Which Game of Thrones Board Game Is Right for Your Business firm?

Game of Thrones just wrapped up its penultimate season, with reports that the last season might not air until 2019. If you're staring at the Long Nighttime in terror and need a GOT fix, y'all could wait for George R.R. Martin to cease the next book — ha! — or you lot could try one of these five GOT-themed board games, some of which do a expert chore of integrating aspects of the characters and stories into their mechanics … and some of which don't.

Cost: $56.98
Number of players: three–6
Length of gameplay: 2–4 hours

My first rule of lath games is that the enjoyment level offered by a game is inversely proportional to the length of its rule book. There are exceptions, of grade, merely as a general heuristic I detect information technology'southward pretty accurate. The Game of Thrones board game has a 28-page dominion volume, which I retrieve qualifies it for the Best Novel category in the Hugo awards, and the rules are dumbo and also complicated in parts.

Set on a map of Westeros, the GOT board game pits 3 to 6 players confronting each other to fight for control of the various regions, with the first player to control vii areas with castles or strongholds the winner. (If no one gets there, the game ends, mercifully, after ten rounds.) With three players, everyone starts a little distance apart, so yous might go three rounds without gainsay while everyone spread out, just with five or half dozen players you're going to smash into each other quickly. Each person starts with a unique setup tied to his/her Firm and a few units, but you get to muster new units in randomly adamant rounds, based on the supplies offered past the areas you control. With more than three players, alliances can form more easily, and tertiary-party players can offer support in combat that occurs side by side to their forces, so negotiations become pregnant, whereas in a 3-player game they're less useful.

Ultimately, the game itself doesn't need to exist as difficult as its tome of a rule volume would suggest. This is a Adventure-plus area-command game with a scrap of resource management thrown in, though the combat organisation slows things down besides much, dragging players from "playing" into "accounting." The Game of Thrones story and characters are moderately integrated into gameplay, particularly the map and settings themselves. Each histrion gets a deck of cards with characters on them to be used in gainsay, with abilities tied to the characters' traits. But actually, the evidence connection is much more a function of putting you into Westeros than incorporating whatsoever of the story or the personalities themselves.

Toll: $31.91
Number of players: 2–half-dozen
Length of gameplay: ane–2 hours

This is both the best Game of Thrones–themed game on the marketplace and the one that best integrates the content of the series into gameplay. This version of the game, start sold in 2015, is a Living Card Game™ , a specific manner of deck-building game developed by Fantasy Flight. It's like to Magic: The Gathering but without the collectible aspect — in other words, there aren't cards that are deficient and selling for hundreds of dollars on the secondary market place, which I think takes Grand:TG way across a game into the kind of thing that causes knife fights. Fantasy Flight has a series of LCGs, which are "living" because the company regularly problems expansion packs of new cards, including Android: Netrunner, Star Wars: Destiny, and the large striking of 2017's GenCon gaming convention, Legend of the Five Rings.

The GOT card game pits ii to four players against each other, with each player starting with a deck that contains cards from two houses (in the base game — expansions will vary this). It's specially sharp as a ii-histrion duel, although it does work with more than players, only requiring more fourth dimension to get to the victory condition. Each player builds a tableau of character cards, upgrading them with other cards that add weapons or special abilities, and uses them to attack the other player or to defend confronting attacks. In each round, players depict a "plot card" that sets some new ground rules, affecting income, powers, and thus strategy for the ensuing circular. You tin can activate certain cards once per round to use their abilities but thus lose them for the remainder of the round.

The attacks, called "challenges," are the meat of this and every other LCG I've ever played: To borrow a line from Arch Enemy, this is fucking state of war. Each card has values in one to iii categories — armed services, intrigue, or ability, and you tin utilise any of those to fight a challenge, with the rewards differing by what type of claiming you lot win. If you lose a armed forces challenge, you lot must kill off (remove) a character from your lath. If you win a power claiming, y'all give a power token or several to the winning actor — and y'all get a bonus token if you win any challenge unopposed. The kickoff player to get xv tokens wins, but it can take a while to get there, up to two hours, because of all of the dorsum and along involved.

The rules are a flake long likewise, only the game flows well once all players empathise the guidelines, especially for challenges. I've seen this and other LCGs played by experienced players at tournaments, and turns happen fast. You're also rarely if e'er waiting long to do annihilation, because almost every player's move is going to bear upon at least i opponent.

And this game really takes the writing of the books and bear witness into business relationship: Character cards and traits reflect those of the source material. Some characters have special abilities, such every bit Insight (Danaerys) or Stealth (Maester Wendamyr); some just have abilities that lucifer their written personae (Jaime Lannister, who will not "kneel" in a challenge). In that location's also a fair amount of balancing the need to defend yourself against setting up an engine for repeated attacks to endeavour to win the back and forth that dominates the game. If y'all're afraid you'll miss GOT while information technology's off air, this is the game most likely to give you lot the ready you want.

Toll: $42.95
Number of players: 3–v
Length of gameplay: thirty–60 minutes

This game focuses on the alliances and betrayals of the series, as each role player represents one firm and will appoint in "encounters" with other houses that tin lead to temporary alliances, deaths, exchanges of influences, or a figurative pocketknife in your back.

