Going to play at the Comic Bug again this Thursday about 5:00.  Kingsguard let me know what chapter packs you have and the card you were looking for if you are planning to come.  Hope to see you there.

Okay lets see. I have the Core Set, Lords of Winter, Princes of the Sun, The Winds of Winter, City of Secrets, Secrets and Spies The Battle of Blackwater Bay, Tourney for the hand and Where Loyalty Lies.

As well as Street of Silk, a few other cards I'm looking for would be 

River Row

Warrior's Sons

Myrcella Lannister (Kings of the Sea)

Ser Balon Swann

Ser Arthur Dayne

Ser Gerlold Hightower (just 1)

Retaliation!

If you have any of these cards, I'd very much like a chance at trading for them.

 Damn it, I had this whole message written out once and for some reason my computer went back to the previous page when I hit delete. Annoying.

Anyways,

Well, todays games were.......crushing. I don't mind losing if I can say I put up a fight but jeeze. Today I had thoroughly lost every game by the first or second turn. It really goes far to exemplify how far my decks are from game-worthy.

Seriously? I have to defend 3 intrigue challenges by turn one, each one I lose costs me a character on top of the normal discard from intrigue AND a military challenge on top of that? I have no idea how I can compete with that.

I'll just come right out and say it; I'm discouraged. Part of me is starting to think maybe I should get out of the game before I spend anymore money on it. I'll give it some more time though I suppose. See you folks next week.

Sorry to hear that you are discouraged.  I would encourage you to stick with it, though! Our local community is really quite awesome and will always be willing to offer tips on how to improve.  If you are not already in the SoCal Thrones facebook group, you should join that, we answer deck building and strategy questions there fairly regularly.

Glad to hear you're not giving up! Imrahil's right about the community... folks have always been real friendly and helpful. I can relate on being discouraged and have taken my fair share of beatings. Pretty safe to say we all have! I remember the plot cycle of first turn Fear of Winter, then Blockade and then Rule by Decree was absolutely crushing me out of Stark. You mean you're going to go first, kill two of my guys and I can only play one card?! Then I get no gold, and then you're going to get me to discard down to 4? Nasty! Or when The North Agendas were popular... 8 strength armies with Deadly for free? Gotta be kidding me!

Reminiscing aside, my best advice is to not let losses get to you. Make the most of them and learn something each time. Ask your opponent about their deck and chances are they'll share what they thought and how they deckbuild. You're coming into the game at a great time. Again, feel free to email me and we'll get you in the facebook group. Or just email me any questions you may have. Otherwise, I'm going to try to make it up that way if you all meet up on Thursday March 1. Maybe we can get a few games in or talk about decks then. Good luck!

Kingsguard, let me start by saying I can certainly understand your frustration. Learning a new game is always difficult, but when done with other new players it is often less frustrating. However, what you should try to keep in mind is our play group is made up of experience, skilled players. One of them is a former world champion and others have been playing the game for a long time. I know for me personally I've met with the group 4 times and gotten obliterated in nearly every game. However, I realized this would happen and have not been frustrated with the situation. I think you need to prepare yourself to learn and have fun while losing with some regularity for a bit.  On the plus side, although the players are quite skilled they are also very willing to help.  During my games I often talk about the possibilities I have and ask for advice. 

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give you is to use proxies. Remember, the other players in the group own every card. If you try to restrict yourself to only the cards you own, if will be very difficult to make a deck that can compete with one built from every card. For me, the first week we met I brought a deck made from the Core Set and the Lords of Winter. I quickly realized that was not going to cut it. Since then I've been using proxies. Are they annoying, yes. But, are they a necessary evil, again yes.  I continue to buy new cards as well, but it just isn't feasible to immediately rush out and purchase every card that exists.

Another observation is the importance of deckbuilding in this game. You need to work hard to craft a really good deck in order to compete. Moreover, as a new player it's important to use resources to help you craft such a deck. I recommend contacting members of our group or looking at submitted decks at agotcards.org or cardgamesdb.com. Also, the newest 2 champs and a chump podcast is quite informative for how good players build their decks. For every deck I've built I've relied extensively on outside resources to help me craft a competitive deck. If this process seems too daunting you could always ask one of the other players to loan you a deck for the night. This is a good way to see what a powerful deck looks like. I know John usually brings a bag of good decks and I've borrowed one on multiple occasions.

