Game of Thrones CCG - Fantasy Flight Games

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Hope I picked the right forum.

The GAME OF THRONES card game - anyone play this? I bought it on Saturday and am loving it. Played a fun game of it with a friend, can't wait to play again. I have some rules questions, though, and I wanted to ask here before I gave in and went to the FFG messageboard.

Character Power- When a character collects power, what does this mean for the character? Does he gain that much strength? It seems odd to divide the power like that with the only interesting factor being that if the character dies it goes away.

Characters without Houses- If you play a character of a different house, the cost goes up by 2. What about Jon Snow, for example, who has no house?

Duplicates- can these be played in the same marshalling phase as the originals?

Is it considered poor form to read everyone else's strength and tally it while gauging whether or not to attack? I mean, unless they have a very interesting event card, you're not likely to lose- otherwise, you'd not attack at all, right?

I hung out with the designer at Origins, and he showed me how to play. I think I can answer these:

Character Power- When a character collects power, what does this mean for the character? Does he gain that much strength?

Nope, his strength remains the same. Characters that can gain power are meant to be easy ways to move closer to victory, but they're relatively fragile.

Characters without Houses- If you play a character of a different house, the cost goes up by 2. What about Jon Snow, for example, who has no house?

This didn't come up in play, so I'm not sure.

Duplicates- can these be played in the same marshalling phase as the originals?

As far as I know, yes. I think we even did this once or twice.

Is it considered poor form to read everyone else's strength and tally it while gauging whether or not to attack? I mean, unless they have a very interesting event card, you're not likely to lose- otherwise, you'd not attack at all, right?

I don't see why it would be. It leads to a lot of interesting tactics. Part of the strategy in the game seems to involve figuring out your optimal spread of attacks. IE - if you strike with X strength on a combat attack, your opponent cannot successfully block without leaving himself open to a power attack. The drawback to attacking is that you lose the use of those characters for other things and you're liable to fall behind during the dominance phase.

I agree that it's a really fun game, and I'm planning on getting into it once con season passes.

Dr Midnight said:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope I picked the right forum.

The GAME OF THRONES card game - anyone play this? I bought it on Saturday and am loving it. Played a fun game of it with a friend, can't wait to play again. I have some rules questions, though, and I wanted to ask here before I gave in and went to the FFG messageboard.

Character Power- When a character collects power, what does this mean for the character? Does he gain that much strength? It seems odd to divide the power like that with the only interesting factor being that if the character dies it goes away.

Characters without Houses- If you play a character of a different house, the cost goes up by 2. What about Jon Snow, for example, who has no house?

Duplicates- can these be played in the same marshalling phase as the originals?

Is it considered poor form to read everyone else's strength and tally it while gauging whether or not to attack? I mean, unless they have a very interesting event card, you're not likely to lose- otherwise, you'd not attack at all, right?

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mearls answered most of these, in the same way I would have if not correctly.

Unaligned cards offer no gold penalty to play though, only cards aligned with houses different than you own.

Note that in the next edition of the game (Ice and Fire, due this August I believe), there's going to be a new type of card call Alliances, which sort of let's you play with two houses without gold penalties.

All the answers posted here are correct.

Also, Alliance is a plot card that allows you to play cross-house cards at no penalty for that turn only. It may not have been included in the recently released Premium Starter Set (one of each House deck), but will be rereleased with the new set. It was, however, available in the first printing of the game. I'm sitting on a bunch of Alliances, want to trade?

d20Dwarf said:

All the answers posted here are correct.

Also, Alliance is a plot card that allows you to play cross-house cards at no penalty for that turn only. It may not have been included in the recently released Premium Starter Set (one of each House deck), but will be rereleased with the new set. It was, however, available in the first printing of the game. I'm sitting on a bunch of Alliances, want to trade?

Click to expand...

Actually, what I was refering to was a new type of card that can be used in place of a House card. It lets you play cards from 2 different Houses with no gold penalty, but you need a total of 20 power to win instead of 15. If I recall correctly, the Alliances being included in Ice and Fire are Stark/Targaryen, Stark/Baratheon, Greyjoy/Lannister, Lannister/Targaryen, Greyjoy/Baratheon...

Oh, that sounds sweet.