From there, we needed to identify the elements that we felt were holding the game back. Each of the following can be trimmed to make the the final product more appealing:
•Moribund. If one word encapsulates the layers of confusion and frustration and eye-rolling that are associated with the AGoT timing rules, that word is moribund. Originally released a couple years into the life of the CCG era as a solution to inconsistencies and paradoxes that emerged in the CCG cardpool, “moribund timing” was never an intended part of the game’s design. Rather, these rules were reverse engineered from the cardpool as a practical means of solving fundamental problems the game’s language was having at that time. Because the solution did its job, it stuck, and has been a major sticking point for many players who seek to understand how and why things work the way they do to this day. Re-engineered timing rules will replace “moribund” and thereby make the game far more straightforward and user-friendly.
•Influence was designed during the CCG era as a mechanic to provide players with a persistent resource engine to use throughout a game round, as each player’s gold did not last beyond the marshalling phase. The introduction of persistent gold and the taxation phase made the need for influence obsolete, but as the core set was originally designed as an expansion in the CCG era, influence made its way into the LCG version of the game. With the new edition, influence no longer carries a necessary function, and is being discontinued.
•With the exception of the shadow crest, crests are little more than “glorified traits.” To simplify the game’s learning curve, we are cutting them from the new edition.
•Other timing quirks such as a special class of response (the “save/cancel response”) and the dreaded “passive effect with a trigger” are being cleaned up and re-templated in a more user-friendly manner.
•The first edition suffers from a fair amount of keyword bloat, with far more keywords than a healthy game needs, especially when you are trying to teach that game to new players. In the new edition, we are trimming the excess in this area, and moving forward with a smaller set of the most essential and interesting keywords.



Finally, we identified a number of areas where we felt we had an opportunity to improve the game experience by making a revision or adjustment. These areas are:
•The attachment card type. Historically, attachments have been regarded as a “weak” cardtype among competitive players. They harm a deck’s flops, and they have an extra layer of fragility when compared to other cardtypes. In the new edition, we are taking some steps--one of which is making the effect of the “setup” keyword a built in aspect of the attachment cardtype--to make these cards a more viable subset of the card pool.
•The gold curve. With a few outliers, the majority of the cardpool for the first edition lies in the 0 to 5 gold cost range. And most of the cards used in competitive decks lie in the 0 to 3 gold cost range, with only a few key slots in these tournament decks being devoted to higher cost cards. In the new edition, we are stretching the game’s cost curve, so that more gold is available to players and more cost slots are relevant when building decks.
•The draw cap was added to the game in late 2003, as a “band-aid” to rein in abusive draw decks. It’s a functional fix, but is not elegant in that it forces players to keep an untracked memory count of drawn cards throughout the course of each game round. For the new edition, we are doing away with the draw cap and replacing it with a more elegant and dynamic check against abusive card accumulation strategies by adding a reserve value to each plot card that caps its owner’s hand size in the taxation phase.
•Plot deck building. When building a plot deck in the new edition, players are able to run a second copy of any one plot card in the deck. This allows for the construction of more specialized plot decks, and also maintains a bit more in-game uncertainty: the first time a player sees a plot card, that player can no longer eliminate the possibility of seeing that plot again until the used pile cycles around. Some plots--like Valar Morghulis--may be excluded from this option for balance reasons by a “max 1 per plot deck” restriction.
•Treaties. The gold penalty is a clunky means of addressing “faction mixing,” and no treaty or alliance agenda yet printed has felt completely right. A new loyalty mechanic combined with the ability to select a support faction in lieu of another agenda makes combining factions a more balanced and viable option than we have yet experienced.
•The factions. We decided that there was room in the game for more than 6 factions, and are expanding and adjusting the color pie accordingly. (To help narrow your speculation: House Brax will not be a core faction.)
•The new edition also showcases a veritable feast of gorgeous original artwork and striking new graphic design.