First Impression: A Game of Thrones The Card Game

I bought this game on a whim from Static based on the fact that we were looking for a good board/card game that could be played with two players, but could also handle more than two players, and the fact that we have a bit of a thing for the Song of Ice and Fire universe that George R.R. Martin has crafted.

I’ve only played 2 games of this, one with the two player variant rules and one with four players, so I’m still not familiar with all the cards, and I’m sure there are levels of strategy that I’ve yet to delve into.

I’m going to start by addressing what is probably the elephant in the room for an awful lot of gard games, The Game of Thrones Card Game obviously borrows a lot of ideas from Magic the Gathering. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, MtG is a very popular game with lots of die hard fans, it did make me think twice about it getting this though, because if I wanted to play just play Magic the Gathering: A Game of Thrones, I’d probably just buy some magic cards and glue stickers of Ned Stark, Daenerys Targaryen and the Hound onto existing Magic cards and play that while I watched both seasons of Game of Thrones in the background on a split screen TV, and listened to my Kindle read out George R.R. Martin’s epic work in it’s dulcet if a little robotic tones.

I’m not that kind of fan though, sure I like the series, but I also wanted a decent game that wasn’t just a rip off of another game, and I’m going to say this outright:

A Game of Thrones The Card Game does not disappoint.

Firstly AGoTtCG is not a collectable card game, that was one of things that stopped me from playing Magic some 20 years ago, I couldn’t be bothered with the financial burden the game put on you, always having to buy hundreds of booster packs to try and get the cards you wanted/needed or having to pay an inordinate amount of money for a single card because the game designers decided arbitrarily that that particular card was going to be extremely rare.

That isn’t for me, and that isn’t what AGoTtCG is. Fantasy Flight Games are calling this a living card game, it’s one of a number of LCGs they do such as the Call of Cthulhu Card Game, Android: Netrunner, and The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. The only one of these I’ve played in the past was Netrunner (I’ll be posting my impressions of that soon) and I might have gotten that if it were also suitable for more than 2 players, but it’s not and as I said I like George R.R. Martin’s books so we got AGoTtCG.

So what is an LCG?

Basically it’s a bit like a Collectable Card Game (CCG) except you don’t buy millions of packs with random cards in them, if you want to play a Targaryen deck you buy the Targaryen booster pack and you get all the Targaryen cards. It’s as simple as that, you can buy what you want to build the deck you want. The same goes for the other 5 houses.

It looks like you can specialize your deck to for example play a Baratheon Knights deck, a Targaryen Dothraki Deck, or a Nights Watch deck (Presumably? I’ve only encountered three members of the Nights Watch Benjen Stark, Jon Snow, and Maestor Aemon) by buying appropriate booster packs too.

How Does It Play?

To start with each player chooses a house, you have the option of Playing one of the Six Major Houses:

  • Stark
  • Baratheon
  • Targaryen
  • Lannister
  • Greyjoy
  • Martel

The Game comes with premade decks for the first four houses, you only get house cards for Greyjoy and Martel. Out of the box, two players can’t play the same house, but if you spent money on the expansions and have built a deck for a particular house then multiple players can play the same house.

Interestingly House Tyrell don’t feature, I’d have expected them to be in the game as they are in the Game of Thrones Board Game also by FFG, there are various Tyrell characters strewn across the other houses cards, but they are not an entity unto them selves.

The object of the game is to  be the first player to collect 15 power tokens, these are tokens that are won by winning challenges against other players, or being the player with the most strength left over at the end of each turn.

Play Sequence

Play takes place in 7 Phases:

  1. Plot
  2. Draw
  3. Marshalling
  4. Challenges
  5. Dominance
  6. Stand
  7. Taxation

1. Plot

The “Plot Phase” is a strategic phase where all the players choose one of their “Plot Cards” to be in effect for the rest of the turn. These cards are all revealed at the same time and it’s worth noting that this is the only simultaneous play part of the game.

Each plot dictates a number of things:

Income:

This is how much gold the player gets to spend on cards this turn.

Initiative:

This is used to determine who goes first, the player with the highest initiative selects which player is the first player for the rest of the turn.

Claim:

This is used to determine how much “Damage” a player does when he challenges another player, it’s usually 1 but there are some 2s and 0s.

Special Rules:

As well as all the above, each plot card has a special rule that either has an immediate one off effect or a lasting effect that lasts for the rest of the turn.

Some example effects are:

  • No one gets any income this round.
  • Every player has to pick up to three location/characters and Discard/Kill everything else.
  • Player picks one opponent, player and that opponent can search their deck for a card of a particular type (character, location etc…) they declare it to everyone else and put it in their hands.
  • Kill every character on the table (This one is particularly nasty)

The plot cards once played enter a plot discard pile so you have to play through all your plots, even if the outcome of the plot is detrimental to you. This happened to me the first time when I had a huge army and was forced to play “Wildfire Assault”, which kills all but three of everyone’s characters, as my plot card as it was the only one I had left.

Once you’ve exhausted all your plot cards you gather them up again and can play them in any order.

