Now, of course I am not saying as a 'casual lets have fun' sort of situation, Im coming more from a 'I'd like to play at Gen Con/Worlds'. There is now…
Core Set
6 Deluxe House Sets(agreed you only need 1 for a certain house you want to play)
8 Chapters with 6 sets a piece….
So Im guessing you need a good deal of these cards, lets say for arguments sake, you only need half of the Chapter Packs.

Wouldn't that mean that a new player needs to spend some where near 450$ to play in a sub serious way?

Will there be a reset of this game at any point?

I don't think there is any reset in a near future (though FFG didn't comment on this forever). Maybe some form of rotation, but who knows.

Before spending money on buying everything, you can try checking out OCTGN and playing different decks there, looking at decklists and figuring out what you like. Maybe you'll find out that you don't really need all the cards to make a deck that you will play for a long time and that could be a partial solution.

The other part of solution is finding a play group and borrowing some cards from time to time. And if after all that you will still think that you need all cards, but can't afford them, you can try splitting the cost with your friends.

PS. Large sets of cards are sold on ebay from time to time for about half-price and could be about 200-300 bucks.

If you are netdecking for the best decks, you only need to be selective about the decks you buy. Assuming 60 card deck and 3X copies of things (not always true), that's 20 possible unique packs you'd have to get (with, at most, two of these 'oacks' being deluxe expansions), which leaves us with 18x15 bucks for the chapter packs, or 270 + core + house expansion pack (the latter two you were probably buying anyhow).

If you compare this to costs of other TCGs (which AGOT is not, mind you), this price is cheap (300 or so gets you three booster boxes of Magic, for instance… hardly enough to buy to be able to play in a standard tournament, unless you start trading, looking for singles, or sharing card pools, which the initial responder suggests).

So no. It is not more or less impossible to get into this game than other TCGs.

If you are interested in only a couple of houses, I think you can buy house packs (all cards of a single house affiliation from a full block) from the Team Covenant guys for cheap.

But really, if you're planning to play competitively, the cards are still only a small part of the overall expense of traveling to tournaments, etc.

It depends on how quickly you want to be competitive. Consider that you could simply go to tournaments and play with newer cards and lose and see what you're missing. Then you could turn around and buy the chapter packs you feel would benefit you. Rinse and repeat. This will be a slow process and will very much be dictated by the strength of your meta and local tournaments, but it is also the most organic. You may net deck a deck and then find out it doesn't fit your playstyle. You may net deck a deck and win tournaments only to be slammed at GenCon because you missed out on subtelties of the game that your opponents simply didn't understand or that your deck was able to cover up.

If you want to have fun with the game, I'd try an organic approach. You are correct in your assessment of the price, though. If you were to simply try to netdeck a great deck and get all the required cards, at MSRP, you would pay around that $450 - $500 mark. You could easily reduce that if you were to proactively look for good deals and get cards from friends or check out alternatives to buying full chapter packs, but you would still be spending a decent amount. On the bright side, there is no rotation currently implemented (and no plans from FFG for one) so everything you buy is theoretically valuable forever.

mdc273 said:

Honestly, it really depends on the deck you are netdecking too. I just did an analysis for one of my decks and found that if I wanted to buy all the cards all over again for it, that I could find 1x of each box for a little under $300 total. That is of course if you find them at around 20% - 30% cheaper from some of the online sources that are available.

EDIT

here is another question I have.

I play Netrunner, Lord of the Rings, and the new Star Wars. I own some of this game, and used to play the old style.

I also used to play Star Wars Minis, and that game I disliked strongly even tho I loved Star Wars.
Reasoning? In fun games you could play cool figures like Mace Windu, Darth Vader, ete…
However most of the tourny lists were things like 2 IG86droids on Speeders, and a bunch of other dudes you've never heard of.

SO my question is, lets say I love Stannis, can I make a deck thats competitive around him, or is the game winning based on
no name characters that have no real part in the show?

khadorstrong said:

Unique Characters are for the most part more powerful than non uniques, and there are certain characters that you build decks around (Cersei Pbtt decks etc) You'll probably see the shows main characters in most decks at some point, though thats not to say weenies/no name characters cant win games for you also.

Some even have multiple versions of themselves, the newer Stannis is good, though you still might want to use the core version for some decks

Also just because it might be expensive to get all the cards you want i dont think this qualifies as making the game "Impossible to get into", Im unemployed and have managed over time to eventually get every card except the Stark expansion and clash of arms set, yes i had to make some tough choices and cut out other luxuries etc but it wasnt impossible for me to get into the game. I then loaned my cards out to others until they also had the means/money to get ahold of the cards they wanted themselves, and a friend just bought an near complete collection (including clash of arms) for a price im pretty jealous off.

How much more money would one have to shell out if you wanted to say get into Magic the Gathering or other popular ccg's? Probably a hell of a lot more, and you'd eventually end up having worthless cards once they go out of rotation too? CCG's are treadmills, you need to keep on them to get anywhere, least Lcg's arnt.

I would suggest making the commitment to buy everything, or not buying anything. You could think up a deck, or netdeck, and just buy select expansions and chapter pakcs. But, the game changes relatively quickly, and no sooner than you get your deck built, you will be wanting to add some other card, and then another, etc.

Plus, who wants to play one deck indefinitely. If you get everythying, you can craft a bunch of decks and get the full experience. In my opinion, one needs to build and play from multiple houses to be a good competitive player.

As Totalgit mentioned, unique characters (named characters from the book) tend to be stronger. If you like Stannis, Robb Stark, Tyrion, etc. then you're likely to be able to build a deck in which those characters perform very well.

