Even if your not playing it right...play it: Game of Thrones

So I sat down for another Game of Thrones Living Card Game matchup last night playing this time House Baratheon. The Baratheon deck I have learned features a LOT of RENOWN abilities. If you win a challenge of ANY type with a RENOWN character you get a power point. As you may or may not know, 15 power points wins the game.

Robert Baratheon alone has a DOUBLE RENOWN ability so the fat soon to be King is rather nasty if he wins a challenge. (Take not that is not his KING card, that is PRE King)

Still trying to get all the rules down we actually finished this game this time around and I lost horribly. While most the rules were done right we ended up with a whole slew of characters on the playing table that should have, if played properly, been killed or at least removed from the game.

The major rule we did wrong was thinking that if you chose not to defend a Military Challenge, you simply gave up a power point and no one got killed. This is entirely wrong and I quote from the book (pay attention to the fine details)

"Unopposed Challenges: During the “Resolve” step of any challenge, if the attacker wins the challenge, and the defender had a total STR of 0 (or no defending characters), then the attacker claims 1 bonus power for his or her House from the power pool. This bonus power is in addition to all other effects of winning a challenge." So, if the attacker wins the challenge (which is virtually guaranteed if the defender does not declare defenders), the defender has to resolve the claim effects. You cannot "side step" the claim effect (killing characters for a military challenge) by not declaring defenders.

Oops. So yeah, throw up a token defense or do something. Otherwise you will give your opponent free power point AND still lose someone.

I played against a House Targaryen deck and the stealth function is brutal. Basically every turn the stealth feature on a card lets that player pick one of my defenders and claim them illegible for defense. Thusly the House Targ player bypassed me each turn and slowly sucked my Power Points from me. Game ended rather swiftly. Now I know though that a Military Deck CAN be quite nasty as SOMEONE is always going to die at least. Maybe even more depending on the CLAIM value on the Plot Card.

This game has endless possibilities and is really one of the deeper card games I have played. Maybe since the Decipher Star Wars game.