hi I'm looking to teach the table I'm Nathan and this is a game of Thrones the board game the second edition based on the book series which there's also a TV series of the same name the game is at its core an area control game on this map of the continent of Westeros alliances will be created and broken as players try to outplay their enemies this can be a long game and it's a very large map and although there are lots of rules they aren't too complicated so grab a flagon of ale or a cup of wine and relax as I try to make this as simple as possible for you each player represents a great house of a prominent family competing for control of areas on the board that contained castles or strongholds the first player to control seven such areas will win or the player who's ahead at the end of ten rounds will win to control an area a player needs to have at least one of their units there or when they move units out of an area they can leave behind a single power token to signify that they retain control at least until someone else comes along so let's talk about power tokens in order to assert dominance to remain influential players need power tokens these tokens show icons for each house but when they're spent they go to a pool on the table and they need to be earned back like I mentioned before the tokens can be used to maintain control on areas on the board but they can also be used for collectively fending off invasions that the nomadic wildlings from the north or most importantly for bidding on the three influence tracts the influence tracks are where players vie for control behind the scenes and off the battlefield each track gives different advantages and players will try to outbid each other to have a higher position on each one additionally the player in the first position on each track will get the accompanying token which will give them special powers I'll come back to these once we understand more of the game players have various units at their disposal ships can only be placed in the sea areas or in ports and they have a strength of 1 in combat on the land you have footmen with a strength of one or Knights with a strength of two there's also siege engines and these are really powerful they have a strength of four but they can only be used in an attack so not defense and only when the combat is in an area with a castle or a stronghold now on to the core gameplay each round takes place in three phases with the Westeros phase where the top card of these three decks is revealed and resolved in order one two and three this phase is skipped in round one so I'll come back to it in a minute phase two is the planning phase where players will simultaneously choose order tokens and place them in each area on the board that contains their units these are all placed facedown and once everyone's done they are flipped over and revealed Phase three will be the action phase where we actually carry out these orders that we chose and that's where most of the game takes place each player has a number of orders that look like this note that the orders with stars on them are special orders and you'll be limited on how many of those you can use per round which I'll discuss later once revealed orders are resolved in player order starting with the raid orders because they allow you to cancel out orders on adjacent enemy areas you can't cancel March or defend orders however which makes sense because you wouldn't expect a raid against a prepared army to go to well March orders also called attack orders by some people are resolved next and they let you move your units to adjacent areas you can split them up and move them to different areas if you like but if you move into an area with enemy units there will be combat you can also only create one combat from a single march order so you can't move into two different areas with enemy units the next order to get resolved is consolidate power which are the crown icons this is a major way for players to gain back their power tokens from the pool you gain one power for the order itself as well as one additional for each crown in that area so to total in this case these orders don't do anything if you place them on the sea areas but you can still place them there if you want to to psych out your enemies there are also a couple of passive orders which only happen if combat occurs defense orders give you a combat bonus if you're attacked by one or more enemies support orders if there's a combat in an adjacent area to you let you lend the strength of your units to either side of that combat after that quick overview let's look at the influence tracks again the first is the iron throne track and this determines the turn order letting you resolve your orders before your enemies the player in first position gets the iron throne token and this lets them decide all ties that occur in the game except ties in combat or the final winner of the game later on even if there's a tie when you're bidding on the iron throne track the person with this token gets to decide the winner of that tie and this will continue until there's a new person in first position and they will get the Iron Throne token the fiefdom track is used to break ties in combat so if two players tie in combat the person whose highest along this track is going to win that combat the person in first position will get the Valyrian steel blade token and that can be used once per round by flipping it over and that will give them an additional +1 bonus to a combat the Kings Court track determines how many special orders the orders with a star on them a player can use during the planning phase the player in the first position will also have this messenger raven token and that can be flipped over once per round to do one of two things at the end of the planning phase after all the orders are revealed the messenger Raven token can be used to replace one of your orders with an order that you hadn't used or if a player doesn't want to change any of their orders the messenger Raven token can be used at the end of the planning phase to look at the top card of the wildling deck and then decide to either put it back on top or put it on the bottom of the deck that deck will tell you bad things that can happen when the wildlings attack as well as who they may happen to so that bit of knowledge is good to have let's delve a little deeper into the phases of gameplay remember the first phase is the Westeros phase so the round marker will first get advanced to signify what round we're on remember there's only ten rounds maximum in the game and then the top card of these three decks is revealed the first thing to look for on the cards is how many of the wildling icons there are so for each wildling icon you're going to move the Wilding track forward one space if this track ever reaches the final space then a wildling attack is going to happen immediately next the cards get resolved starting with card one then two then three there are a few things that can happen from these cards it wouldn't happen otherwise in the game and one of those is adjusting this supply track when told to do so in turn order players will check all the areas they control on the board and count the number of supply icons these little barrel icons and then they're going to reflect this on the supply track the flags on this track represent the armies of players allowed to have for example having a supply of two let's that player have three armies one with three units and two armies with two units players will need to remove you from the board to reflect this level and they'll have to adhere to it for the rest of the game until this supply track changes again keep in mind that an army is when you have two or more units together so you can have unlimited number of single units all over the board but if you had two units together like this that would count as one of your army of two a card may tell you to muster your forces and this lets players in turn order add new units to all areas that control that have castles or strongholds in them a castle grants one mustering point or a stronghold grants two mustering points that can be used to add units to that area you're weaker units your footmen and your ships take one mustering point to add to that area or you're stronger units the night or the siege engine would