenge."

Plots would be similar to Power of Blood or something, where they buff the traits and maybe Noble crests too.

This is just an example. It could be done with anything ( Knights , Maesters , Heralds , Bannermen , etc).

I just had a thought along the lines of AceManUSC. If we're going for a reinforcement of existing themes that's spread out among all the great houses, why not do a Deluxe expanding on a previous cycle's theme like seasons or shadows?

The seasons could potentially even include reprints of key cards like carrion birds, white and black ravens, and samwell. Those go into quite a few decks and I'm sure most players wouldn't mind having extras of those. And, new players could use that deluxe with the core set and not need to buy extra chapter packs making everyone happy (though I guess now the summer/winter agendas would need to be reprinted too). If the casual player decides he likes seasons, there's a whole cycle to point him to for future purchases. What could a shadows box include other than the 1 agenda?

>reprint carrion birds
>Alot of people already have 18 copies

Ok

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I don't suppose it has occurred to you that we are only a fraction of the player base and are vastly outnumbered by the casual players?

Penfold said:

Mathias Fricot said:

I can say with complete confidence that GJ and Martell, with only ~75% of everyone else's cards, are on par with everyone else.

It would amuse me though to see a "troll" expansion filled with terrible GJ and Martell cards so they can have as many bad cards as everyone.

playgroundpsychotic said:

This is funny. Waste of money, but funny. Sad that it is also pretty true. Although, I will say that the Driftwood Crown is a crappy GJ crown. I would rather have the old GJ Crown of Pyke.

a New Greyjoy Expansion building 2 exciting deck themes to AGOT, the Saltwife deck and the Loyal House Codd deck

Mathias Fricot said:

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AceManUSC said:

That's why it would need 2-3 really good cards for each house so everyone would buy it. It would give you that extra bit of self-loathing to complete the joke.

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I don't see how another Greyjoy or Martell box would skirt the issue of disrupting the current purchasing model of the Deluxe Expansions. Obviously my idea that you could do a Deluxe Expansion that expects some Chapter Packs is not so popular, but how would it work with these Houses? Are they expansions that expect you to own a Core Set and Princes of the Sun/Kings of the Sea? Or does FFG have to design another expansion that works with just the Core Set?

If you do that first route, you have a Deluxe Expansion that requires something more than the Core Set, which seems to be a strike against it. Even if the expectation of owning the previous DE for the House isn't a serious investment, it still presents an extra tier of content to the Deluxe Expansion concept. Right now, you can buy any DE you please once you've gotten your first Core Set, and that won't be true anymore if this is how they do another GJ or Martell expansion (or if they do something like what I was spit-balling for a Neutral expansion).

So there's the other option, do new GJ and Martell expansions that aren't dependent on Princes of the Sun or Kings of the Sea. In some ways this might be the better route, as it sidesteps this whole issue of tiered content, but it seems like it would be a nightmare to design. A whole new set of cards with which to build decks for these houses, decks that assume none of the core staples of both houses that come from their expansions. And then you add potentially extra confusion to a new player. Right now, someone gets the Core Set, and they want to expand into Stark, bam, there's one purchase. But if there are two Greyjoy boxes, that makes it more complicated for them. Would they know which one to purchase? Hell, this problem exists regardless of if extra expansions for GJ or Martell are stand-alone or not.

If a primary goal of FFG in designing their expansions is make things relatively low-impact on the new player (and I think it's clear that this does play a role), then I think another GJ or Martell box would just make things more confusing. The only reason to do something like this is to try and achieve parity for the absolute number of cards that each House has, which is silly and arbitrary; neither House is in a bad position right now, they don't need a Deluxe Expansion.

I think you may have it it right on the head, none of the Houses need a deluxe expansion. Is it possible we are just assuming there will be one and they have no plans to create one?

I could see them just foregoing the entire thing and instead just keep churning out Chapter Packs.

Penfold said:

Warhammer and CoC have only two expansions a piece. Both are faction based games yet don't have expansions devoted to each faction like GoT does. In that sense, no new expansions are needed.

Warhammer's second expansion did introduce an entirely new card type (Legend) though. Perhaps there might be room in GoT for an entirely new type of card and that could be used as a basis for an expansion.

playgroundpsychotic said:

I'm interested in this. So Legends are a whole separate card type, like Character, Location, Attachments, and Events in AGOT? (No idea what Warhammer's types are.) Hmm, that might be cool, though I wonder how that would work in practice.

And I agree that there isn't really any need for any more Deluxe Expansions. Perhaps not having any major products on the horizon might make some people less enthusiastic for the game though, so that might be the value right there.