New FAQ and Tournament Rules are Available for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

The 2014 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game Organized Play season is building to a crescendo. When the world is at its most chaotic, it is those who plan ahead that will come out unscathed. Will you use your knowledge to gain an advantage over your foe? Or will you fall by the wayside, just another pretender to the throne?

Knowledge can be just as important as armor or a sword; be sure to read the new FAQ (pdf, 2.3 MB) and tournament rules (pdf, 1.5 MB) before heading out to your next tournament.

These changes will go into effect on October 20th, 2014.

A Word from the Developers

Hello A Game of Thrones players!

The 2014 World Championships are just about a month away, and in anticipation of the event we bring you a new FAQ and tournament rules update in an effort to make the environment as competitive and enjoyable as possible.

For new card errata, this update includes four items. The first is an adjustment to Harrenhal (Ancestral Home, 78), which prevents people from getting more than three uses out of the card by taking advantage of the moribund timing rules. This brings the card to a place that is much more intuitive to many players and makes the decision of when to actually invest in using one of its three cancels more interesting and significant. You can no longer simply save one use with the knowledge that you can abuse the card’s moribund state during
the next Valar.

Next, we have adjusted The Brave Companions (Ancestral Home, 79) so that their text works in conjunction with FAQ entry 3.24, which defines the characteristics of facedown attachments; there is no functional change here, the entry simply establishes that the card text is consistent with the rules entry. Finally, we have given “House X only” restrictions to Daenerys Targaryen (Ancestral Home, 76) and to Asha Greyjoy (Where Loyalty Lies, 70). This latter errata also opens the door to remove Asha from the joust restricted list.

In the rules content section, the most significant new entry is the introduction of the copy limit. Over the past couple tournament seasons, we have observed a number of powerful combo decks that, through clever cycling engines, are able to repeatedly play the same card or set of cards in a single phase until a victory condition is gained. To check the “instant-win” potential of these decks, the copy limit establishes that a player cannot play more than three copies (by title) of each card in each phase. There have been a number of players asking for a “three times per phase per ability trigger limit” to be added to the game, and while we investigated such a limit in playtesting, the final decision was that the “copy limit” solution introduced in this document was less intrusive, and carried less overhead bandwidth in moment-to-moment play, while still providing an important check against these instant-win decks.

The Joust restricted list is being updated, with two new cards being added and two cards being removed. Bran Stark (Core Set, 13) has emerged as a particularly effective means of rapidly cycling through River plots, and he is being added to the list to break up the potential of using him in conjunction with Crossing the Mummer’s Ford (Spoils of War, 20). Wheels Within Wheels (A Dire Message, 107) has also had a large impact on the metagame, and it has been added to the list to protect the relative balance between the Lannisters and the other great Houses. Coming off the list, we have the aforementioned Asha Greyjoy (Where Loyalty Lies, 70), who should give a nice boost to the House of the Kraken, and Westeros Bleeds (Core Set, 176), which, with the release of new cancel and protection effects, can now re-enter the metagame as a non-restricted card.

In order to make the environment as exciting as possible, four new cards are being added to the Melee restricted list. Daenerys Targaryen (Queen of Dragons, 22) has been the centerpiece to a strong, stable Melee Dragon presence for years, and the release of the new event card By Sword or By Guile (A Dire Message, 114) pushes this deck over the edge in the Melee environment. Each of these cards is now being added to the Melee restricted list. Melisandre’s Favor (The Horn That Wakes, 63) is also being added, to increase the opportunity cost of using this powerful card in the format when stealing power-laden characters and closing out games. And finally, we are adding Harrenhal (Ancestral Home, 78) to the list to check its prominence in an environment where it can be even more frustrating to combat.

The tournament rules document contains a pair of new entries that document procedures for dealing with an illegal deck and with illegal game states that are discovered during the course of a game.

With this update, we now hope that the table is set for a feast of epic games at this year’s World Championships. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Nate French

Damon Stone

Fantasy Flight Games

Thanks Nate and Damon!

Don’t let yourself arrive at the 2014 World Championships unprepared. Download the new FAQ and tournament rules today so you’ll be ready as you ride into battle.

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