Time to get out the quill and ink!

I'm hoping that many of you long-time or well-versed AGOT players can assist a few of us on TC in creating a nice resource for the AGOT LCG. This game is just completely top-notch, and as such we're creating a "Getting Started" page for it. This page helps new players break through the "I'm new and overwhelmed" wall by allowing them to understand the background of the game, what they can expect from it, how it operates, and the best thing to buy to get started. Our AGOT page will be in the same format as our other Getting Started pages, like the one for Monsterpocalypse or Burning Wheel. (Do please forgive the blurry text on the current Getting Started Pages. It'll be web text when we get the time!)

From what I've gathered via Wikipedia, the game started in 2003 as a CCG following the traditional booster pack format. In 2007, it switched to an LCG with a fixed pack distribution of 40 cards. It has since switched to a fixed pack distribution of 60 cards (3 copies of twenty cards). It looks like that switch occurred in 2010.

Is there any crucial historical information that new players need to know about the game? I plan on doing a basic timeline with bits of important history necessary to get new players truly caught up.

Thanks in advance for all of the help! Now it's time to decide whether or not I should have 3x Newly Made Lord in my deck...

What's TC?

Here are a few key points I can remember. I don't know the actual dates, but these are at least close to chronological order.

Expect some of this to be biased, and/or meta based.

-Game goes from 40 to 60 card minimum. (IIRC due to Stark Murder's dominance at the time)

-Wheels within Wheels + Rioting and much whining.

-Greyjoy comes out.

-Valar Morghulis is printed.

-Targaryen comes out.

-The first (and probably still the best) dragon is printed. Promo Rhaegal.

-Targ is amazing. Burn is reaaally good.

-Crone + Drogon combo, and much whining.

-Alliance house cards come out, allowing you to play 2 houses with a goal of 20 power instead of 15.

-Game gets the 3 card draw cap. (Response to the Promo King's Landing card, which would let you draw a card after a location was played)

-All plots are limited to 1 per deck. (Probably because of everyone at the time running Summons x2, Building Orders x2 in every deck)

-The smoke break at Gencon and the controversy behind it (Rings touched on this in another thread)

-Lannister as a house, somewhere around this point (after the first sets rotated) was considered to be pretty weak, which was strange, because they had always been a top house prior to this.

-Cannot be killed cards, and much whining.

-Baratheon gets Swayed by the Light, a 4 cost condition attachment that could steal any character you could attach it to. This was the most frightening thing in the game at this point, I think...

-Martell comes out.

-Gossiping bard + Ygritte/that Warship/whatever and much whining

-Others plots are printed. Winter has come, a cannot be saved reset with claim (that required others plots in the used pile) replaces Valar in many builds.

-Wolf Stalwart comes out, and is amazing. Stark is sitting pretty at this point.

-Kingdom plots are introduced, which were all great defensive or gold generating plots, but they restricted themselves (usually you could only have two)

-Around this time, the game was considered to be at it's best by many. Every house had competitive builds, and was usually represented at tournaments.

-Trading with the Pentoshi, a plot with 8 freaking gold comes out and is played incessantly.

-Nate French replaces Eric Lang as the lead designer.

-Game goes LCG

-All CCG cards are banned ahead of schedule to make way for the LCG. :
This was serious sour grapes for myself and a lot of other CCG players, and many, (including our own 15 or so person playgroup) just disbanded.

((2-3 year gap. I was not playing during this time.))

-Packs start coming out with the 3x format. (This is where a lot of us started back up)

-Damon Stone replaces Nate French(?) as the lead designer

-Maester Agenda comes out, and much whining.

-All house expansions have come out at this point.

-Low cost nobles + GG, and much whining.

Wow, thanks, interesting read for us newbies. Looks like the whining has been pretty much constant - nothing has changed on that front. BTW, GG is really insane

Rave said:

I believe the game started with a 40 card minimum instead of 50.

The king's landing promo card allowed you to draw a card when a location was played, not knelt.

Got it. Fixed.

And that's right! Adding GG hate to the timeline

History in the making!

good rundown.

Prince's Loyalist.

Awesome, this is great info to have. I'll do my best to make it concise and presentable to all of us who don't know the history!

If anyone else has anything to add, I'll be checking back here as I update the page. Cheers, guys!

Most of these things I can look up since they are just cards/environments, but can someone point me to the 'smoke break at GenCon' thing?

I don't know where the thread is, but the gist is that the #1 and #2 seed players attempted to take a draw, and went out for a smoke. Upon coming back, they found that they were disqualified from the tourney. There was an official reason, but I know more than a few players that think this was really sketchy.