On your plough, yous describe an event card to encounter which opponent yous'll face, then each of you chooses one of your characters to participate in the run across. Every other histrion gets the risk to offer one of his/her characters as support to either side — then making alliances can be critical — while the 2 active players can negotiate and talk over whether they're playing Hostility cards or Truce cards. If both play Hostility cards, the players add up the points on their side — their played cards, their played character values, and the added values of any supporting characters — and the larger total wins, with the winning actor placing an influence token on the losing actor's board and then taking a menu as a "earnest" from the loser. The players tin agree to both play Truce cards, only something has to change hands in the process, such equally ane player agreeing to give power tokens to the other, or 1 player placing an influence token on the other's board without hostilities. Someone can lie, however, in a Expose action, playing a Hostility card after they've both agreed to a truce. That player wins the encounter with the usual spoils, except this time, the losing histrion gets to have a hostage bill of fare from the winning player.

Play continues until one histrion has placed all 5 of his/her influence tokens on other players' boards, or until all iv of 1 actor'southward characters are killed (losing all ability tokens on each carte). Whoever has the most influence on others' boards is the winner.

If any of this sounds familiar to the one-time-timey gamers amidst you, that'south because The Iron Throne is built on the framework of the classic game Cosmic Encounter, offset released in 1977 and reissued multiple times over the concluding four decades. Some core mechanics are the same, with a new skin and graphic symbol abilities tied somewhat to the GOT canon. The Tyrell House cards tend towards spiteful actions, depriving winners of rewards or allowing the Tyrell player to withdraw from an meet and yet gain some of the spoils. The Lannister cards intensify conflicts by raising hostilities or removing power tokens from opposing characters. The Stark cards are more strategic, involving manus management, moving power tokens, or forcing an opponent to release all of your cards held as hostages. House Baratheon cards ramp upward conflicts in unpredictable means, while Targaryen cards make your side more powerful in hostilities.

The base of operations game plays three to five, but with three players it's kind of pointless — two players tin form an brotherhood and knock the third one out or just weaken him to make it a two-thespian contest. Considering of the high social interaction component, it works meliorate with more players, and this twelvemonth'southward expansion, The Wars to Come, increases the thespian count to 7, which coincidentally is the same number of players as yous demand for Affairs, the original and withal classic game of alliances, betrayals, and hurt feelings. If yous have a larger group of players than the card game can arrange and/or want a quicker game, this is the amend bet.

Price: $17.49
Number of players: 2–4
Length of gameplay: 15–30 minutes

This quick, color-matching game has almost nix at all to with the show or books, and it'due south fun but kind of a trifle. Designed by Bruno Cathala, who won this year's Spiel des Jahres award for his game Kingdomino and co-designed the games vii Wonders Duel and Yamatai, Paw of the Rex has players lay out a 36-card, six-past-6 grid that contains character cards of 6 different colors, representing the six Houses, plus one neutral card with the character Varys. Players and so move Varys in any orthogonal management and take all cards in that management belonging to one specific house. Each house has a different number of cards in its set (7, 6, v, 4, iii, two), and the player with the majority of cards in a house gets its banner, with the winner going to the role player with the about banners. Simply catching the leader of cards in a house gets you the banner, so if yous get the second of the ii Tully character cards, you lot go the banner.

If y'all take the last character on the lath belonging to a specific house, you can choose one of the six "companion" cards, representing side characters from the stories who don't belong to any houses. (Hodor). Each companion card lets you take a special action, from getting an extra plough to stealing a card from another player to taking a card from the grid and removing information technology entirely from the game. That'south as much Game of Thrones content as you'll make it this game, which is really nearly collecting sets and trying to think a motion or two ahead.

Cost: $12.09
Number of players: 2–half dozen
Length of gameplay: 15–thirty minutes

This is the real oddball of the bunch, as prolific designer Reiner Knizia — amongst whose 400-plus titles are Tigris & Euphrates, Ra, Samurai, and the new Quest for El Dorado — rethemed his kids' game Penguin with Game of Thrones artwork. It's a peculiar choice, equally Penguin is considered 1 of Knizia's worst designs; of all of his games ranked on Boardgamegeek, it is the lowest, at No. 14,083 overall. (If you lot're morbidly curious: Of the more fourteen,000 games ranked on the site, the bottom three are Candyland, Snakes & Ladders, and Tic-Tac-Toe.)

Each player starts the game with a mitt of between half dozen and 14 cards, depending on the number of players, and players get effectually placing cards on the table, building a pyramid of cards, placing cards next to whatsoever other card every bit long as they don't exceed the card limit for that row, or placing a card of a sure Business firm (colour) above any other carte du jour of the same Business firm. If y'all can't legally place a carte, yous're eliminated from the round; the final actor to make a legal placement gets a bonus. That's it — at that place couldn't be any less GOT content in here, and you could play the same game with a deck of cards in five unlike colors. No affair how much you love the Thrones, don't waste your time.

Which Game of Thrones Board Game Is Right for Your House?