thats the thing with plots....they are useful when not house specific and often are better in a different house then what they are designed for. I'm just glad we are getting 7 (6 for rest of houses) more plots to add to our plot selection, i don't care that we are not getting 7 * 5. 6 plots is also nothing to scoff at if they are the right plots. Plots that help Greyjoy can easily be translated into other houses A non kneeling military challenge plot would make all my decks, as would winter storm, or a no intrigue challenge this round plot. If the additionaly cards don't move you after tis released you don't have to buy the expansions (~but its GJ common its worth it just for that) and can target the cards of you favorite house and see if you can buy one or two or three of of crazy people like me or are allready putting $$ to by at least 3 copies of this box.

Re Rise of the kraken.....I dunno Balon could be unopposed, but he is not the UO machine that ITE was. Plus he would need like 5-10 other cards that keyed off of UO in the expansion and i don't see that happening in a 45-60 card release. (especially if you want the other GJ staples to be there as well, and i'd rather have save then UO). Plus, since ITE nate has been moving GJ away from UO. I just see one of the other two posted images as having a higher chance of making it....we'll see.

Stag Lord said:

completely agree. The only thing i don't like about these guys is that there are too many limited location choices as is.

Ruvion said:

Honestly, don't you think maybe you set the bar a little too high? In an expansion for House Greyjoy with a little bit of extra stuff for everyone else, you expected there to be ~40 plot cards alone?

I don't even really play Greyjoy, and I'm totally excited out the expansion and what it means for the design of LCG overall.

I haven't been part of this community for long, but I've been in business longer than I care to admit. I've seen (and sometimes made) decisions that don't make a lot of sense to outsiders who don't know the constraints. (And sometimes those constraints simply can't be communicated, either.)

From this perspective, the LCG transition shows all the hallmarks of a Hail Mary pass to try to save a game that was close to the cutting block. Nothing short of imminent disaster would justify the early rotation of the Five Kings Edition. (It would be ludicrous to assume that the designers didn't realize what this would do the synergy of the card pool for Clash or Arms and Time of Ravens.) Similarly, the decision to focus on four Houses sounds to me like a rational decision to see if the profitability could beturned around before committing additional resources to developing (and printing) "core" decks for Greyjoy and Martell.

I suspect that many people in this forum thought, or perhaps even knew, the same thing, but were too circumspect to say it. (Or didn't want to admit it publicly, in an attempt to keep a positive atmosphere. I applaud you for that decision, by the way.)

With those assumptions, far and away the most important sentence in the whole article for me was: "As a product, the AGoT LCG is exceeding expectations, and the game has shown significant growth for the first time in years." Woo hoo! Next to that news, everything else pales in comparison. I almost don't care exactly what's in the Greyjoy expansion. I'm happy to take whatever they can afford to provide, and hope only that they keep the price reasonable.

I'm going to take a printout of this article to my local game store owner. I'm still working on him to carry the game...

arma, we talked about, but mostly on the old boards. There seemed to be a kind of a move on now feeling (and i think rightly so) on the new boards. Nate should again be thanked here for his efforts in helping to keep the game going.

Where do you live? i'm surprised that a game store won't carry it. Did it not sell there as a CCG and thus he was feeling already burned by it? Do more then just you play/express intrest? YOu should als see if FFG will send you some demo material for you to run a demo night to help the sotre owner make up his mind.

I live in Silicon Valley. There's a store near the San Jose airport (about 20 minutes away) that carries the game, and that's where I bought my core set and a few chapter packs. But I seldom have the time to drive over there just to go shopping, so I only stop by when I'm in the area on business. The other store (the one where I'm talking to the owner) is literally across the street from where I work, so it would be easy to pop in monthly and buy a chapter pack.

Unfortunately, time is also the chief constraint on my ability to evangelize. I've got a job, two school-age kids and a pre-schooler, and other outside-of-work commitments. I look back fondly on the hours I spent during high school playing Advanced Squad Leader (anyone else know that game?), but these days my gaming has to be something that doesn't take too much time away from the family. So playing a game at home with friends or relatives is great, but leaving the wife and kids to go gaming or run demo nights at the game store would lead to a Negative Life Experience.

I love an immersive, complex game with a lot of replay value, but for now I have to get my "fix" in short spurts. (Ironically, reading and trying to understand ktom's rule explanations counts as a fix... That's a large part of the reason I keep up with the boards.) Maybe when I'm older, I'll move to a retirement home just for old wargamers and CCGers....