Prince's Loyalist was mentioned, and that's a big one I forgot.
~~~~

When Winter edition came out (this goes in the same area as the Others plots) AGOT got the doomed mechanic.

Doomed cards were statistically broken cards with a raven in the lower left corner, all of the doomed events were 'deathbound' like Prince's Plans. They went directly to the dead pile anytime they left play.

The mechanic was: Anytime you have 5 doomed cards in your dead pile, you lose the game. The vast majority of the community hated this mechanic, but it did shift the metagame quite a bit. It was interesting in theory, but I think the problem was that doomed cards were almost certainly not created equal.

It was wild though. There was a doomed neutral risen from the sea that would bring a character back as cannot be killed. Oh the memories!

There was a promo The Doom that Came(?) that when attached to an opponent's character would increase their doomed count by 1. So you could technically lose the game by having 2 doomed cards in the dead pile and 3 of these attached to one of your characters.

There was even an agenda, the Frey agenda, that would let you run 4x of any card. So technically you could play 1 massing at twilight, get some cards, and lose. I'd seen it happen once.

Prince's Loyalist was one of the doomed cards. I'll link to it. It needs to be seen to be believed. There are no words.
http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=17920

Massing at Twilight as previously mentioned was the other big one that came out. It was a neutral doomed event that you would kneel your housecard to trigger, and reveal the top 3 cards of your deck and put them in your hand in the draw phase. Guess how many people played that one.

Ah, knowing about The Doom That Came makes the Doomed mechanic make a bit more sense. Before, I'd heard about it, but just thought, well duh, just don't have 5 Doomed cards in your deck and your safe. Still seems like an incredibly annoying mechanic.

That Frey agenda sounds kinda neat though. For a moment I was thinking it would be cool to see that reprinted, then immediately realized to use it you would have to effectively double up on the card pool to get a fourth copy of most cards.

The thing was - there were some really good characters and deathbound events that had the Doomed trait - so you could end up with cards sitting in your hand that you couldn't play depending on how high your doomed count was. plus the best draw engine the game ever saw was the Defenders of the North agenda coupled with the Deathbound event Massing at Twilight. *Shudder*

Rave - your time line looks spot on - I'd add a mention about josuitng and uber joust charcters between the Trait line and the Winter Line - that was really big for a ittle whiel. Lannisport Tourney Grounds - amazing draw card.

and yeah - the game really was at its best during Iron Throne block. I doubt it will ever be as deep and balanced again. Rsuh - control-combo: all had solid builds.

Stag Lord said:

Defenders was just silly. Sidenote: there was also a nuetral character (Coldhands?) that when he was in play added a doomed count, and almost everyone played him as well (he was a 4/4 with two icons and deadly and Cannot Be Killed). It was actually fairly easy to get doomed out, and it was certainly a horrible mechanic (very rock/paper/scissors - you played Doomed cards and beat non-doomed card decks, but a dedicated doom-out deck you lost to all the time, but that dedicated doom deck lost every time to someone not playing their own Doomed cards).

Bara Tourney Grounds was just as good, if not better actually. Especially with that Knight that came back from the dead if you won a power challenge by 4 or something silly. I think it actually got banned?

I would say I liked the game best at 5KE - the last two blocks were REALLY good and balanced, and I know I won't be popular saying this but a known rotation schedule kept the game fresh and seeming new every year (imagine losing 33% of your deck every year, not counting reprints like Paper Shield that were 'always' legal). But maybe that is because we didn't have much time to break the 5KE environment The houses were not as balanced (in my memory Stark and GJ were pretty sub-par), but the # of playable decks was moreso IMHO (Luke's Targ sort of came out of nowhere to win over my Martell that no one was playing either).

I agree the main events were the switch from 40 to 60, the 'Rings FAQ' changing the plot deck to '1 of' from '2 of' (yes, I was just as annoying then, and harped on this weekly enough that the FAQ was named after me...pretty sad really), and the 10/10 FAQ (right?) that put the draw cap on (?), and the first announcement of rotation which lost us a lot of players. There were other FAQ's, but none quite so huge (although the one that changed it so Cannot Be Killed cannot be chosen for claim was big and much needed). Oh, and the introduction of agendas, which I am still not sure of. And of course the awesome change to LCG format. It could have been done better (~what, FFG misteps on customer relations? Never!), but it was the best thing to happen to the game.

Waymer Royce.

Yeha - the Baratheon Grounds were decent - Lanni ones were better though. I ran them both.

Rave, I recall "Trading With the Pentoshi" coming Valyrian edition. The Kingdom plot everyone ran (except me because no one would trade theirs away) was "The Gathering Storm" (5/6/2 - when revealed, your opponent can select and reveal a different plot instead). It was so ubiquitous that they reprinted it in the Iron Throne starter decks - which is how I finally got mine.

