Up and down card game

Quinns: In a couple of weeks the 2nd edition of Fantasy Flight’s Game of Thrones: The Card Game, with its direwolves, chunky coins and endless pictures of sultry nobles, will be released. A lot of people are very excited, and with good reason- the 1st edition amassed a cult following, and the 2nd edition looks incredibly sharp.

You won’t be getting our review just yet. As a Living Card Game, this box encourages players to collect monthly expansions and build their own decks, and we want to have conviction when we suggest you get involved (or not). But I can offer some early impressions and comparisons to the LCGs that this site has gone on the record as recommending, namely the bizarre Doomtown and the sublime Netrunner (on the subject, Paul will have a review of Plaid Hat’s new card game Ashes in the next few weeks).

So let’s begin. How do you win the Game of Thrones?

I’m thrilled to say that it’s by being an appropriately sneaky f***.

Caveat: I’ve not played the 1st edition, so while I’ll touch on what they’ve added, I won’t be talking about the many improvements they’ve made. For that you want to go here, click “read more” and scroll down to “What are the differences?”

The immediate simplification I want to make is that Game of Thrones: The Card Game is like Magic: The Gathering except you’re fighting your opponent on three fronts. The characters that you play from your hand have a “strength” value, but also big coloured buttons above it showing whether they can be used in fights for Military, Intrigue or Power. As you’d expect, Ned Stark contributes a vast reserve of strength to your military and power struggles, but he’s about as much use in clandestine spywork as a high-visibility jacket.

If you wouldn’t have guessed that, because you've somehow trundled through the 21st century neither having watched or read Game of Thrones nor absorbed the spoilers through osmosis, you’re going to miss out on an awful lot of the fun here.

The colourful themes of card games aren’t just set dressing. They’re vital for drawing players into the game, and as new cards come out they’re responsible for brand new interactions that are dramatic, thought-provoking or laugh out loud funny. In my first game of 2nd edition my Lannister opponent played a “The Things I Do For Love” card, except in our alternate history he pushed a puppy out of a window.

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