Sorry -- didn't mean to hijack this thread with my life story! Let the celebration resume.....

Arma virumque said:

Arma, I'm somewhat nearby in the San Mateo area. My local game shop, Gator Games in Belmont, didn't carry it either. I had them special order some CPs from me, and then I put in a standing order for one copy of each new CP, and they don't force me to buy it if I don't want it. A few months later, they now have a healthy stash of many CPs, and I think other people are buying them as well.

The store owner his since then become a big fan of Call of Cthulu CPs, which also helps. Hopefully my "success story" can be useful to you... I too do not have free time to spread the game of thrones...

Speaking from the perspective of the Game Store Owner, one of the things that players may not realize is just exactly how many ccgs/tcgs/lcgs are actually available at any given time vs. what the local store carries. In the 5-1/2 years since my family opened our store, I bet I could easily come up with 30-40 ccgs that have been available over that time. There are many games that we have never carried, some that were special order only, and others that we carried the entire time we've been open. We carried Thrones when we first opened, it never really took off, two years later when Feast for Crows was released and FFG had their "Day of the Feast" promotion, we jumped on the game, and I've been addicted to it ever since (though I did enjoy it back in the I&F days, but couldn't get many takers for the game).

Thrones is pretty much what most of us owners call a "niche game," in that it isn't one of the big three that everybody in gaming has heard about (and the third game often changes). I've been to alot of stores that have never carried GoT. My brother-in-law also owns a store a hour away from ours, and he "can't sell any ccg other than Magic," so he doesn't even try to sell niche games, and barely carries YuGiOh or WoW. Other stores that I've been in contact with maintain a minimal presence of the LCG even now, if they stock it at all.

Many of us game store owners have ben burnt by ccgs and related products (I got stuck with 2-3 boxes of Rocketmen, and both my wife and I lvoed that game), and for the most part once a store gets burnt on a game, it makes it that much more difficult for the owners to give it another try. If I didn't have my own store, I'd be going all over this state promoting the game and giving demos, but I only have so much time, and it just isn't in the cards.

I think that the LCG format is actually a good model for the industry. In the past, often a store owner had to order between $200-$300 of a game -- one box of starters and one box of boosters -- when they wanted to try out a new ccg. That's alot of risk, especially when you think that same amount of money is 2 copies of Battlestar Galactica, Arkham Horror and Dominion (okay, that last isn't an FFG game, but it's still hot). Now, a store can order 2 copies of a Core Set and a few Chapter packs (if that) to give the game a try. A lot less investment, a lot less risk. And yet, there are still store owners that won't carry it (See my brother-in-law above).

The LCG has been successful at our store, but we had an active player base to begin with. I started to carry Call of Cthulhu as well -- a game that I had to clearance out back when it was still a ccg. Now we have a Cthulhu community (again, one in which I take part). I would not be carrying Cthulhu if it wasn't LCG. And I think most of the people playing it with me wouldn't be playing it if it wasn't LCG.

I think that more game stores need to give the LCG model a chance. It really is a minimal investment, and will appeal to alot of budget conscience gamers. I just wish I could get the word out better than I can.

You know, if nothing else, I'm excited about this because I'm seeing several old faces that I haven't seen in awhile posting and somewhat interested.

Oh yeah, ok, so I'm excited about the cards too I suppose.

JJ -- when you say that a store owner can order "a few chapter packs," does that mean that the minimum order per chapter pack is one? Or do chapter packs only come in boxes with several copies of the same chapter?

longclaw said:

I feel the same way. I have been checking the forums once every two weeks or so, though I probably won't step it up to more than once per week until the expansion actually comes out. (I used to check www.agameofthrones.com's forums multiple times per day.) In any case, I too find this announcement encourage, for two reasons:

1. It's great to know FFG/Nate has recognized the "holes" in the current format and is working to address this. (Specifically, location control and synergy with preexisting mechanics.)

2. It's very nice to know that FFG is selling these well, especially that they're selling abroad. That may prompt FFG to take a chance and market AGOT to other countries/in other languages. Also, while it would have been great if FFG had released more up front, it makes sense from their standpoint to try to get their products out as fast as possible so that they begin generating enough return to reinvest in the game. (I think the real killer was not the shift to LCG but rather the announcement that organized play would be LCG-only.)

