Game of Thrones LCG

So the old Game of Thrones CCG has now become the Game of Thrones LCG, meaning no more boosters and endlessly hoping for rare cards. Now you can buy full sets of cards for a single house, I believe. Therefore, I'm putting it here instead of the CCG forums since the C is no longer there--feel free to move it to the CCG section if it should be there.

That makes it far more interesting to me. I *love* the books and I used to play magic in high school until I got off the money sink (same with GW games). Does anyone around here play/has played this CCG? Can you give me a rundown of if it is worth it and how it plays?

Additionally, am I the only person more likely to give it a try now that it has stopped being collectible? I think this is a good next move from the failing CCGs (though IIRC GoT:CCG was pretty successful) out there to get more buyers.

I am not sure that what Fantasy Flight is doing with these games is so great. I have bought all the Call of Cthulhu Asylum Packs and they are poor. You could not use them to make meaningful decks. They are just like buying three boosters. You get a bunch of random mostly rubbish cards. New players can't buy one or even all of these packs and expect to a playable game. The old Premium Starters were at least fun for a few games. The Premium Starters also provided a base of useful cards that you could build upon. I used to play Game of Thrones but haven't for ages. I think if FF don't keep reprinting the old sets that these two CCGs are dead.

Ouch! Well that is still super helpful Citadel. I'll pass on this until I hear different and there is some sort of useful start up pack.

Yeah, I am harsh on what they have done to the Call of Cthulhu CCG but I think I am being fair. Before they announced they were changing to the new format they had announced a new set, The Dreamlands, which never materialised. I think the Asylum Packs which contain 20 new cards each (1 * 10 new cards and 3 * 10 different new cards, 40 in total) are just 20 cards from that set loosely thematically bundled from the original set, which would have been I think 260 cards. The big problem with Call of Cthulhu and to some extent Game of Thrones was the cards were poorly developed. In each set there would be something like 5% overpowered broken cards, 20% useful cards, 30% usable but significantly underpowered cards and 45% totally meaningless unusable-in-any-deck cards. There were lots of half baked ideas that didn't get incorporated well into the sets. I personally think that they just didn't do enough playtesting. But you can see that these problems of power level of cards makes it difficult with a small number of cards to make decks that will be fun to play against each other. The new packs have the same power distirbution problem.

It may be different with A Game of Thrones. If they release them house by house as you say and make each a playable deck that is balanced against the others, the fans would be delighted and new players would too. It would be a great way to do things. However, based on the way they have done things with Call of Cthulhu and also on their past history with these games I doubt that what they release will be either playable or balanced. This will discourage fans from buying the packs and make the game inaccessible to new players. So the games will end up having protracted deaths.

If you just want to have a look see what the games are like I would suggest picking up a premium starter for each game. I only got as far as Valyrian edition with Game of Thrones and I only picked up the Ice and Fire Premium Starter. I thought it played pretty good. I got both the Call of Cthulhu Premium Starters and I would say Arkham is far superior to Eldritch. After 10-20 games you will find one side wins more than the other but I think the Premium Starters give a good overview of the games. I have had a lot of fun playing them. The artwork is stunning. They are flawed but I am sad to see that they may be on the way out.

I fully support Citadel's comments in this thread thus far.

This forum is awesome, what you are talking about is exactly the type of thing I want to avoid. I was being pulled in by the theme and the artwork.