House Goals?

By thunder.114, in A Game of Thrones: The Board Game

I've been playing this game with my friends for the past couple of months. I really like how the game captures the atmosphere of the books and puts you in the shoes of a Westerosi lord.

However, the one thing that has been bothering me is the fact that all houses are after the same thing. In the books some lords are trying to defend their Houses' territory, others are trying to dominate all of Westeros, and others still are working towards revenge against a specific House. I think it would be interesting to add this spirit into the game somehow.

I was considering adding a victory point system where players tally up points at the end of the tenth turn, or whenever anyone controls seven castles, to determine the winner. All Houses would write a secret goal, such as "destroy House Lannister", on an index card; all the index cards would be placed in one envelope. Then on turn five, Houses write a secondary goal, which may be completely opposite of the first, and places in another envelope. Rules for tallying points would be as followed:

  • 2 points for controlling your House's seat
  • 2 points for being on top of any influence track
  • 3 points for meeting the secondary House goal
  • 4 points for meeting the first House goal
  • 6 points for attaining seven castles

After tallying the person with the most victory points is declared winner.

Tell me if you think this would actually work or not. Also, if you have any ideas on how to simplify please reply. Thanks.

Would you also receive a victory point for each castle you control, or would they have no value unless you reached 7?

Also, you definately need a set list of available goals for people and I would not recommend eliminating a player as one of them. Perhaps pick two or three key areas around the map and your goal can be to make yourself or a specific house control one of them.

You might also be interested in looking at the Storm of Swords rules (one of the first edition expansions). Each house had a target area or two and could gain an extra victory point by controlling one of them. It also gave players various opportunities to spend power for victory points, which could be seen as an abstract representation of achieving your house's political goals. (Very abstract though, as far as game mechanics were concerned you were just spending power to gain claim over westeros).

I really like this idea. I agree with dypaca though, if you could set any goal your goals could be to win a battle and then you could potentially win the game very easily. With the objectives, you could each draw out the name of a house and try to destroy them secretly so you wouldn't know who has it in for you!

You could also set specific goals that match families from the book then a player could pick one of those known goals. At the end you could add PowerTokens, Troops, Supply, and Castles to the Victory Points as these would all tie into who the leading family is.