The plot cards in a way make the game, you can completely screw someone, or yourself, over by playing the right or wrong plot card at any given time, and you have to play all of your plot cards so you need to pick the right time to play each of them.

Once the plot cards are revealed, the player who won initiative (Highest initiative with ties resolved by the player with the least power) picks the “First Player” for this round. Going first is not always a good thing though as it leaves you open to being attacked once you have expended your resources.

Rotating round from the First Player each player selects a title token from the small council:

  • Crown Regent
  • Hand of the King
  • Lord Commander of the Kingsguard
  • Master of Coin
  • Master of Laws
  • Master of Whispers

Each has it’s own in game effect, as well as some of them getting bonuses for/not being able to challenge other seats on the small council. This part is not used in the 2 player game and I guess your could ignore it in a four player game too if you wanted to.

That being done you move onto the next phase.

2. Draw

Each player in turn draws 2 cards from their deck, there are certain cards or that “Master of Law” title that allow you to pick more cards. That’s it…

3. Marshalling

The “Marshalling” phase is when you pick up your income, and spend it to buy shinys. Shinys in this context refers to Characters, Creatures, Armies, Attachments, and Locations. Each player marshals their forces in turn before moving onto the next phase, so everyone has a chance to get their armies out before anyone declares any challenges.

Characters, Creatures and Armies:

These are your legions of faithful soldiers, they have a strength value and several attributes which allow them to attach in different ways and or perform actions when they are knelt (tapped) or just have a constant effect on the game.

Some are unique, which means that no one can have more than one of that person or thing in play at any one time, and if the character dies then no one can call it into play for the rest of the game.

Attachments:

These are cards that affect other cards to which they are attached, they can be weapons, skills, rank ailments whatever (One of them is called something like “Stinking Drunk” and it reduces the power of the character it’s attached to by 4).

Locations:

Locations are permanent cards that give you some sort of bonus, some of them give you extra cash at the start of your marshalling phase, some of them make stuff cheaper, some of them allow you to disable characters, some of them make your characters stronger. Winterfell for example gives all Stark characters +1 Strength.

4.  Challenges

The players take turns starting with the first player to challenge each other in one of three ways:

Military

You are physically sending your armies against an opponent’s armies. If you succeed one or more of your opponents characters will be sent to the “dead” pile. Dead characters cannot be brought back, and one a unique character is dead no one can play that character.

Intrigue

You are making an intrigue attack on the opponent’s hand of cards, if you succeed that player discards one or more cards from their hand, at random. This is surprisingly effective, as you might make your opponent lose some very powerful cards.

Power

You are making an attack on your opponent’s power pool, a successful attack means you can steal a power token from your opponent.

So how does a challenge take place?

In their challenge phase each player may perform one challenge of each of the above types, they do this by “Kneeling” characters that have the appropriate icons on them and totalling up their strength and any bonuses to determine their attack power.

The defending opponent may choose to kneel some or none of his characters to defend against the attack. If the sum of the defending players knelt strength is more than that the attackers nothing happens, other wise the attack succeeds and the defender has to suffer the consequences. Note that the attacker wins ties.

If the defender doesn’t defend against the attack at all the attacker can claim a bonus power token from the pool.

There are also a host of effect and event cards that players can play to turn the tide of of challenge, for example I as House Baratheon was attacking  the Stark player and was going to kill two of his banner-men, because one of my characters had the “Deadly” attribute, I’d put all my military might into the attack because I needed to ensure that the other player was cut down to size. Little did I know that the player I was challenging had a card that they could play that killed every character that participated in a challenge against them. I was crippled for the rest of the game.

5. Dominance

The dominance phase has the players totalling up the strength of their remaining standing characters, and their remaining gold. The player with the highest total wins dominance and gets a bonus power token. If there is a tie no one gets anything.

6. Stand

Any characters that have been knelt and don’t have an effect on them preventing them from doing so are stand.

7.Taxation

Any gold remaining with any of the players is taxed, unless there is an effect that prevents this from happening.

So is it any good?

On the whole I’d say this is a really fun game to play, it’s different enough from other games, and the strategy involved in playing even with the pre-built decks that come with the game to make it worth playing and the mechanics are fairly well balanced.

It can be hard work trying to maintain a balance between being able to challenge opponents to get power, and not leaving ones self wide open to attack. And while in context I understand the reasoning behind characters dying permanently when they are killed, it can lead to a situation where a player slowly wastes away due to not having any military units because they were all wiped out in one fell swoop because of a plot card.

The game is very fun for 4 players, I’m not 100% sold on the 2 player variant though, as some mistakes/effects/plots can be very hard to recover from and can lead to a slow and painful death. Don’t get me wrong, the 2 player variant is very fun, but it’s not very forgiving.

Why is Steel-Punk Not a Thing?

I saw the piece above entitled Pauldrons and Arm Braces by deviant artist vofffka and wondered to my self why there wasn’t a subculture of people who dressed up like knights? The concept of chivalry and honor are quite big in some geek sub circles, George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series is hitting it off big time both in the bookstore and on the small screen and it involves wearing armour!

