retribution814 said:

You have to retreat all unit's to same area!

 I have not read this whole thread. I do not have the time. Balon Greyjoy's house card is the real issue. Personally I like the imbalance because it forces me to be a better player, but the thing to remember when fighting Greyjoy is to take Ironmans bay at all costs. The player who controls Ironmans bay controls the neck. As for Jaime Lannister's house card, I think the first book explains it perfectly. He is a great swordsman and a brash commander, easily tricked. Also many of the house cards do not accurately represent the character, take Mace Tyrell for example. Its simple really you only have 7 cards and they all have to fit into the one 0 two 1 two 2 one 3 and one 4 format.

Thanks for the post guys, I really appreciate it!!  Check out this site for the Best New Board Games for Couples!!  They are awesome games and killer deals.  

http://www.squidoo.com/best-new-board-games-for-couples

John Williams

So after reading the majority of this forum, I agree that Greyjoy and Lannister are at a disadvantage when it comes to their ability to expand, but I do not think that this makes the game imballanced. I have played 2 games with 4 players, and in both games I played house baratheon (it was chosen randomly). I one one of the games, because the Stark player was not smart. But in the second game, the stark player was able to sail his ships all the way down to shipbreaker bay, and he eventually ended up winning the game. 

If some of you out there would say it was because of my incompetence, I did not make any mistake, as far as I can tell. I used Salladhor Saan to his fullest capacity, but during the next round stark used eddard stark and killed both of my ships in the narrow sea, leaving only one in East Summer Sea (I had marched my army from dragonstone down to starfall, and later yronwood). After an unlucky clash of kings card, I was 4th on the king's court influence track, and so I could not muster any mor ships, untill after stark had taken dragon stone for good. I do not see what was wrong with my tactics. I think that this is a useful strategy for the stark player, and I think it could be accomplished more often that not. This also left me crippled, and I did not get above 2 castles 'till round 6.

That doesn't really have much to do with the Greyjoy-Lannister problem. Baratheon in a 4-5 player game is a different matter all together. Baratheon have the advantage of being able to capture the south without any resistance.

As far as anyone knows, there is no was to solve the Greyjoy-Lannister problem without changing the board or how Lannister starts. The way I've dealt with it is I always have Greyjoy played by a very fair and seafaring person who doesn't like smashing Lannister as they are too easy. I always play as Lannister and I manage to win later on when I'm secretly gaining strength without him knowing.

I've been playtesting this issue a fair bit - it's damn near impossible for Lannister to win in four/five player assuming all the other players know the rules and are competent players. Four-player is especially broken, with Baratheon usually strolling to victory provided they keep Shipbreaker Bay, followed by Greyjoy who tend to come second due to favouring the Fiefdoms over the Iron Throne when it comes to bidding. We playtested the suggested 'fix' of swapping Greyjoy for Tyrell, only to watch them walk all over Baratheon (Loras is an absolute monster, and a well-used Mace and Queen of Thorns can really ruin a day) and win every time. Lannister reamined pinched, though they were able to build when I always think of as the 'fist'  - a defensive bulwark of Lannisport, Riverrun, Harrenhall, sometimes Seagard and the crucial Stony Sept (an army with a Support order here can defend nearly everywhere). The problem is they can't really risk breaking out of this fist without being taken apart. They did better without Greyjoy, but still didn't - almost couldn't- win.  

We recently got our hands on the Dance for Dragons POD expansion, however. It's a game-changer. Firstly, the Greyjoy have been weakened considerably. Balon is gone, as is Victarion's ship-boosting power. The loss of these two cards no longer guarantees a canny Greyjoy player can waltz all over Lannister. The Lannister deck is also much improved, I'd say - you have swords and towers on more than one card and you get some excellent new powers. The 0-card, Qyburn, takes the combat value and symbols (but not the special rules) of a discarded enemy card for two meagre power tokens - with a bit of timing, that gives you two 3/4 strength cards. One of their strength two cards has a variation of the old Kevan's power - raising the strength of Knights to 3, but only when attacking. It encourages more aggression. But playtesting showed us that the new decks weren't enough to prevent a Baratheon victory in four-player nine times out of ten - the Lannisters are more powerful, but the Greyjoys (weaker, true) are still on their doorstep. Tjhe new Stark deck is a little one-trick pony. It's got Ramsay Bolton (3/4 and three swords. Special rules boost him and make it easy to get him back in yuor hand by losing a fight with the 0 card, Reek) and Roose (4, one sword), giving them an excellent offense. I've not seen them take Shipbreaker bay with them, but that might be a way to break Baratheon… but it would almost certainly cost you Winterfell to an enterprising Greyjoy. 

