Is anyone ready for the rowboat to get here yet? I know FFG is a great company, and I'm sure they have a valid reason for the initial delay, but come on guys. I'm foaming at the mouth here for some new stuff.

Agreed. The more delays we are, the more it feels like we're loosing players to other LCGs. As much as I love the model, FFG's making it quite easy to cannibalize their playerbase.

Yeah, there is a lot of players migrating to netrunner and starwars….but i think the worst problem is that new people are hoing for those just because they are starting and is cheaper to be competitive….. nothing to do about that, except to smooth talk people into it.

We have talked into the game at least 5-6 new players so we are getting to 15-16 regulars!!!! (go Chilean Community)

Something will have to happen sometime soon with AGoT. Either FFG will stop developing new material for it, or there will be some type of rotation or alternate format introduced, allowing new players to be competitive. My advice to people about LCGs is to either get in on a game right when it is released, or very soon thereafter, or don't play them at all. For new players just getting into LCGs, I would never recommend Thrones, even though it is my most beloved of them; the buy-in is just absurd at this point.

It might be a heavy buy in compared to other LCGs but compared to CCGs which a lot of players come from its still very cheap.

I have only just started myself and being able to start, make a deck and then just buy the packs for that deck is a much easier entry into a game than trying to get into MTG or something similar

I highly doubt anyone is leaving the game from this delay, however I am super worried that now, most likely only the first two CPs will be legal for regionals, making the environment not all that different from worlds. Was hoping for at least the first 4 packs to be legal for the entire regionals season. That's the main reason DC applied for a late date, so that we can have as many cards released as possible.

divinityofnumber said:

When FFG wants to establish a rotation, they have to rethink their design. We are left currently with many mechanics that feel unfinished and many mechanics that were unfinished years ago and got the missing pieces recently. I'm a Baratheon player and after core set, house expansions and 8 whole cycles there are cards like Shadow Enchantress. I played MTG Standard and if such a card would have been in a set, there would have been Asshai characters with shadow crests in the same or the following set. But we only have one pretty bad Shadow Asshai character in the house expansion. Or Small Council Chamber. We have currently one good Small Council event card, the others are useless. The whole learned crest seems lackluster and the char agendas- while a good idea- need much more support than they will probably get in the next cycle. It's all just a little bit… unfocused. We are jumping between non chronological sets with different mechanics that abandon good ideas from the previous. Plus a game where you pretty much need everything to be competitive is discouraging for rotation. There are six different houses that all need their own support and their completely seperate card pool (not like Magic where you can splash colors).

So I come to the conclusion, that when they want to rotate anything they need to have themes that are supported for more than one cycle and it should be easier to splash for another house.

dcdennis said:

sometimes it takes only one card to change the metagame a lot. and right now this card is House of Dreams.

Tourney of Stahleck said:

yeah that is very true. Kinda forgot about that little nugget

Ignithas said:

Singing to the choir, mate.

I don't think it is hard to get into an LCG like thrones at this point in the game (there really isn't that many cards, I can hold every targ card x3, plus locations and attachments in 2 hands). It is only about 500 dollars to buy all the good cards. Think about some other hobbies like golfing or skiing or magic the gathering--much more expensive--I sold my magic cards for over 2k when it was all said and done about 7 years ago. For the price of an iPad you can have every thrones card you need, and then some.

kr4ng said:

Right, but my sentiment was that I would not recommend Thrones to a new player. For 80 dollars a person can get into Star Wars, and the spend the 15 dollars per month, and be competitive. Or, buy NetRunner and the first data packs for that. Why spend 500 dollars to get all of the cards for Thrones now…it would take hundreds, if not thousands, of hours to familiarize yourself with the cards, build decks, and really develop the expert knowledge of it that those who have followed it over the years have at this point. It would be a never ending game of catch-up. I have been playing for quite some time, and love Thrones dearly. But, I would never recommend it to a new player; I would recommend getting in at ground level with one of the new LCGs, and following it for its entire lifespan.

divinityofnumber said:

Hmmm… I might pull this thought into a separate thread, but one of the major selling points of Magic is the theme deck. A player can drop $10 - $20 on a theme deck and BANG, they generally will get a fun, competitive deck (if not tournament level). That pretty much is impossible in thrones. You have to drop at least $20 to get a house expansion which you may not even enjoy and THEN have to build the deck.

mdc273 said:

Isn't this more an issue of support, though? FFG has published web-articles with decklists before, but for other LCGs, not for Thrones. They could have guest writers develop decks and publish an articles in their news. Hmmm, this sounds an aweful lot like cardgamedb.com and agotcards.org. I think FFG may be content to let peripheral support remain a function of the community. That's tough for new players since those forums may not be apparent to them initially, but cardgamedb at least comes up fairly high in a google search.

Or are you talking about physically building the deck once you have the cards? Well, that's a tough one, and I may drudge up a perennial saying by my father in my childhood about such things building character. If someone wants to open a deck and play, there are plenty of other games that will indulge them. And if they insist on pre-made decks for Thrones, how about the HBO version?

mdc273 said:

Those pre-constructed decks are definitely not be tournament level decks. However, you do have a good point. You can get a magic deck for cheaper than a thrones deck.

Overall, Magic is still more expensive to compete in even if you just want to play Type 2.

As to the other sentiment about not recommending thrones and recommending Star Wars or Netrunner instead, I feel differently. I don't want to even look at Netrunner or Star Wars until the card pool is sufficiently large. It doesn't seem fun to try and compete against others in an LCG with only 1 box of cards released. Not worth it--boring--I will wait 5 years then start playing Netrunner if I am still playing LCGs.

Thrones has been so fun for me because I just started in July and there was a lot to learn and study--that is fun--maybe not for everyone, and the thrones card pool doesn't seem that big to me considering over half the cards are unplayable.

kr4ng said:

I have to say I agree with this to some extent. Until a sufficient card pool is available there are going to be 1 or 2 top-tier decks and everyone will know what they are… after a cycle or two is complete things will change a bit, but for a while SW and NR are going to be net-decking games.

Skowza said:

Lol, isn't this kind of appropriate for Netrunner?

Since people mentioned Magic: What Wizards of the Coast have found in early 2000s was that their players base stagnated and was actually shrinking (in other words, Magic started to die).They got worried, gathered™ statistics and analyzed them. And as it happens the core of the problem was a complexity creep. What WotC did in response was overhauling the game in order to make card texts cleaner, mechanics design as simple as possible.

Why did they do this? The simple explanation is that for any given card game its players pool rotates, people grow and go forward in life and you need new blood to keep game going (It was said somewhere that average number of years people play Magic is about 8 years.) If your game evolves to have 20 pages of different mechanics, sooner or later new players will start avoid it at all costs.

PS. Netdecking FTW. Imagine if all the best deckbuilders in AGoT gathered™ together and designed all kind of crazy decks and presented them to the community.=)

BBSB12 said:

This is amusing. Especially sinceI've played Magic, Pokemon, Raw Deal, Dragonball Z, Warlord, Magic again, A Game of Thrones (LCG), Netrunner (LCG), and Star Wars (LCG) over the past 16 or so years. I would argue this complexity issue is on my long list of reasons I stopped buying chapter packs.