Why is this not a thing? I’m not talking about LARP (Live Action Role Play) style costumes, dressing up in full plate would make day to day tasks completely impractical, I’m talking about incorporating things that look like armor into everyday outfits, a little like this Hoodie by Etsy seller SOFworks which was so successful it got the poor guys shop shut down…

Grey Knight Armored Hoodie

We have Steam punk, that’s a thing that’s been a geek subculture for quite some time, arguably for some people it just involves wearing brown goth clothes and gluing on some gears, but it’s a vibrant subculture.

Likewise there is cyber punk, cyber goth, and hundreds of other subcultures consisting of people who want to for one reason or another dress like they come from another time period be it the past or the future, people even dress up as anthropomorphised animals and believe that that is their true form (Weirder still there are double furries who believe that they are animals dressed up as humans…)

Why don’t we have Steel Punk?

Like I said I’m not talking about people wearing full suits of armor, that’s impractical unless you are LARPing or Cosplaying.

So wondering about with swords is probably out of the question because you will probably get stopped by the police pretty sharpish, but accessorizing normal clothing with pauldrons, bracers, maybe a knitted medieval helm or a knitted chain mail jumper (There is a pattern for this here)?

Or knitted armor:

I have found a few projects scattered about the web The following are undergrad projects:

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Undergraduate Lydia Hanchette created this cuir bouille cincher,
pauldron, and vambrace entirely of hardened leather.

 

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Body armor and pauldron/vambrace rig by second year Adrienne Corral
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As above but worn

They are all leather and maybe steel would be a little but less practical, but I still find it strange that there aren’t more people wondering about with bits of armor accentuating their outfits.

As I said actual metal would be preferable, and it’s not like modern fashion designers haven’t tried this like these costumes by designer Naty Chabanenko which are supposed to be android like but lets face it look like stylized armour:

Or this design from Alexander McQueen’s 2007 collection which has a lot of armor inspired designs but this is really the only one that fits what I’d call steel punk:

Or even these armored jeans by Acne Jeans:

Acne armoured jeans Acne make armoured jeans, world wonders why

Or these plate high heels by Nigel carren? He does armor fashion!

Maybe not this plate bra though…

All I’m saying is it seems really weird to me that despite there being a niche for this subculture and there being people who would fit into that niche the subculture doesn’t exist.

And no wearing articulated claw rings does not count, that’s just lame…

 

Game of Thrones The Board Game: First Impressions

I had a go at playing the Game of Thrones board game on Saturday, and from what I’ve seen I quite like it. The game centres about the battle for the control of Westeros, and you play one of 6 houses (Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, Greyjoy, Tyrell and Martel)

Depending on how many players you have some of the houses aren’t available to play, we were playing a 4 player game so houses Tyrell and Martel were out of the picture.

The game lasts for 10 turns 3 phases:

  1. The Westeros Phase
  2. The Planning Phase
  3. The Action Phase

The in the Westeros Phase you deal with a set of random events that happen as described by drawing 3 cards from the Westeros Card Deck, these cards tend to involve a choice for one of the players, usually the player at the head of one of the three tracks (Iron throne, Fiefdoms, Kings Court) or they allow players to muster their armies or change their resource levels.

During the planning phase each player puts a token on each area he controls face down, the tokens signify what they want to do in that area, the options are:

  1. Raid
  2. March
  3. Defend
  4. Support
  5. Consolidate Power

Raiding essentially equates to screwing up other players order, marching allows you to move troops to another area or attack an area, defending enhances the defence of an area, support allows troops in one area to support troops in another area in defending or attacking, and consolidating power allows you to get power tokens or under certain circumstances build up your army a little.

Once everyone has finished putting down their planning tokens they are turned over and the action phase starts.

First you resolve raid tokens and then march tokens, this is done by resolving one token at a time starting with the player who currently sits on the Iron Throne then rotating clockwise round the board allowing each player to resolve a their raids and then their marching orders.

I think this order of play is actually one of the games great strengths, because the players aren’t taking turns all the players have something to do all the time, which means that it’s less likely that players will get bored while waiting for their turn to come around.

Combat is straightforward, you win if you have more armies than the territory you are attacking, otherwise you lose. Each player can play a card to modify the results of the battle, these cards also affect the number of casualties from the battle. When a territory is lost the losing troops retreat, to an adjacent territory owned by that player, if they can’t do this I think they all die, but I’m not sure and I don’t have the rules to hand to check.

The game continues like this until one player has 7 territories with Castles or forts in them or until the end of the 10th turn at which point the player with the most castles and forts wins.

All in all the game is fun and is quite quick to play, I’ve been playing the Battlestar Galactica game an aweful lot recently and because this game is by the same people (Fantasy Flight Games) I was a little worried that it would require the same epic time-scales to play thankfully it doesn’t.

My one comment is that the starting positions on the map and the layout of the regions seem to favour certain houses, specifically house Lannister and house Baratheon, Lannister is surrounded with both forts and resources, while house Baratheon seem to have easy access to a very large empty area of the map to conquer. This (I think) is only really an issue when playing the game with 4 players, as the empty areas of the map are taken up by the two houses that you can’t play unless you have more players.

Having played a friend’s copy of this game I’m very tempted to invest in my own, which I think speaks volumes for it.