Draft play has long allowed players to experience the excitement of competing to form a deck of cards from a limited card pool. Recently, our in-house manufacturing has allowed us to bring draft play to your battles for the Iron Throne in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game .

For those who have never drafted, a draft begins with each player purchasing a Draft Starter and a Draft Pack. Players open their randomized Draft Packs simultaneously and look at the top ten cards. Each player chooses one card to “draft,” and passes the remaining nine cards to his neighbor. Drafting and passing continues, changing directions with each new group of ten cards, until the Draft Packs are depleted. Once all cards are drafted, players construct decks using their drafted cards and the cards in their Draft Starter and play a series of games against other players in the draft.

Today, guest writer Jonathan Andrews, an avid player of A Game of Thrones and a co-host of the Beyond the Wall podcast, shares his strategies for drafting in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game !

Jonathan Andrews on A Game of Thrones Drafts

Drafting presents a unique challenge to both new and veteran players of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game , forcing you to build your deck from a very limited card pool. As a drafter, there are a couple key concepts to remember while choosing your cards:

• Know the cards. You can probably find a list of the cards in the draft online, and you’ll want to read them, memorize them, and make sure you understand how they interact. This information lets you play better during games, and it gives you an idea of what decks are possible to create with the limited card pool. You’ll need to steer clear of concepts or deck ideas that the card pool can’t support. Trying to build a characterless deck in a draft is probably a bad idea.
• Pick up the bombs. A bomb is a very powerful card that’s hard for your opponent to deal with. If your opponent can’t answer your bomb quickly, it can easily win you the game. The Red Viper ( Westeros Draft Set ) is a great example of a bomb.
• When unsure of what to draft, don’t forget the B.R.E.A.D. acronym. This means that, as a general rule, you want to pick cards in this order: Bombs, Removal, Efficient characters, Attachments, and Dregs
• Good drafting makes your deck consistent while maximizing the use of your powerful cards. This means you want to keep the majority of your deck to one or two Houses. Any more Houses than this and you risk destroying your cost curve and setup. It’s also important to balance your deck’s power with its consistency. A good general rule is that a standard draft deck of forty cards should have twenty-two characters, nine resource locations and nine other cards, including attachments, events, and non-resource locations.

Advanced Draft Strategies

There are a number of advanced strategies that players can use while drafting that may not be readily apparent to new drafters. Some of these strategies are listed below:

Signaling is the act of passing or receiving a group of cards with a very clear ideal pick. Signaling can help you or another player choose a House that no one close to you is drafting. It’s normally best to avoid drafting the same House as neighboring players to ensure that you and they all build better decks. Fighting your neighbors over a single House’s key cards renders everyone’s decks less potent.

If you’re passed a clear signal, not taking it can be risky, since the player passing to you now believes you’re playing a certain house (since they sent a signal), and they may try to avoid playing that House themselves. The signals you send and receive give you an idea of which Houses other players are drafting, informing your choices in the early rounds of the draft.

Cutting off means preventing a player from seeing any worthwhile cards from a given House. This is generally done by aggressively taking these cards yourself. Of course, sometimes there will be too many worthwhile cards of a single House and you won’t completely cut a player off. The desired result, however, is to influence other players to cement themselves into a different House than you, so that in later draft rounds they pass over plenty of top cards in your House of choice. Of course, the ultimate value of this strategy depends heavily on the amount of worthwhile cards for your chosen House in later rounds of the draft.

Long-ranging means making decisions based on cards you hope will be passed back to you when a group of cards comes back around the circle. In most drafts, you’ll see the last few cards from your first card groups again, allowing you to plan ahead somewhat. Although the cards that return to you are generally weaker cards, it’s important to have a sense of what might return. Knowing that a card you want is generally unpopular, for example, may justify taking another card, since the unpopular card will likely return. Long-ranging is more useful and reliable the fewer players drafting, since you’ll need to predict fewer picks.

Hate-drafting refers to taking cards without the intention of playing them. Players normally do this to prevent another player from using a powerful card. For example, if a card group contains nothing for your House, but it does contain Balon Greyjoy ( Westeros Draft Set ), you may choose to hate-draft.

Hate-drafting isn’t very profitable, since it is generally better to increase the strength of your own deck than try to hurt another player’s deck. In the games that you play after the draft, everyone enjoys the advantage you create by hate-drafting, but only you pay the price. Generally, the best time to hate-draft is if a card specifically counters your deck and there is virtually nothing for your deck in the card group.

Adapting means making decisions early in the draft to keep your options open, rather than sending a clear signal and confining yourself to a certain House. Players tend to do this by selecting neutral or multi-House cards early in the draft. The idea behind adapting is that you will have a chance to sense the climate of the draft before choosing a House, reducing the risk that you’ll be stuck in one House while great cards from another keep turning up. The downside to this is that you normally have to take sub-optimal picks early. Players tend to use adapting when their first few card groups have strong neutral cards or no strong cards at all. They can then continue to keep their options open until the second or third card groups.

I hope you have the chance to put these advanced draft strategies to use in your next draft for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game !

Conquer the Iron Throne

Thanks, Jon!

Draft play offers a unique and exciting way to experience A Game of Thrones: The Card Game . There are now two draft pools for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game : the Ice and Fire draft pool and the new Westeros draft pool. Practice your strategies and gain the Iron Throne at your next draft!

Look for more A Game of Thrones strategy articles in coming months.

Based on George R.R. Martin's bestselling fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones: The Card Game , playable by 2-4 players, brings the beloved heroes, villains, locations, and events of the world of Westeros to life through innovative game mechanics and the highly strategic game play. The Living Card Game format allows players to customize their gaming experience with monthly Chapter Pack expansions to the core game.