Hi all. I finally decided to get into AGoT LCG after having played the CoC game for a long time. This game looks to have made the transition better and have some more stable design behind it that its LCG counterpart. I've become sadly disenchanted with CoC over the last 6 months or so.

And, I must confess, what finally got me to look into George R.R. Martin's works (despite hearing how good the books and CCG are for years) was the miniatures put out by Dark Sword and sculpted by Tom Meier... Absolutely gorgeous!

Anyway, I have a couple of questions and apologize if they're highly redundant here on the forums. I did about an hour of searching and couldn't come up with anything conclusive...

1) Which chapter packs are actually white bordered? For the sake of esthetics and simplicity I'll only be buying the core set and any other white bordered releases.

2) I know that following the above model will create some limitations on card pool and deck building... However, I'll mostly be playing for fun with my wife and a small group of friends. Will that work out ok? Will it still be fun? Or are there too many cards in the previous black-bordered packs that I'll sorely miss. Are most of the themes and main personalities covered in just white-bordered releases?

Thanks very much for any and all help, greatly appreciated!

Oh, and if anyone is looking for an incredibly comprehensive Call of Cthulhu collection to buy or trade for AGoT cards... let me know. :-P

RJM said:

The A Time of Ravens chapter packs have white-bordered cards, the Clash of Arms chapter packs have black borders. I personally only buy white bordered cards because of the aesthetics - having black bordered cards mixed in just looks goofy.

I don't think my play experiences have suffered as a result, especially now that a couple chapter packs have come out in white borders.

The main personalities and themes are covered in the Core set, adding the Chapter packs adds versatility and variety..

Thanks very much!

As a follow up question... is it benficial to have multiple core sets? I'm not as familiar with AGoT's rules as I was with CoC's, but I definitely know having multiple CoC core sets is the way to go for playsets. For competitive decks, will I want 3x unique characters some of the time?

Best regards.

core sets are the same in GoT and CoC. There are 1x in the deck of each card (when there is more then one x of say a location, it is numbered differently)

Lars said:

Thanks Lars. Not exactly what I meant, however. I know there's 1 copy each. What I was asking if it was common in deck-building to say... have 2 or 3 copies of a unique character in a deck. I feel like I read somewhere there were lots of effects to pull specific characters, thus making the need of lots of multiples redundant in some cases.

Either way, its a moot point now, and I'm sure I'll learn the subtleties of this games deck-building quickly once I have my cards. I did go ahead and buy 3 core sets, and 3 of each chapter pack from the Time of Ravens expansion. I figure if I'm going in, I'm going in. :-)

Thanks again for the help guys. Look forward to knowing all the community over here.

ah, well that depends on who you ask.

RJM said:

I would say it this way:

1 copy of unique character if it fits in your theme but it is not important to have him always around

2 copies when you want to have the charater around in each game, it is imoprtant for your strategy but if you dont get him, the strategy does not break up

3 copies only for very very important character that you need for your strategy to work, without him there would be no strategy

and then you can have some seach plots, events etc to help you get what you want, but it is not a must

It's not just the characters, though, that you may want to have multiple copies of in your decks. There are plenty of event cards and locations that you will want to have more than one copy of -- Retreat (an event that returns a unique character just killed to your hand), the Sea locations (provide influence and can be discarded to reduce a character's marshalling cost by 2) and many others are worth running multiple copies in your decks. Even with the unique characters, you can use a "duplicate" to save that character from being killed or discarded, and in an environment that include Valar Morguhlis, that is useful.

Your play experience probably won't suffer too much without including the Clash of Arms chapter packs, but you will miss out on some nice cards. So far in the LCG format, the Ancient Enemies chapter pack is the only place to get the Military Battle, Intrigue Gambit and Power Struggle plot cards (and only one per house). The Rhaegar Targaryen card from Battle of the Ruby Ford is amazing, and the Rhaegar's Harp card helps with the Carrion Bird combo, and Targ's best attachment control card -- Dragon Thief -- is also in Ancient Enemies. If you find yourself brancing out from just playing with your close friends to other players, you may want to include these packs as thet increase your options.

JerusalemJones said:

While all of that may be true, they have black borders, and that's just unacceptable. Having one or two black bordered cards in your deck is like having one Cylon living within your fleet.. the Cylon may be helping, but you can stop staring at it, and you can't stop wondering if you should get rid of it just to make everything seem normal again.

heh. don't look at ym decks then. I run winter versions of some cards, black bordered cards and white bordered cards

jmccarthy said:

LOL. GREAT analogy!

Thanks for the tips!

And yeah, I really do like some of the first chapter pack expansions for the cards playability. Especially the Targ stuff from Battle of Ruby Ford. At the moment, I just can't quite bring myself to mix the black and white borders. Part of the appeal of jumping into the game at this point for me is the completely fresh and united look of having matching card faces. :-)

I know to some playgroups, the sudden switch to all LCG for Standard play has soured them. But to be honest, without it, I can say I probably would have kept putting off getting involved in this game indefinitely. The chance to break in evenwith the field at a relatively low cost ($200 got me 3 copies of core & every white-bordered CP available) was really what finally sold me. I wonder how many other new players have felt this way?

And If I'm not playing in sanctioned events, perhaps I'll make my own photoshopped or modified versions of the first run of CP's with white borders... since I sleeve all my decks anyway it shouldn't be too hard.

And when I'd asked the question about multiple unique cards above, I hadn't actually fully realized the elegance of the duplicate/save rules. Definitely a nice rule to add some extra thought into deck design with a game that revolves largely around unique personae.

RJM said:

But save with the dupes. 10 characters each by 3 copies in your deck is not going to work. I follow the rule I wrote above and it always worked for me.

To the borders. I found out I could not make a deck without the black boarder cards, knowing I have them there for use. I always used like 10 or more cards in my LCG deck with the black boarders and without it I could not even get to 60 cards.

Rozy said:

Oh, definitely. I wasn't saying I'd have 3 of every unique I want in my deck. Your guideline you posted above is pretty much exactly what my thoughts would be I think. I just wanted to comment how its a nice simple little in-built way of making using of multiple unique cards, other than simply letting them build up in your hand like in other card games. :-)

Rozy said:

Yeah... I really do understand where you're coming from. In the near future, if we really start getting into the game, I could easily see myself going out and buying a set of the first series of chapter packs and just sucking it up in regards to the whole mixed borders thing. I've played Magic and the old Decipher Star Wars CCG in the past and I guess the mixed white/black borders on those cards didn't bother me too much after a while.

Wow...the Star Wars CCG. Now there's a game I haven't heard anyone mention in ages...

That system had a healthy handful of problems but it was nonetheless a whole lot of fun to play

dienekes00 said:

Heck yeah. I still play it whenever I can manage. (Sans the Episode I cards, aka "classic" format!) For a game thats been "dead" since 2001 it still has a pretty good player base and a great player's committee keeping it going with tournaments, rules updates, and online expansion releases as well. You shall now be receiving a friend request, oh know-er of SW:CCG! :-)

Anyway...

dienekes00 said:

That's really funny that you mentioned SWCCG. I'm actually selling my old Star Wars cards on Ebay right now, partially to fund my AGOT collection. For a game that went out of print eight years ago, many of those cards still fetch a pretty decent price on Ebay.