First off - hello! I'm Josh. Been lurking for a bit, and just got my first core set for christmas. I've been a card gamer for a while, mostly Decipher's Star Wars CCG. I've found answers to several of my newbie questions on here already - thanks for that. I'll hold the rest of those for now, as I'm currently reading through the topics returned by a Search for "noob" in the message title, and I'm sure I'll continue to find existing answers to the silliest of my questions.

I have just a couple general questions for now:

1) Defending a challenge, but losing by A LOT. It seems that if you can't (or don't want to) stop a challenge, but also don't want it to go through unopposed, defending with just 1 chump is the best way to go, regardless of the total STR of the attacker. Now, I know there's a card (or so) in the Core set that says "If you win by 4 or more STR…" you get extra goodies, but without any card effects, when defending a challenge, is losing by 1 really the same as losing by 12? That offends my mindset, which admittedly, is not yet tuned to this game.

Again, I've only got the Core set, and I assume there are a lot more cards that make winning by a lot more profitable. Please please tell me that's the case.

2) Is there a sort of spoiler-alert list for the seperate expansions & cycles? My wife is my opponent (and doing so well!), and she's still reading A Dance with Dragons. We want to get more cards, but I've seen a couple cards from the Queen of Dragons expansion, for example, that I don't want to spoil anything in the book for her. Are the early chapter packs safe? Seeing "Bones of a Child" in the Core set tripped me up a bit, as if I recall correctly, that's from Book 5.

Thanks a lot for any light you may be able to shed on these points. We are really enjoying this game, and looking forward to getting in deeper. I'm also really liking the community here!

Josh

jme said:

jme said:

Shift your mindset and it isn't as offensive. For example, since there is also no practical difference between winning by 1 STR and winning by 100 STR, why did the attacker bother to send across so much STR, knowing that their opponent had the option to "chump block"? Also, consider how many other challenge opportunities (including defense), not to mention Dominance, the attacker closed off by making such a pointless show of STR. When you really get to know the flow of the game, winning by 12 when you could have won by 1 usually ends up being more offensive to the sensibilities than losing by 12 when you could have lost by 1.

jme said:

jme said:

However, think about it and see if it's really that big a deal. For example, does simply knowing there is a card for a character named "Young Griff" before he is introduced in Book 5 really tell you anything about him and his story? Does playing with the plot card "Red Wedding" really prepare you for anything in you read in the books? Most people find that the possible spoilers from the game don't impact their enjoyment of the books.

Thanks very much for the reply, ktom. I eventually (forcing older brains in new directions, ugh) began to suspect that it was a question of my strategic thinking rather than something I was missing in the actual rules.

One problem we ran into was by turn 6, we both had so many characters out that neither of us could really get any kind of meaningful challenge through, which I think is what promted me to try to "go big". In perusing this forum, I've come to suspect that perhaps that's one thing the "resets" are for, ie Valar Morghulis, etc. Do games often get to a point of "stuck" and need that major shakeup? Also, I knew we would have a lot more "tricky" cards had we not had just 1 core set - baiting the opponent to defend and then reducing their STR so they lose, kneeling the opponent's characters, that sort of thing.

On a somewhat related note, how many turns does the average Joust game run? Is it common to not get through your entire plot deck? And of course I assume different deck builds will be very different in turns of game-length.

And yes, I suppose I'm not overly concerned about the spoilers. My wife's on the last book now, anyway - I think I can wait a few days to pick up more cards. I guess…

Again, thanks a lot!

Josh

I don`t think you need to worry overly about the spoilers, as I`m opting to read the series as I watch it on HBO and haven`t had much ruined for me yet, aside from a few here and there (including one big one in a certain King trait, unfortuantely). So far, I`ve avoided the Martell cards, simply because they haven`t even been introduced yet, except in passing, but knowing the names of characters before meeting them in the series doesn`t really tell me anything about them. Also, I tend to not over analyze the pictures if I don`t know what the card alludes to, and definitely do not read the flavour text.

Although the cards might alude to certain things in the books i dont think theres that much in the way of spoilers on the cards either. Take for instance a certain colourful marriage. I could tell from the card what is probably going to happen, but then its a game of Thrones, i expect as much and ive no idea just from the card who or what it happens too or where etc.

Ive only seen the series but im not really bothered by spoilers infact i went out and read as much as i could from other sources because i was curious as to how characters events turned out but didnt want to wade through all the books to find it out, "bones of a child" even if from book 5 tells me really nothing, ive no idea whose bones they are, though i could take a guess etc etc.

jme said:

So don't worry. If you start constructing, you'll find yourself much less likely to run into this "we both have too many characters to phase each other much."

jme said:

Just to address the spoiler issue, there's mostly not content from the latest book until the "Beyond the Narrow Sea" cycle. "The Bones of a Child" was part of a scene included (if I recall correctly) as a bonus chapter at the end of book 4.

-Istaril said:

A bonus chapter! That certainly would explain how a card copyrighted 3 years before the book could contain anything from said book.

Thanks for all the "spoiler" info & suggestions, folks - it's much appreciated. We've just ordered the A Time of Ravens cycle, though I think we'll wait until my wife finishes the book to get the Targ deluxe, just in case. Again, she's on Book 5 now, so it won't be too long at all.

And thanks for the assurances on the core decks, ktom. While we noticed that several cards in the set were obviously built for melee (especially a few plot cards), it hadn't completely occured to me that basically the whole box is intended largely for melee. We'll just quit stressing things until we grow our card pool.

Again, thanks for the help and suggestions, all!

Josh