But there may be a solution. We've started playtesting the Tyrell variant using the new cards, wwth promising results. In our first game it really was anybody's game - every faction was on equal footing in the final turn. It was a great game, too - some castles kept changing hands. The Lannisters actually took Winterfell, which is something I'd not even seen in three-player. The new Tyrell deck is less aggressive, especially without Loras, and has one incredible defensive card (albeit of limited use) and the Queen of Thorns who is now value 1 and removes the opponent's special rule. This works out more defensive, as their nearest neighbours are Baratheon. Their new deck is really shockingly nasty, but very, very situational and reliant on special rules, meaning these two play very well against each other. 

We'll be running a few more playtests, but I'm hopeful that we may actually have balanced the game. 

I find this forum is useful for game lover,and i will come everyday.

Hi, I registered on these forums just to post on this thread.

My gaming group played the first edition of this game addictively for years after it came out.  Probably played it around 50 times.  However, the problem with Lannister was very real, and while some would argue that this makes for "exciting role-playing" or encourages diplomacy, nobody in our group thought it was fun, both to have Lannister in the game, or to play Lannister. 

Since I loved this game, I collaborated with a friend of mine on trying an assortment of house rules over the years to see if we could fix this game in a somewhat elegant fashion without going as drastic as redesiging house cards and territory boundaries.   We got close, but it was never enough. 

The game as it stands is fundamentally flawed, and I say that as a person whom loves this game and always champions it.  I say this in the hopes that FFG will actually delve into the issue and fix it.  I'm not a game developer, I don't like having to try to fix games after the fact, and I am more than willing to pay $ to have it fixed. 

I did so with the second edition.  I had super high hopes that they addressed the Lannister-Greyjoy issue.  Unfortunately, they did not.  I played the second edition only 3 times but it was readily apparent that all the new rules coalsced together to create a very similar Lannister experience to the first game.  The only material difference I've seen is that Greyjoy no longer has a strong contention for winning, and it is almost embarassing how the second edition passed quality control at FFG with regard to Baratheon's now dominating advantages.

Please fix this game, and not with a scenario (I think that is a cop-out).  Either fix the map, tweak the core rules, or errata some stuff.  As it stands now, we haven't played this game in about 3-4 years besides trying the second edition, and a LITTLE bit of attention to fixing the flaw of this game would go a long way in revitalizing interest in this game.

raiden14 said:

Could you plz provide the details of the tyrell variant ?

Are there official setup rules ?

What areas are completely closed off or have Neutral armies ?!?

Thanks

I find it strange that this is being discussed so little, but after 3 games with Lannister I think I can see some clear disadvantages it has, not only compared to Greyjoy but to everyone else: Lannister house cards suck.

Not in terms of combat power, mind you, they have the same numbers as everyone else, but in terms of abilities:

- Cersei has 0 power, yet her ability is conditioned on winning the fight. Well how often can you expect to win the fight by playing a 0 card?! (Especially while using the ToB cards, which my group does.) Maybe once every 3 games? Next to useless. I can't name a single time I've seen this card's ability activated in the 5-6 games I've played so far.

- Tyrion is pretty much only able to block your opponent from using their highest card in hand. Anything else and your best move will typically be to leave their card alone for fear of escalation. With only a power of 1 on your card, this will rarely mean you can gain any combat points on your opponent, most of the time it will just help you cut your losses (get attacked with a 3 instead of a 4, a 2 instead of a 3 etc. - most combinations don't give you any combat advantage with your measly 1 combat point). Not so useless, but still disappointing - feels like a perpetual loser's card.

- Kevan (the most broken of all) doubles the (already small!) power of your footmen once every 7 fights and that's only if you're exactly in the right kind of situation to initiate an attack with enough participating footmen every 7 fights. In order to do this, you pretty much have to squander your supplies and keep around weak armies of footmen for all other 6 out of every 7 fights (when Kevan is discarded), while enemies at the same supply level as you will have happily recruited knights and siege engines instead and will be using them to devastating effect. This card's ability is a catastrophe of bad design. Trying to use it hurts you more than it helps you, you're better off just ignoring the text on the card.

How I would fix the Lannister deck:

- Switch Cersei and Tyrion's abilities. (Both characters use trickery, manipulation and politics in the story, so this should pose no problem.) Tyrion, with his combat power of 1, will be in a somewhat better position to satisfy the "if you win" condition at least some of the time so that the "remove an order from anywhere" ability will no longer be quite so useless.

