Game of Thrones Guide 

The game takes place concurrently with season 1 of Game of Thrones, and switches between two characters, Alester Sarwyck and Mors Westford. Alester, a knight, was the heir to Sarwyck, a lordly house under Lannister, but had fled to Essos 15 years before, being traumatized by an unspecified event at the end of Robert's Rebellion. During that time, he became a priest of R'hllor. He returns to Riverspring, his home, after hearing of his father's death. Mors Westford is one of the best rangers of the Night's Watch, and prior to that, he was one of the best knights serving House Lannister. Near the end of Robert's Rebellion, he refused a direct order to kill Elia Martell and her two infants, thereby putting his family's lives in danger. He sent his wife and daughter into hiding and was persuaded to join the Night's Watch to avoid execution. Mors is also a skinchanger, and has a dog which he can control at will.Alester, at his father's funeral, learns that his younger brother Gawen was recently disinherited, and has gone missing following his father's death. Gawen is suspected of murdering his father with poison. Meanwhile, Alester's half-brother, Valarr Hill, a bastard and a knight of the queen's guard, is engaged to Alester's sister, Elyana, and is set to become Riverspring's next lord, which Alester is determined to stop. As the funeral ends, a riot occurs among starving peasants. Alester takes command of the city guard and uses either force or negotiation to end the riot. Alester then leaves for King's Landing to search for clues about Gawen's disappearance.

While there, he is arrested by the City Watch at Valarr's instigation. Varys helps him escape and meet with Queen Cersei, who decides to hire him for secret missions, and to make him compete against Valarr. The two are sent to kill a bastard named Harry Waters, who is protected by Jon Arryn's knights, led by Godric Donnerly. With Godric dead, they learn that Arryn was protecting another woman and sent her to the Wall. Valarr sends his lieutenant Yohn to impersonate Godric and find this woman. Alester then encounters Lord Arwood Harlton, who offers to help find Gawen. They find a genealogical book which proves that the queen's children are illegitimate. Alester searches the sewers for Gawen but finds bandits sent by Janos Slynt. Alester infiltrates the City Watch and finds a Gawen's corpse, and a letter showing that Slynt was hired by Valarr. At this point, Harlton reveals that he is part of a conspiracy to reinstate the Targaryens, as was Alester's father. Alester joins and goes to Harlton's estate, Castlewood.

Some character models, specifically Mors’ dog, look absolutely awful and animations can range from stiff to ridiculous. Occasionally you’ll cue a violent cinematic kill when you defeat the last of a group of opponents, but if you never switch weapon types throughout your experience you’ll always see the one animation.Combat features a surprisingly robust amount of options that you can seemingly use to build your character with, but in execution you’ll rely on little more than a handful of repetitive tactics to ensure victory. Most battles begin with hitting the L1 or R1 button to slow down the action. During these moments enemies will still slowly move keeping the intensity of the moment alive and allow you to strategically plan your attack. You do this by switching between characters and setting them to use a specific set of attacks before exiting the slow-down mode and returning to normal speed while you wait for your energy to recharge.Victories against a large group can make you feel like a master tactician until you realize that you’re only using about 3 or 4 attacks over and over again. Knock someone down, make them bleed, stab the wound, or knock someone down, make them bleed, set them on fire.

Each player receives an army of Footman, Knight, Siege Engine, and Ship units, as well as a set of Order tokens and other necessary components. Each player also receives a deck of unique House Cards, which are used as leaders in battles against rival Houses.Each round in the game is made up of three phases: the Westeros Phase, the Planning Phase, and the Action Phase. The Westeros Phase represents special events and day-to-day activities in Westeros. There are three different Westeros Decks, and each denotes a different global action, potentially affecting all players.The Planning Phase is perhaps the most important. Here you secretly assign orders to all of your units by placing one order token face down on each area you control that contains at least one unit (Knight, Footman, Ship, or Siege Engine). This portion of the game emphasizes diplomacy and deduction. Can you trust the alliance that you made? Will you betray your ally and march upon him? Players may make promises to each other (for aid or peace, for example), but these promises are never binding. The result is tense and compelling negotiations, often ending in backstabbing worthy of Westeros!During the Action Phase, the orders are resolved and battle is entered! When armies meet in combat, they secretly choose one of their House cards to add strength to the battle. Finally, the Houses can consolidate their power in the areas they control and use that power in future turns to influence their position in the court of the Iron Throne and to stand against the wildling Hordes.

Each card has values in one to three categories  military, intrigue, or power, and you can use any of those to fight a challenge, with the rewards differing by what type of challenge you win. If you lose a military challenge, you must kill off (remove) a character from your board. If you win a power challenge, you give a power token or several to the winning player  and you get a bonus token if you win any challenge unopposed. The first player to get 15 tokens wins, but it can take a while to get there, up to two hours, because of all of the back and forth involved. The rules are a bit long too, but the game flows well once all players understand 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 ever waiting long to do anything, because almost every player’s move is going to affect at least one opponent. The base game plays three to five, but with three players it’s kind of pointless — two players can form an alliance and knock the third one out or just weaken him to make it a two-player contest.  Each person starts with a unique setup tied to his/her House and a few units, but you get to muster new units in randomly determined rounds, based on the supplies offered by the areas you control. With more than three players, alliances can form more easily, and third-party players can offer support in combat that occurs adjacent to their forces, so negotiations become significant, whereas in a three-player game they’re less useful.

Most will probably not get this far as you’ll spend the bulk of your time with Game of Thrones staring at what looks like a last generation title. Some character models, specifically Mors’ dog, look absolutely awful and animations can range from stiff to ridiculous. Occasionally you’ll cue a violent cinematic kill when you defeat the last of a group of opponents, but if you never switch weapon types throughout your experience you’ll always see the one animation. Speaking of repetitiveness, a surprising amount of the character models looked extremely similar, and during some scenes you’ll witness three of four clones of the exact same model doing something. This is more forgivable if it’s in a large group of background characters, but when it’s seen during one of the in-game cut scenes and the triplets are front and center, it’s just laziness on the developer’s part. Victories against a large group can make you feel like a master tactician until you realize that you’re only using about 3 or 4 attacks over and over again. Knock someone down, make them bleed, stab the wound, or knock someone down, make them bleed, set them on fire. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Also, you cannot load a save during battle, so if you’ve made a mistake or lost a character during an escort mission you’ll need to wait until you’re killed to restart.