Finally, it may make you feel better to know that in the game you are referring to I basically got the perfect flop and opening hand. My deck is designed to rack up a lot of intrigue wins and can kill characters with one of the plots, but it can be hard to get all the pieces going. You basically stumbled into a buzzsaw there.

I look forward to seeing you on Thursday!
 

 I tend to try and avoid proxies. The Magic the Gathering group I play with frowns on their use. I suppose they'd be a good help in figuring out exactly how good some of the deck ideas I have in mind but am lacking cards for really are. I'll think about it.

And after giving it some thought, I suppose it wasn't quite as overwhelming as it felt. I mean if you hadn't been able to kneel Jaime, I could have knelt Cersei and only had one challenge from Myrcella to worry about. Or if I'd used the "You swore an oath" plot and played Ser Jorah Mormont instead of Sansa, I could have possibly held the line for the turn. Though I suppose that would have meant I couldn't have played Jaime which means Jorah would have been knelt by that "wrong dwarf" card or whatever it was that you used. So I suppose that wouldn't work. Hmm. I'll keep thinking on it.

Somebody there is a former world champion? Does that mean he's gotten to have his own custom card printed?

Yes, John Bruno (Mathlete) won the 2005 World Championship and got to make the plot card First Snow of Winter.

 Oh nice. That'd be real cool to get to see a card of my own design printed.

Kingsguard said:

I think one main thing to remember is Thrones is so unlike MTG in every way. As a community, proxies are not allowed in official tournaments, but at all other times it makes lots of sense to use them. Even for people who have 3X copies of every card, there are times when you want 6X copies to have 2 decks built -- proxies just make sense.

Also, unlike Magic, there is no need to stick with one house, you should definitely expand your horizons.

As a specific critique, The Whitebook agenda is easily considered one of the weakest agendas in the game. All the Kingsguard are expensive, so you shouldn't (in terms of deck construction) have all these 3-5 cost kingsguard AND then other normal in-house characters. Your Siege of Winterfell deck works much better, I think.

And yes - John is a former world champ. And he is such a diva he'll even sign your copy of The First Snow of Winter.

 Lol. I'll keep that in mind. I've got sort of a neat idea for a direction I could take my kingsguard deck. Though it uses a number of cards I don't have. lemmie know if you think this might work.

http://www.agotcards.org/deck/v/6409

For starters, your deck has 58 cards, the minimum is 60.  Second, You have far too few characters.  Not counting duplicates, you have 12 characters.  You really do not need 3x of every unique character.  Characters die in this game often, whether you like it or not.  Having 3 of every unique is going to leave you with a lot of dead cards in your deck.  Try running some cheaper characters that can absorb some damage.  Stark has some great weenies that fit the defense theme that you are trying to go for with Hodor and Guard at Riverrun.  Maester Aemon is a great claim soak as well.  Meera Reed is a great card, but she is best when she can go back to shadows to trigger over and over, but she only works if you have other Stark characters, and she is your only one right now.  Meera combos great with Arya Stark (KL).

I like what you are going for, Stark defense can be strong.  Hope this helps!

 That's wierd. I put in the last two cards....It must not have saved them. Wonder what cards didn't get added....

There, I just Threw in a couple Hodors so it's at 60. I'll think more about it later. Man, I want to get more Ser Arthur dayne's and a set of Dawns. I sure hope they reprint his expansion set soon.

BTW, You folks were talking about the location from the next chapter packs over at Comic bug? The one that reduces the cost of one out of house card by 1 and one trait by 1. Which trait does the Lannister OOH one help?

Hey just wondering... Do you guys still play at the comic bug?

I live nearby and just started getting into this card game and would really like to meet some people to play with and maybe get some tips/pointers.

Yes, they do!  They normally play every Thursday night at the Comic Bug, although this week they played tonight because it is booked tomorrow.  If you want more info, feel free to join the Facebook group:

www.facebook.com/#!/groups/173621416012393/