Three caveats. First, this is true for some houses more than others. Baratheon is great in that you can build a deck with most of your favorite characters that is competitive. Stark is pretty good too, though certain less prominent characters (Meera, in particular, but also Shaggydog, Reek, etc), are stronger cards than what one would normally consider the important characters (Arya, Eddard, etc.). Lannister is similar to Stark in this respect, whereas Greyjoy, Martell and Targaryen all tend to be quite a bit different. You won't see many competitive decks built around a single character from the books, with perhaps the exception of The Red Viper, which is one of the best characters in the game (from any house).

The second caveat is that if you like Khal Drogo or Jon Snow, then chances are you like the dothraki or the Night's Watch themes. In general, thematic decks in this game are not competitive. So while Khal Drogo himself is a great card (and there are several different versions all worth experimenting with), a deck focused on dothraki more generally falls into the "fun but not realy competitive" category. Same is true for other houses…decks built around House Tully/Riverrun, House Dayne/Starfall, and even "Kingsguard" tend to be as uncompetitive as they are thematic. There are a few traits, such as Clansmen and Dragons, that show some promise and in certain cases may be very competitive. But as a general rule, the more cohesively thematic the deck is, the less competitive it is.

Lastly, while you'll see a decent number of named (unique) characters in play, the non-unique characters (cards like IG86droids) still typically make up about half to 3/4 of character cards you play, or roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of the deck itself. Of course, this depends on the house or build of deck that you are playing. But in this game characters are constantly dying, and typically you need a good number of generic characters to fall on their swords throughout the game to keep your named characters alive. Each house has at least one non-unique card that seems overly powerful though, and at times it can be annoying if you're getting beat down by the generically named Wintertime Marauders or The Conclave. But overall, unique characters tend to be more powerful.

Twn2dn said:

Hmm… Around a year ago I would have completely agreed with this statement, but in the current enviroment I'd like to contest this portion a small bit.

While it is true that you will see a lot of unique characters in competitive decks, they are generally in a 'rainbow' type of style, with 1 copy of each of the Houses most powerful uniques. Due to the recent ramping up of terminal removal (especially Targaryen Burn) and ability cancel (together with protective attachments being a bit of a liability) it is very rare to see any decks built specifically around one or a few unique characters (and thus running several copies of them and other protection) be able to consistently achieve good results in Tournaments.

There are of course exceptions, but they definately are NOT found in Baratheon or Stark - I'd look more at GJ, Martell or Targaryen, since they sport enough cancel/saves/recursion to offset the environment. The only Baratheon decks I've seen get good results in Tournaments for a while now have been aggressive builds running a rainbow of the most powerful characters (usually together with Wildlings or Knights), since Baratheon really doesn't have the tools to protect their key characters in the current environment. Further, I'd say that Stark is perhaps the most obvious example of running a rainbow of strong uniques, instead of trying to build around a single one.

So, in effect, you will be able to play competitively using the important characters of the House, but be prepared for a more 'family' centric view (instead of expecting a single character to carry the day).

At $450 the buyin on this game is roughly half the buyin on say magic for type 2, and your buyin nets you far more cards (the buyin for type 2 will only net you a single deck most often) and the buyin will last longer as the meta changes are far less frequent than type 2 cycles. Of course, you could also consider AGoT buyin to older sets, where a $450 buyin doesn't even get you a single card. . .

i've been into this game for 2 years now. almost caought up. just play casually with friends. now thinking about competitive play. i enjoy the game and playing with what i have.

sports have different pools for different skill levels and ages. would be good to have different pools A/B for experienced /newer players?

WWDrakey said:

Could you clarify this a bit? When you say 'rainbow,' I automatically think of L5R's recurring "Superfriends" theme, which splashes powerful cards from various clans into a deck, disregarding the 2-point gold cost penalty to playing out-of-clan (similar to AGoT). Is this what you mean (i.e. running the Neutral Faction House card and random awesome dudes from across the "House rainbow"), or are you simply referring to the concept of playing each of a single House's power players? The latter seems appropriate to me. Even from a thematic standpoint, a deck that revolves around a single character generally should not be competitive, since characters tend to die frequently and the overall struggle between the Houses ought to extend beyond a specific persona. By the same token, though, I would be surprised if Neutral Faction decks are at all popular at the competitive level, as fun as the idea sounds.

MarthWMaster said:

Sorry, I think my use of the term lead you astray. Yes, I'm in fact referring to running all of the powerful in-house uniques. Due to the gold penalty being quite severe in AGoT it is quite rare to see cards run OOH in competitive decks… and usually those are either some kind of location/attachment -based draw engines or specific cards that will allow you to shore up a House weakness (like location control via Newly Made Lord). Oh, and Neutral Faction is pretty rare, if not non-existant, competitively.

Most Houses tend to have a group of ~3-5 extremely powerful in-house unique characters that will make 90-95% of decks for that House, followed by a larger pool of other good uniques that you will often encounter. For some Houses the 'auto-include' uniques are iconic characters from the series, while for others they can be less important ones. The further the cardpool expands, the more viable it appears to be getting to just run 1x of each powerful unique in your House as a competitive deck (this being what I was mainly thinking about with the term 'rainbow').

Personally, I'm not sure if the direction the game has been taking lately, of being unable to rely on single key uniques as center-points for a deck is completely unproblematic. Many of the unique characters printed into the game tend to have abilities that would only be worthwhile, if you could really build your deck around it… making them close enough to dead cardboard in the current environment. Additionally, the game has a built-in mechanic of protecting such uniques (duplicates), that has been really getting weak lately, and I'm not a big fan of built-in mechanics becoming endangered species in card games. But like I said, that's probably just personal preference talking.