I'm going to write this down for reference

[sniffnoy]

UPDATE August 12 2012: Turns out I missed a few.

So apparently there's now a 2nd edition of the A Game of Thrones board game, which incorporates a bunch of stuff from the expansions, as well as some entirely new stuff. (No, there's no way I'm going to buy it. The only board game I'm even considering getting right now is the new edition of Flash Duel and I'm leaning against it.)

What's worth noting is that there are a bunch of small rules changes even to the things from the original base game. I'm going to write these down here for reference. (Also, "cities" are now called "castles".) I assume there are also changes to the various cards and possibly the board but FFG doesn't put those online.

0. 6 players is now considered the default; everything is now shaped around this. Arguably this doesn't count as it was ACoK that allowed for 6 players...
1. If the wildlings ever reach a strength of 12, they now attack immediately, before any of the actual text on any of the Westeros cards are resolved.
2. If they win, their strength only goes back 2 spots, not all the way to 0.
3. Effects of a successful/unsuccessful wildling attack are now entirely different, due to wildling cards, but I won't get into that (and how this affects the messenger raven) since this is a new component.
4. Pillaging now means not only you gain one power token, but also the person you pillaged loses one.
5. Big change -- the starred raid and consolidate orders have gotten serious upgrades. (I suppose they must have felt there wasn't enough raiding.) The starred raid no longer lets you raid twice; instead, it adds the possibility of raiding a defense order. And instead of doing nothing special, or even giving you an additional power token as many people had house-ruled, the starred consolidate order now lets you perform a muster in that spot. Wow. Edit Aug 28: You can only muster or get the power tokens, though, not both.
6. This is a weird one -- apparently now when you win the Iron Throne in bidding, you get it immediately, i.e. you can use it on the subsequent king's court bidding. Not sure why they thought that was a good idea.
7. Ha, they changed the tiebreaker rules! That could cause some arguments -- who's going to think to recheck that? Instead of cities + strongolds -> supply -> power -> it's just a damn tie, it now goes cities + strongholds -> strongholds -> supply -> power -> Iron Throne track.
8. Did the rules state before that you have to decide whether you're establishing control before you resolve combat? Well, now that's clarified. I don't feel like checking this one. How the hell control of home areas work is also clarified (enemies *can* establish control there with a token, but it's yours if they don't).
9. Now the rule is that you *must* issue orders if you have enough, and if you can't, people place in turn order so that those after you can react to the knowledge that certain areas definitely aren't doing anything.

Also, not a new rule, but I totally didn't realize this was a rule before: Apparently routed units aren't allowed to move? I had never noticed that before.

EDIT: Actually, it occurs to me now -- powering up the special consolidate order again gives people more reason to raid. It really looks like they're trying to encourage raiding.

Also there's now an optional variant with randomized combat (and special cards for such). Now that I wouldn't have expected.

-Harry

Comments

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

Hmm, 9 makes the messenger raven somewhat weaker.

Also, does this upgrade include the port rules?

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Yes, it includes ports, and siege engines as well.

I'm not entirely clear on how #9 makes messenger raven weaker? Actually messenger raven got stronger in another way which I didn't state (only briefly mentioned in #3), though the buff seems pretty small. What it is is, instead of using it to replace an order, you can use it to look at the top card of the wildling deck and then put it either back on top or on the bottom. (You're not allowed to show the card to other people, though of course you can talk about it.) So I didn't explain the wildling deck -- now, in a wildling attack, after the bidding, instead of the usual consequences, instead you draw a card from the wildling deck, and it determines what the bonus is for putting in the most on a win, what the penalty is for losing, and what the penalty is for putting in the least on a loss.

I have to wonder how much variance there is in the deck -- I would expect that replacing an order would usually be better. But I guess it gives you something to do when your current orders are good as is!

Here, let me just point you to a PDF of the rulebook: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/agot-bg-2nd-ed/support/VA65_AGoT2_Rulebook_web.pdf

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

My thought for why the raven is weaker in that if you have a lot of troops you can't give some of them no orders in order to have lots of options to use the raven.

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Huh, I hadn't even considered that. That's an interesting idea, actually. On the other hand, you'd have to be pretty secure for it to be helpful, and at that point you may as well consolidate, right? It's not like you're going to be switching one of those into a combat zone so there's no loss to excluding it from possible switch-ins.