A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

For Christmas my family gave me A Game of Thrones: The Card Game. I became interested in the game after reading the review on Drake's Flames. I can't say that I have finished a complete game. I have started one four-player session and three two-player sessions so far. I have not had the time to play a game completely through. So far I find the preconstructed decks interesting to play. The feel more coherent than the decks you get with Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. I still have not really found the flow of the game. The goal is to score 15 power points. During your turn you can make up to three challenges for military, intrigue, and power. With military you are trying to kill off the other player's characters. Characters are what let you make challenges in the first place. If a character has one of the challenge symbols, it can attack or defend against that type of challenge. With intrigue you are trying to whittle down the opponents deck. With power, you are trying to steal your opponents power directly. This seems the most obvious type of attack to carry out. If you make challenges that your opponent can't defend against, you get a bonus power chip.

My last session that I played with Kati, I played House Targaryen, while Kati played House Stark. Initially Kati was able to get a few hits on me. She was more able to put characters into play. I concentrated on putting locations into play. Suddenly I had 7 or 8 gold per turn. I thought I was in real trouble when Kati put out Hodor. Up until then, I had been using attachments to damage and kill her characters. To destroy Hodor, I used a plot to force her to destroy her own character. Kati then got out the Army of the North, a strength 11 character. I had many locations and a lot of wealth. I played three or four characters. Had she attacked, I could have blocked her character and sacrificed Vicerys. He has the ability to enable me to save him and put him back in my hand. His cost of one makes him a sacrifice I can make repeatedly. Since the Army of the North was the only character she had, I could use Khal Drogo's stealth ability to exclude the army as a defender and make and unopposed attack, forcing her to choose a character to kill. At this point I clearly had control of the game and with 12 power, we decided to call it in my favor. I suspect that stark needs to do its damage early on and get characters into the game. I won't know for sure until I get a better look at the House Stark cards.