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A Game Of Thrones |  | Brand: Fantasy Flight Games
Category: Toy
New (16) from $39.99
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 4749
Edition: Brdgm
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Age: 12 - 100 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.4
Dimensions (in): 11.8 x 3 x 11.8
MPN: FFGVA03
Model: 5511217
ISBN: 1589941039
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
UPC: 699788109038
EAN: 9781589941038
ASIN: 1589941039
Publication Date: June 2003
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| Features:
| • | Tons of replay value | | • | For 3-5 players | | • | Strategy game | | • | Plays in 2-3 hours | | • | Top quality components |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games Designer: Christian T. Petersen Number of Players: 3-5 Playing time: 2 to 3 hours Ages: 12 & up Overview: Take the roles of the Lords and Ladies of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire as they struggle to win control of the Iron Throne and the lands of Westeros. As the head of one of the Great Houses, players use a combination of battlefield strategy, political maneuvering, and sheer will to take the shards of a broken kingdom and forge them in a realm that answers to you and you alone! In the fine tradition of Diplomacy, Game of Thrones places the mass attack thinking of Risk aside, choosing to hold to a higher standard of clever strategy and ruthless cunning. With excellent design standards and excellent gameplay, this is sure to become a standard in the upper end of strategy board games. Other games you might like: Diplomacy, Warcraft: The Boardgame, Lord of the Rings Risk, Age of Mythology
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 Great Story, Great Game December 23, 2004
Colleen Messer (Jacksonville, FL)
25 out of 27 found this review helpful
This is a great game. If you like games of strategy with a great story behind it, this is the game for you. The game doesn't require that you have read the books though. If you've read the books then you'd probably agree with me that this board game really brings out the best of the books. It's a very well designed game. Honestly this game is very balanced and it's hard for one player to run away with it. It's fun. A lot of fun. And yes... Winter is coming...
Not to be taken lightly November 17, 2005
E. Davis (Sierra Foothills, CA USA)
26 out of 29 found this review helpful
The wonder of this game is matched only by it's complexity. To compare it's similarites with Risk, the only other strategy board game I have played, is to say they both have armies. The differences then take flight with an innovative battle system which involves no luck only strategy, ships to give a whole new element to consider with the transport and aid they offer, a system of bidding for three seperate offices which greatly affect the players ablities to operate on the field of battle. Consider before purchusing the depth of the game, as not only dose it take time to memorize the rules but the game itself takes time to set up with its many pieces. Yet there is no board game I have ever played that rewards skill rather than chance the way this one dose. Simple games are fun to pass the time, but to play A Game Of Thrones is a rich and rewarding exsperiance. All in all it takes one game to fully comprehend the game and it's workings and after that things go much smoother as exsperiance grows. To me worth every cent.
Novel War Game August 6, 2007
Dennis G. Voss Jr. (Lexington, KY USA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
As an experienced gamer who has tried out a wide range of strategy-oriented products, I have found the Game of Thrones to be an especially strong one (which is fairly surprising given that it was not designed as a stand-alone product but instead grows out of a series of genre novels). It is a nice game in all of the superficial ways: gorgeous board, sturdy and attractive pieces, strong box in a convenient size to add to shelf and with attractive artwork that would make you proud to have it there. But what especially impressed me is the overall unity of the design.
Most niche board games come with extremely thick manuals filled with idiosyncratic rules to govern every situation. They may be enjoyable, but they take forever to learn and you generally cannot get non-gamers to invest the time. We feared this game would be the same, but I sat down with my wife, kids, and a family friend so that we could walk through the manual and we quickly realized that the rules were especially consistent and logical. Even my 12-year-old daughter picked them up quickly.
If you're looking for a comparison, I'd say that among the traditional war games this one most closely resembles Diplomacy, and anyone who has played Diplomacy will find the rules particularly comfortable to learn. The action choices are similar, and determined in advance in a similar fashion. Randomness plays little role in battle outcomes. And, like Diplomacy, the game even permits the addition of a negotiation session as players make non-binding deals with one other.
But don't take these comparisons too far. This isn't Diplomacy with a new thematic overlay. It would take too long to go into all the unique features of this game, but I'll highlight three big ones:
(1) Different territories offer different resources: Troops, Supplies, Power. If you also factor in whatever direct military advantage taking a territory might bring, the result is that players must make uncertain choices about which advantages to pursue and when to pursue them.
(2) Players periodically bid for positions of political influence that can help them out later, producing a nice tension between saving your resources vs. investing them in gaining potentially useful advantages.
(3) A group of savages called "wildlings" will attack occasionally, threatening all the players at once. The rules set up an intriguing collective-action problem: Contribute too much to repelling the invasion, and your rivals will have gained a relative advantage. Contribute too little and the marauders roam the countryside, killing your people before they return home.
Does the game have problems? We've noticed one: The arrival of troops and supplies is governed by event cards, so sometimes a strategy will be stymied not because of any strategic error but because the needed card stubbornly refuses to pop up. But, by the odds, that kind of difficulty would only appear in a small percentage of games.
Finally, please note that I have not read the George R.R. Martin novels that served as a point of departure for this game. I cannot testify to its level of success capturing the world depicted in the books, only its success at creating a fun and exciting gaming environment. At that task the game designers have succeeded brilliantly.
Excellent game requiring a balanced mix between battlefield cunning and diplomacy. December 22, 2008
B. Dougherty (Boston)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I play this game about once a year with friends and have never been disappointed with the amount of fun that has resulted. I have never read the books but it has not taken away one bit from the enjoyment of the game. The game itself takes about 3-6 hours to play all the way through, depending on how deeply the people you play with like to think about their actions. Allow yourself about another hour on top of that to read through the instruction manual before you play, as there are likely to be many circumstances requiring you to peruse through the booklet during gameplay. The entire game consists of 10 "turns". The beginning few turns usually take longer because everyone is still rusty with the instructions, and the last few turns take equally as long because more pieces are on the board and thus require more strategic thinking. The game is extremely balanced and even seemingly insignificant actions by each player can end up making huge differences all within one turn. The one who takes the lead early in the game is rarely the one that ends up winning!
Like the novels this game is great!! December 10, 2008
M. M. Nicodemos
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I haven't read all the books in the Song of Ice and Fire series but I don't think that is necessary to enjoy this game. The game is easy to setup and the rulebook and rules aren't as complicated as other Fantasy Flight Games. And this game is ideal for over three players but still enjoyable enough with just three.
Each player plays as one of the major houses from the book and the objective is to control the most strongholds by the end of the game. The game is divided into ten rounds and each round is composed of phases. The first phase is a martial phase followed by a planning phase where players place their orders for the current round. In the next phase players take turns executing their orders and in the final phase players make arrangements for a new game round. Most of the action takes place during the execute orders phase where players can move troops, attack to control territory, collect power tokens, as well as other strategic orders such as raid, defend, and support nearby troops in combat. There are other rules such as drawing cards at the beginning of each game round. When cards are drawn, they can trigger specific events and conditions that affect the overall game. Cards can also allow mustering of troops and reinforcements, voting on the three power icons of the game: the Iron Throne, the Valyrian Sword, and the Raven, whose name I forget at the moment. Each power icon grants special abilities for the player who controls them. There are other situations where players must vote and give power in order to prevent changes in the game.
This game is as much of a tactical strategy game as it is a negotiation and game of voting with power tokens. Players for the most part are competing against one another but in certain situations can cooperate to gain an advantage against other players. The game is not overly complex and is a must for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire series. The game can last around 3 to 4 hours and as previously stated is ideal for more than three players but still enjoyable with just three.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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