A Game of Thrones: The Board Game

Learning to play the Game of Thrones board game

In which I do not explain how to play the game, because that would be a different and considerably longer blog.

A few weeks ago, we here at UysFaber decided to try playing the 2^ndedition of the Game of Thrones board game (read: the boss decided we were going to play, and the rest of us decided it was a fine alternative to real work).

The original plan was to learn the game as we went along, consulting the rulebook as necessary. As I admired the 30-page book, quick-reference sheets, detailed game board, and (literally) hundreds of pieces, I decided that perhaps this wasn’t the best idea. I opted to take the rulebook home with me, read it, and then teach the others how to play the next day.

It turns out that this was a very good idea.

Altogether, it probably took me about an hour just to read through all the rules. And after that, I still wanted to skim through it the next day before attempting to play and teach the game. After spending somewhere around 30-60 minutes sorting out the many different tokens and cards, I tried to cover all the rules and information that I thought players needed to know before starting the game. Then, finally, we began playing. I explained the other rules as we went, often flipping through the rulebook when I couldn’t remember how something worked.

For those of you who want to try playing this for the first time, I suggest you set aside a lot of time for this part. It takes a while to read through the rulebook, and the game will go slowly while everyone is still learning. Also, just sorting out the many, many different pieces will take a long time. There are:

• 138 units (footmen, ships, etc.),
• 81 cards, and
• 266 cardboard tokens.

Nearly all of these need to be sorted by house, and that’s not counting the optional 24 cards that make the game harder. We stayed away from those—there was already enough to learn without throwing them into the mix.

If you have the time, I would recommend having all of the players read through (or at least skim) the instruction book beforehand—it will make the game start sooner and move faster. Of course, I know that’s not likely to happen. Our method, with me learning how to play and then teaching everyone else, seemed to work fairly well. It resulted in quite a lot of talking for me, but it was definitely smoother than it would have been if all of us tried to pick it up as we went along. I can’t imagine what the game would have been like if we’d tried that!

I’d also suggest letting players take back their moves and change their minds (to a certain degree, at least). When everyone’s learning, people are going to make mistakes. If someone misunderstands the meaning of one of their pieces or forgets to leave a token behind to mark an area as theirs, it doesn’t hurt to let them fix their mistake, and it will make the learning experience more enjoyable.

After all my warnings of how long it takes to learn, you may be worrying that this is a very challenging game to play. However, it isn’t too hard once you understand the rules. After I had read through the rulebook once, the mechanics made sense to me and the process seemed pretty straightforward. There are a lot of different pieces, a lot of steps in each turn, and just a lot of things that you need to keep track of, but that doesn’t actually make the game hard to play. Once you have those things straight (or just keep checking the reference sheet), it isn’t difficult to get the hang of.

If you want a game that’s quick to set up and easy to introduce new players to, this is definitely not the game for you. However, if you’ve got the time (I’d say at least 3 or 4 hours if you’re teaching new people) and your players have the patience, it’s a fun game to play. Just be prepared to field a lot of questions, and keep that rulebook close at hand.

And remember: you win or you die.