How To Play on The Iron Throne

Introduction

This guide is aimed at players familiar with the A Game of Thrones: The Card Game 2nd Edition who want to start playing online using The Iron Throne platform. If you are new to this cardgame in general, there is a helpful tutorial video, a Learn To Play guide, and a Rules Reference Guide to help you out.

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Adding Decks

Start by making sure you have created an account and are logged in. You must be logged in to add decks and spectate or play games. The Iron Throne has a functional Deckbuilder, although most people use the more fully featured ThronesDB deckbuilder to build their decks. After building your deck on ThronesDB download it as a TXT file, then copy and paste it into the deckbuilder here. You are now ready to start playing. Head over to the Play section to create, join or watch games.

If you are new to Thrones 2.0, you can find an introductory Stark deck here, and an introductory Lannister/Tyrell deck here. Both decks only feature cards from the Core Set. If you are new and using any of these decks to play be sure to check the ‘Beginner’ category when creating your game, so you don’t necessarily get destroyed by an up to date power deck. If that happens anyway, just keep practicing and you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.

Profile Options

Clicking your Profile at the top right of the page allows you to tailor certain aspects of gameplay to your wishes.

Action Windows

Thrones 2nd Edition has quite a large number of phases and their associated action windows, a number of which are not used regularly by all decks. Always prompting these action windows leads to a lot of tediously clicking ‘Pass’, while never prompting these action windows leads to certain cards not being able to be used to their fullest extent. To solve this issue you can check/uncheck any action windows in your profile to determine when you’ll be prompted or not.

For example: if you play cards like The Tickler, Wex Pyke, Messenger Raven or Take the Black in your deck, be sure to check Dominance Actions in your profile. Your action window settings can also be changed during a game by clicking the settings button on the bottom of your screen.

Timed Interrupt Window

The combination of automated gameplay and the ability to play reactions or interrupts from hand has the potential to “leak” information about what your opponent might hold in his hand. For example: if after playing an event there is a pause before it resolves, you might guess correctly that was due to your opponent being prompted to use The Hand’s Judgment. The three most notable cards that would be leaked this way are The Hand's Judgment, Treachery and Vengeance for Elia. To solve this issue, the Timed Interrupt Window was created. Depending on which options you have checked, you get a timed prompt during certain triggers asking for interrupts whether you are able to interrupt these triggers or not. Now your opponent experiences the same pause any time and won’t be able to correctly guess whether you’re holding certain cards anymore.

There are a couple of options: you can decide whether you want to always be prompted for triggered card abilities (useful if you’re playing Treachery), events (useful if you’re playing The Hand’s Judgment, The Pack Survives, etc.) or both. Claim (useful if you’re playing Vengeance for Elia) is currently combined with the event option. The timer duration can be modified too. Obviously, if you don’t care about leaking cards from your hand (or you don’t play these cards anyway) and just want a quick game, deselecting both options will allow for that. You will still get prompted to use the aforementioned cards, but only when you actually have them.

Framework Timing Sheet

Below you will find a sheet summarizing the framework and the timings of the game in a quick reference:

Bugs and automation

While The Iron Throne is still a work in progress, the vast majority of cards are implemented and should be working correctly. We keep a list up to date with unimplemented and partially implemented cards here. If you happen upon a card that you believe is not working as it should and it is not on that list, it would help immensely if you would submit an issue on GitHub. Other comments and/or feedback can be left on GitHub as well.

Specific Card Interactions

Varys' Riddle vs Summer Harvest

CardGameDB rule threads on this interaction: 1, 2.

These plots have a very specific interaction that's implemented a little differently from the official ruling. Officially, X will be defined by both plots and thus will be both 2 and 7. The first player will consequently decide what value X is whenever it gets referenced (a more thorough explanation is detailed in the above links). On The Iron Throne it is implemented a little differently. As the player who revealed Varys&aspos; Riddle, to make sure your opponent&aspos;s value of X will be 2, you have to go first and trigger Summer Harvest first. As the player who revealed Summer Harvest, if the Varys&aspos; Riddle player has made you first player (or you won initiative somehow), you&aspos;d want to trigger Varys&aspos; Riddle first to make sure your X is 7.

Manual Commands

Every once in a while something happens during a game that shouldn’t have happened. This can occur due to a misclick, an unimplemented card or a bug in the software. To fix the game state in such situations a variety of manual commands are implemented. Typing these commands as a chatmessage during a game will have the following effect:

  • /bestow x - Adds x gold to the selected card. You must have enough gold to add.
  • /cancel-challenge - Cancels the current challenge after it has been initiated. Note: both players will need to manually stand any knelt characters and undo any abilities used.
  • /cancel-prompt - Clears the current prompt and resume the game flow. Use with caution and only when the prompt is 'stuck' and you are unable to continue.
  • /discard x - Discards x cards randomly from your hand.
  • /draw x - Draws x cards from your deck to your hand.
  • /give-control - Gives control of a card to your opponent. Use with caution.
  • /give-icon x - Gives a character an x icon; where 'x' is one of 'military', 'intrigue', 'power'.
  • /kill - Kills a character. Use with caution.
  • /move-bottom - Moves a card to the bottom of your draw deck.
  • /move-shadows - Moves a card to your shadows area.
  • /pillage - Discards the top card from your deck.
  • /power x - Sets the power of a card to x.
  • /rematch - Start over a new game with the current opponent.
  • /remove-from-game - Removes a card from the game.
  • /reveal-hand - Reveals your hand to the opponent.
  • /strength x - Sets the strength of a card to x.
  • /take-icon x - Takes an x icon from a character; where 'x' is as per '/give-icon'.
  • /token t x - Sets the token count of a card of type 't' to 'x'. Currently used token types are: 'bell', 'betrayal', 'ear', 'ghost', 'gold', 'journey', 'kiss', 'poison', 'prayer' 'stand', 'tale', 'valarmorghulis', 'vengeance' and 'venom'.
  • /mute-spectators - Mutes spectators so they can´t use the chat. Using this command a second time enables the chat again.
  • /pause-clock - Pauses/Unpauses all players clocks until /pause-clock is used again.
  • /add-chess-clock-time x - Adds x seconds to the players chess clock timelimit.

About Stats, Conceding, and Leaving Games

The Iron Throne does not rank and/or match players by skill level in any way. There are three categories (beginner, casual and competitive) to be chosen when creating a game which gives an indication of what to expect, but it doesn't enforce anything. Even though personal stats are not being tracked, most players still very much appreciate a formal concede by clicking the ‘Concede’ button and typing ‘gg’ before leaving a game. The reality of quick and anonymous online games dictates this won’t always happen though, as evidenced by regular complaining in the main lobby about people leaving without conceding. Our advice is to just move on to the next game since in the end, conceding or not doesn’t really impact anything. Happy gaming!