To arms! A revamped Game of Thrones card game delivers combat and treachery

by Eric Berger

This is how a typical game looks a few turns in. Of course, your game board won't be this tidy.

Fantasy Flight Games

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.

Six decades have passed since J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King first hit bookstores, and since then, The Lord of the Rings has reigned over the fantasy genre. Yet in recent years, no challenger has come closer to toppling Tolkien's epic in popular culture than George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

The series' widespread popularity, due in part to a wildly successful HBO series, has opened the door to countless spinoff products. But even before the show brought Tyrion Lannister into our living rooms, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) had been catering to George R.R. Martin fans for years. And because Martin’s world is populated with dozens of vivid, unpredictable, and often downright evil characters, it's no surprise that FFG launched A Game of Thrones: The Card Game back in 2008. Who wouldn't want to do battle as Jaime, Cersei, or Tywin under House Lannister, or wield Sand Snakes as The Red Viper of House Martell, or fight alongside the other factions?

Instead of a “collectible card game” (like Magic: The Gathering), A Game of Thrones was billed as a “living card game" (an earlier incarnation of the game, released in 2002, used the collectible format). Expansions in the living card game were not sold in randomized packs but as complete, fixed sets. New sets appeared regularly, and although you still had to invest hundreds of dollars into the game to get the best cards, you could at least be assured of getting all the cards.
My playing group invested pretty heavily—both in terms of time and money—in the original Game of Thrones, and we played for hours. The game could be played seamlessly as a one-on-one battle or among three, four, or even six players. My biggest issue with the game, aside from finding time to devise and manually construct decks, was that to build winning decks, players had to prioritize mechanics over conflict. That is, the key was often not to develop the strongest characters, but to find ways to draw the most low-cost cards into your hand, deploy them to the board, and overwhelm your opponent.
When your strategy is less about keeping an Ice-wielding Robb Stark alive and more about swamping your opponents with Baratheon bannermen before they can get any important cards out, the game becomes divorced from the world of Westeros and the Free Cities. There was also the card pool, which kept growing until it became ungainly. So my group drifted away from the original Game of Thrones card game.
But in late 2014, the game’s senior designer, Nate French, announced that Fantasy Flight would relaunch the game.

Fantasy Flight Games

Fantasy Flight Games released the core set of the second edition of A Game of Thrones in October 2015.

1. 
   Fantasy Flight Games

   Fantasy Flight Games released the core set of the second edition of A Game of Thrones in October 2015.
   
2. 
   Fantasy Flight Games

   Plot cards are a unique and integral part of A Game of Thrones. They remain powerful in the second edition.
   
3. 
   Fantasy Flight Games

   Plots determine how much gold you gain during a turn, who goes first, and how much you can damage your opponent.
   
4. 
   Fantasy Flight Games

   One of the best parts of the second edition is that it brings main characters back to the fore. (Except Jon Snow. He knows nothing.)
   
5. 
   Fantasy Flight Games

   Characters cost more in the second edition. Yes, Eddard costs 7 gold. But the ability to use him during several battles in a single turn is priceless.
   
6. 
   Fantasy Flight Games

   Tywin Lannister is still a highly unpleasant man, but the game text follows plot lines in the books. Which is nice.
   
7. 
   The Night's Watch is one of two new factions. And Take the Black—love it!
   
8. 
   Fantasy Flight Games

   Taking the Black was the first Chapter Pack expansion released after the Core Set.
   

“We at FFG found ourselves facing a difficult decision,” French wrote in a letter to the community. He continued:

On one hand, we had the option to hold on tightly to what we had. To put forth a rotation policy that could address the immediate 'size of the cardpool' concerns and see if we could squeeze two or three more good years out of a game that faced the other challenges described above. The alternative... Well, what if we were to relaunch the game with a new edition, an overhauled rules set, an improved core set, and some exciting new features? The idea took hold, and as we discussed the possibilities, it became more and more intriguing. Instead of a three-year plan, we wanted to establish a foundation upon which the game could conceivably thrive for the next 10 years or more.

After the second edition core set was released in October 2015, I picked up one set over the winter holidays. I didn’t know what to expect. Was this a cash grab by FFG? Or would gameplay really improve?

I recently found the time to play, and after two long gaming sessions, I’m happy to report that it's the latter. A Game of Thrones 2.0 has so far proven itself.