About the "doomed" mechanic -- I dunno, I enjoyed the idea, but the implementation wasn't great. Might have instead made the effect more granualar -- i.e. that it became harder and harder to win as the doomed count stacked up. What can I say, I won the only regional I was able to participate in back in the CCG days with a DotN Lanny hyper-kneel/delayed rush deck. Of course, the only deck that gave me pause back then was the Martell DotN decks with "Broken Loyalist."

This history is absolutely fascinating. Doomed mechanic?! Sounds crazy. The game I picked up a few months ago has certainly been through a lot. Do most of you feel that it's heading in the right direction? Or is there a belief that the golden days are over?

i think there were 2 more highlights in the history of AGOT:

- the change of the card design - starting with Iron Throne Edition

- the introduction of Influence as a new cost - starting with Valyrian Edition

and talking about mechanics, there has already been Joust (similar liek now) and Melee (different) in the past.

and one of the best mechanics imo was "specialized" (characters with more than 1 icon do not count their STR during a Specialized challenge.) - if that going to be part of the game again i would love it!

oh, and also the introduction of Multiplayer Titles was mentioned yet. i think that happened with Iron Throne Edition. or was it 5Kings??? there were no official multiplayer rules before.

also interesting for those that have not played the game in the CCG days might be the Gold Dragon redemption system: there was one GD on each booster, 3 on a starter and 5 on a premium starter. you had to cut and send them to FFG, purchasing some promostuff like promocards, stone house cards, tshirts, powercounters, ...

for tournaments there were GD certificates as prizes. i remember it was 20, 40 and 80 for normal tourneys, and i think it was 250, 500, 1000 for nationals.

to give you and idea about the value: a stone house card was at 250, power counters at 125.

and then there were Wildlings. . . . .

Hmm... I guess there's a few things on the LCG-side that could be mentioned (correct me if I remember wrong):

- Dobbler's surprise GenCon win with GJ Winter in a Lanni-dominant early environment. Lanni toned down a bit via errata's.

- Wildling/X-Agenda dominance the following year. I guess one of the best anecdotes for this was Gualdo's semifinal in Stahleck, where he was facing a 6-agenda Stark, that was top decking Wolves of the North, Wildling Hordes and Rangers of the Watches using Val and Dolorous Edd. He was somehow able to win through all that with some clever use of Traitors... Oh. And some whining here again (oddly, still less than with GG...).

- Wildling dominance first watered down by one errata (no NW + Wildling), but that not being enough and Blood of the First Men getting banned in the end.

- Beric causing some fuss around this time also. Some interesting Voltron-stuff.

- Oh. And the whole restricted list coming out right about here.

- The TLS/Heir to the Iron Throne debacle, where Baratheon was neutered before they even got the cards by restricting TLS and errataing Heir. I think this left a bit of a sour taste in many Bara-players mouths...

- The Spring of Martell Summer, leading to errata/restriction-happyness.

- Maester-Bob/Joffrey causing a quick whack-the-mole errata to Maester's Path.

- And since then it's mostly been GG whining...

WWDrakey said:

~ You think?

botounami said:

Like anything, there are pros and cons.

Pros (of now): I think the popularity of the game is as high as it has ever been (for sure in the States since the first couple of blocks, and overseas like never before). I think the house balance is as strong as it has been. I think the move to LCG was amazing, and the quality of the game is great.

Cons: OP is really lacking comparably...we used to have really cool theme tourneys ever 3-4 months it seemed, which was the way you go promos (don't worry, they were on Ebay if you missed one). The lead designer actually wrote Designer Journals (granted, they were sporatic at times). Gold Dragons was great - I know why they got rid of it (although Alderac still does it for L5R), but it was fun.

Truly, I think the game is great right now (the pros heavily outweigh the cons), as evidenced by some meta's being formed, and old ones coming back into the fold.

I only hope OP can get some headwinds - maybe 'Worlds' is a step in that direction, but a more local feel would be better IMHO. An example - the Wildling Deck which was a really powerful deck that the tourney organizer got to play against the players. If you won the local tourney, you got to play vs. the Wildling Deck, and if you won vs. it, you got to keep the deck. It took Seattle a month+ to beat it. There was a Varys and his spiders deck as well, and a fun Tyrell themed tourney.

(BTW I still have a 2,500 and a 1,000 gold dragon certificate, along with one of the very first ones that were made out of cloth they they had for the first 1/2 year or so).

Boy I feel old.

Rave said:

What was the "official" stance?

botounami said:

I think the game is different. But I'm also happy with the way it has evolved.

I remember the game being a lot more brutal in the past. Like, it was odd for most decks to not be running paper shield or some version of event cancel.

There were also a LOT of really good neutral cards (like King's Hall, a neutral seat of power O_o), and because it was a CCG it was murder trying to get some of these.

Another thing I noticed now... nobody plays Westeros Bleeds. That was a really popular card back in the day. Probably because influence is harder to get overall.