A Game of Thrones: Board Game

A Game of thrones

Key points:

Players 3-5 (3 doesn't work and 4 needs a bit of altering)
Game Length 3-5 hours
Age 12+

It is a turn based strategy game that depends upon very little luck as there no dice involved and should appeal to those who enjoy in depth strategy war games. It is based off a book series while it is not essential to have read them, it does add to the general depth of the game.

The mechanic work very well with out any dice. There are five categories of orders can be given to your units; March, Defence, support, raid and consolidate power. You only possess three orders in each category so careful planning is required before placing your orders each turn.

Units are very valuable in this game as armies are limited in size my two factors. Firstly each house only has a maximum of 4 knights, 10 footmen and 6 ships. Secondly armies require upkeep(supply), some areas of the board have supply icons, the more supply icons you control the larger your armies can be.

Each House has seven house cards, these are your generals that are used in battle. They can add strength to your army and have different abilities. They are select in secret and reviled at the end of the battle. So card management is extremely important as once a general is played it is discarded until you have used all 7 cards, at which point they are all returned to your hand.

The 5 houses are not balanced, one is over powered. There is an official update to the starting positions of the houses. Having unbalanced houses is very enjoyable and makes the game interesting to play a different house the next game.

Positives
nice mechanics, orders and generals,
no dice so very little luck involved,
small army sizes,
back story to the game (novel based),

Negative
can take rather a long time,
really only works well with 5 players,
not for causal gamers,