- Cersei gains the rather disappointing ability to force the enemy to switch their card for any of their others, but now is in an even worse position to benefit from that as she has 0 combat power. This ability needs its own fix: make it force the enemy to switch the first card they've played for another card with strictly lower combat power (or no card at all if a lower-powered one is not available). In most cases this will have the same effect as before - it will prohibit the use of the highest-powered card in hand - but in some other cases it will be clearly better:

* If the enemy for some reason tries to play something other than their best card - probably for its ability - they can now be prevented from doing that without fear of combat power escalation.
* If the enemy tries to use their weakest card at any point, they can be blocked from using any card at all for that combat (whereas before this was only possible if they were down to their last card - a rather narrow window of opportunity that doesn't necessarily sync up with a fight with Lannister). This is a brilliant side-effect because it extends Lannister's ability to slow down Greyjoy's card cycle, which is a bit faster than others due to Aeron. So this would also help specifically with the problem of Lannister-Greyjoy balance.

- Finally, correct Kevan's ability so that it adds +1 power to all participating Lannister knights, not footmen, and this should solve the supply-wasting problem I described above, not to mention it would be a better fit for Kevan's depiction on the card, where he's shown holding the reins of a horse. :P

Any thoughts?

We've had issues with Lannister with the first few games. However, it was always because Lannister and Greyjoy were getting in a neverending war because of their proximity. Now, With a few games under out belt, Lannister and greyjoy don't fight as much as they used to do. I think the problem is that Lannister are harder to play and since they are closer to more people, playing with over-aggressive/new players usually makes for a hard lannister game.

abm said:

wow i would love to see those fixes, they definitely give a kick for lannisters…

however if u switch tyrion with cersei, his combat strength will be zero and as u mentionned the opponent will be forced to play his zero card or nothing which makes it more like balon greyjoy….

No it doesn't, it just improves its power a bit. If you have 3 or more cards in hand you are guaranteed to be able to play one of them and if they're anything other than 1-1-0 or 2-2-0 you will not be reduced to 0. Also, if you have 2 cards left and neither is your 0 you will still be able to use some combat power against Lannister, so again not reduced to 0. Like I said, in most cases it still has the same effects as the current Tyrion card - it prevents you from playing your highest card - but is still far from Balon's power of always reducing you to exactly 0.

And I didn't say the Tyrion and Cersei characters should switch places, only their abilities. It would be wrong to give Cersei a power of 1 as a military commander while Tyrion has 0 of the same. :) No, the characters stay where they are, they only switch abilities (and then Cersei's new ability gets corrected a bit to account for her lack of military power).

I agree with the Jamie house card being underpowered. With my mates, we place one castle icon on that house card so Jamie is 2 + 1 sword + 1 castle

About Lannister +  Greyjoy balance problem: I think it is basically is balanced depending on strategy and chance. I think its an even fight if you manage to anticipate what the other player will do. Lannister raid order in golden sound or lannisport is a must if you want to survive. At first hand, if I see Greyjoy has a march order on the sea, I use the raven to put a march order in the golden sound to pull my ship back to lannisport. This way I can prevent my ship from being destroyed without using and housecards, and ensure that Greyjoy can get no support from golden sound. With this strategy I also move my footman from Stoney Sept to Harrenhal, to muster with Special Consolidate Power. 

I think with the Messenger Raven Lannister can adjust his strategy to counter Greyjoy's movements and with the 3 special orders Lannister is able to place, he can even the odds with special consolidate power mustering. However I do accept that Lannister can get absolutely crushed if he's unlucky or has made a mistake, whereas Greyjoy will not be destroyed even if he makes a mistake or loses a battle. What I'm trying to say is that consequence of winning and losing is not the same. (But the chances of winning and losing are about the same.)  This is why it seems unbalanced I think. 

I have made a PLAY VARIANT that will solve most the issues with the card imbalance:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=252&efcid=1&efidt=630678&efpag=0#631874

TLDR for the wall of text on the link:

Shuffle all the cards and deal them out randomly to players:

4 3 2 2 1 1 and a 0 combat value

The reason most people dont like playing games like "axis and alies" is that the axis player is designed to lose, and only wins with great luck or an incredible tactical error on the opposing force.

There is a lot of "back and forth" regarding the canon of the cards and their values as opposed to what they may seem to be in the lore.

Just remember all this is a game, and the cards and their abilities/values need to be balanced.

Try it out on your next game!