Arma virumque said:

Depending on thier distributor, they could be able to order simply one of each chapter pack. Yes, these do come in boxes of 6, but all the distributors I order from (local and national level) I can get them in as little as one quantity. SInce I don't know who your store orders from, I can't speak for how they have to order. I do know that 5 years ago anything collectible had to be ordred by the case or box quantity from most distributors (which is one of the main reason why we choose our primary distributor, as we could order just one booster pack of any set, if that was all we wanted).

Arma: Big ASL fan here. I played from 1987 until very recently and pciked up all teh expansions through Doomed Battalions. I think the HASL products - Red Barricades, Blood Reef Tarawa, Valor of the Guards et al are hte fienst WWII simulations to ever come to market. Bar none - and including all formats.

I still keep up with the Journals but haven't had the opporunity to play in a few years. i coudln't find ANY ASL activity goign on at origins last summer - much to my dismay.

Back on topic: the annuncement sure sent a ripple of excitement through the local community. We were already going fairly storng - but I think people aroudn here are more prepared to embrace LCH format after this release. Most of our events have stayed Standard over the winter becuase of the clear limitaions of the new format.

BTW - I 'm not sure I agree that desperation rpompted early rotation for 5K. I think they just wanted to standardize the format and do away with all remanant sof teh CCG era for OP. which turned out to be a joke becuase OPnever really got off the ground in the winter - but hey! Its all in the apst now. I'm remain optimistic and excited going forward.

Stag Lord said:

I agree, the Historical ASL modules are without peer. I own them all, but the only one I played significantly was Red Barricades, because the others were released after I lost my regular opponent.

Oh -- except for one priceless game of A Bridge Too Far, which I played as a nostalgia game years later. I got together with an old buddy, and we played until midnight, and then the next morning until noon. Eventually it all came down to one building: The Germans were piling every last unit into the building, while the British were cut off and trying to defend one corner of the top floor. It all came down to one final dice roll, the last possible attack any unit could make before the game ended. We calculated the odds, I turned to my buddy and said, "All right, roll two dice -- 7 or less, you win." My wife, who had just come into the room, was stunned. "That's it? You've played six hours to get to '7 or less, you win'????" I think she felt we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of time if we'd just tossed a coin the night before....

Good times, good times.

~I'm so confused. Why is everyone talking about Age, Sex, Location?

Kennon said:

Haha. Isn't this the AGoT dating site?

(In case you were serious... Advanced Squad Leader is the acronym.)

Kennon said:

25/M/Redwood City, CA

jmccarthy said:

And here I was expecting "not as often as I would like."

Back on track here: they're talking about King and Queens. Assuming reprints, which ones? Robert or Stannis? Or might they delve back into the old RoK Kings?

With more Military Battle, Intrigue Gambit, and Power Struggle plots coming back in, I'm putting good money on 5KE Robb, Cersei, and Stannis.

Nah I'm sure it won't be reprints of 5KE Stannis, Robb & Cersei. Look at LCG Balon & Renly, they're not on the same level. Also, it's pretty boring when they all have the same ability like that. Maybe 5KE Joffrey will make it in, and the aRoK ones seem like they would fit in decently, but I hope they go with new ones rather than reprints.

perthius said:

I'm just hoping for a Cersei and Joffrey that are decent enough to justify putting in a deck. Their Core set versions are just awful. I agree that it probably won't be reprints, especially since 5KE Robb was recently a rare and a chase card.. seems unfair to start giving copies of him away. I liked 5KE Joff a lot though, and would hope to see him again.

Er, I really don't see what "fairness' has to do with him being reprinted? He'd be a good reprint if they are reprinting a fair number of traited plots. Much less scary than the AROK Robb...I kind of hope they reprint ACOS Robb and give him a King Trait , renown and Kingly drawback...

If any reprints are done from previous cycle, I hope appropriate croppings are done to match the current environment, especially some of those from the 5KE cycle.

(best Pickard voice) The powercreep must stop here!

I don't necessarily believe that Game of Thrones needs power creep, in the way that lots of ccgs do. Even when it comes to the unique characters, the idea is to have the new version be on a par with the previous ones, and not necessarily a huge step above.

I dunno, there can be uses for the core set Joffrey if properly focused. I've run lanni 'kill' decks with trait manipulation and infamy to exploit the whole "when a lord/lady dies" text.

Or, he could pop up out of house in a stark deck with the same premise. He's really not all that bad.