My wife and I have been playing with the core set for about a year now, and she has yet to win a game.

Ive read the rules and faq but it doesnt say much, i just have a few questions to know if were playing this right.

How many cards can you have in play at a time?

If a card lets you put gold on them to use as +STR, does that gold get taken away at the taxation phase?

Is there a max amount of cards you can have in your hand at a time?

Also:

Say if I kill all of my opponents characters in the military phase, I can then proceed to the intrigue phase and its automatically unopposed so I win intrigue AND gain a power? Then I can proceed to the power challenge, win it unopposed, take one power from my opponent, then claim another power for being unopposed?

There is no maximum number of cards you can have in play. Nor is there a max number of cards in hand you can have.

The only gold that goes away during the Taxation phase is the gold in your gold pool. So gold on characters or locations isn't affected by the Taxation phase.

You are correct in that if your opponent can not defend the challenge (because they have no characters or they choose not to, or their characters' str is 0, etc etc) then you get an extra power when you win that challenge since it was unopposed. Also, just to make sure, you can do the challenges in any order you want. You don't have to do military first and then intrigue and then power. You could do power and then military and then intrigue if you wanted. Some houses will do challenges in a completely different order than another house.

Thank you for the quick response!

The games always seem to go like this: ill end up defeating her characters early on, so a few rounds in ill have about 8 characters on the table, while she will only have 1-2 and ill proceed to win every challenge and slowly get 15 power while she doesnt even gain 1. I just feel like were doing something wrong.

Were currently playing right now, I may throw a few more questions out there as they arise, you've been very helpful thus far and im hoping I can get all this down pat so i can eventually compete in a tournament.

As far as my next question goes, if my opponent puts an attachment card on one of my characters (this one gives -4 STR while participating in challenges) when does this card get removed, if ever?

darkbored said:

Some of the un-evenness you are experiencing may simply be the Houses you are playing (some are better at getting out a bunch of characters quickly than others), the plots, resources, and cards you are drawing (so she never seems to have money and characters at the same time), or the difference between how aggressively you play.

If you want to get a feel for whether it is something in the Houses/cards you've chosen vs. something in the your play styles, after a game where you always seem to have characters and she doesn't, switch decks and play again.

If you'd like to have a change in pace, I recommend getting the Kings of the Sea and/or the Princes of the Sun deluxe expansions. This way you have house Greyjoy or Martell as optional houses to play as. They are quite different from the core set houses so maybe that will help your wife find a house to beat you with!