take to mustering points to add to the board alternatively you can use the point differences to upgrade existing units like turning a footman into a siege engine or a knight by using just one single point there's one point difference keep in mind that mustering a ship would add that ship into the port in that area or to an adjacent sea area as long as it didn't contain enemy units also remember you still need to adhere to your army limits if you're adding that unit where there's already other units The Clash of Kings card is what starts the bidding for these influence tracks so all the tokens come off the track players put all their available power behind their player screens so no one can see how many of their bidding and players are going to take any number that they like in a closed fist and reveal simultaneously players who bid the most are going to get higher position on the tracks and there's three bidding processes starting with the Iron Throne track fiefdom is etc so you're going to do that any tires are broken by the person with the Iron Throne token and then once that track is completely chosen the person in first position is going to be the new owner of the iron throat jokin so they would get to break the ties in the next two tracks any power that's bid is going to go to the pool so they're actually going to spend it and it's going to be gone they'll have to earn it back later on once you're finished bidding on those tracks all available power goes back out where everyone can see it wildling attacks from the north are something that players all need to collectively defend against attacks can happen whenever the track advances to the last space or if a card comes out that says that the wildlings when an attack happens players first checked the strength of the wildlings on this track so that would give you the number of power that players all collectively need to either meet or exceed in order to defend against the attack similar to how bidding on the influence tracks happens players are going to take all their available power put it behind their players screens and choose however many they like into their fists to reveal simultaneously add up the total amount that the whole table is contributing towards this attack and it needs to meet or exceed that in order to win if it does then the players win against the wildling attack and this token goes all the way back to zero if the attack is not successful than the wildlings win then it's only going to go back two spaces regardless of the outcome you're going to take the top card from the wildling deck and resolve it either using the wildling victory or the Nights Watch victory depending on what happened so if you lost generally there's a penalty for most people as well as the person who put the least amount of power towards that battle and if he won is usually a benefit for the person who put the most then that card is going to go into the bottom of the deck those are some of the things that can happen in the Westeros space remember that phase is skipped in round one so you have time to prepare for some of those things happening phase two is the planning phase where your orders are assigned facedown to any area containing your units on the board and that always happens simultaneously unless someone has so many units in so many areas on the board that they don't have enough orders to hand them all out so in that case it's going to go in the turn order based on the Iron Throne track where the first player puts all their orders out then the next player and then the next player so the player who doesn't have enough orders to put out just puts out all the orders that they can once all the orders are out they're simultaneously flipped over to reveal and this is the point where the person with the messenger Raven can turn it upside down effectively using it to change out one of his orders with one of his unused orders or he can look at that top card or the wildling deck there's not much else to add to the planning phase that I haven't already said but there's one thing we haven't looked at and that's the special orders remember you can only place as many special orders is allowed on the king's court track some of these special orders are self-explanatory just giving you a higher combat modifier to defense or attacking or supporting but remember how the raid tokens they let you cancel out an order but you can't cancel march or defense orders well a special raid token does let you cancel out defense orders if you like the special order for consolidate power lets you muster units and area instead of trying to gain power from that area so that's a good benefit if you need more units in a certain area keep in mind that the consolidate power and the raid special orders can be used just like regular orders if you want if you just have so many raids you want to do and you don't have enough regular raid tokens like I mentioned in phase 3 the action phase orders are resolved in player order and starting with the raid orders each player can resolve one raid order so you look at all the players that played raid orders and go in the turn order doing one raid at a time when resolving your raid order you're removing your enemy's adjacent token that you want to get rid of as well as your raid order token and returning them to the players who own them one extra rule here is if you raid an enemy's consolidate power token then you're considered pillaging your enemy so they're gonna have to lose a power to the pool and you'll gain an additional power token from the pool also raids on the land cannot effect adjacent sea areas I guess your troops cannot swim however raids in the sea can affect land and they can affect other sea areas it's also worth noting that you can also raid special order tokens with the Stars as long as it matches up to the corresponding types that you're allowed to raid after raid orders next to the March orders resolved in player order one order per turn like I mentioned you can split movement if you like as long as you're not creating more than one combat per march order when players leave an area vacant they need to leave behind a Power token on there or else they're going to lose control of that area players can even place multiple March orders to string together so the same units move on consecutive turns by resolving this March order and then later on resolving this March order etc rivers are considered impossible unless there's a bridge connecting the two areas and this not only affects marching it also prevents raiding supporting or any other actions for adjacent areas another interesting aspect of movement is ship transport land areas are considered adjacent as long as there's connected sea areas with their own boats in them for example this little man here on the island can hop on his own boats inland in this area here on one movement another oddball rules that ships can move from a sea area into an adjacent port as long as they control the land that the port is on ports are considered sea areas in most ways in the game except that they can only have a maximum of 3 ships inside port and they can't be attacked directly ships and a port will get their own order tokens assigned to them but they cannot raid or support any land areas think of them like they're a naval base they're just there to protect the adjacent see if the land a port is on gets taken over by an enemy your ships are removed from the port and the enemy may place the same amount of their own ships in there if they choose and although ships out in the sea cannot use the consolidate power token ships in a port can as long as the adjacent sea area does not contain any enemy ships you can use consolidate power on a unit in a port and still get one power back we've been beating around the bush this whole time so let's finally talk about combat when players use a march order to go into an area containing enemy units an attack is initiated with the player who marched in considered the attacker first any adjacent support orders can pledge their support to either side of the combat if there's multiple support orders adjacent than this happens in turn order support orders are not removed so they can stay out there and if there was conflict in other areas they can support those conflicts as well each side then calculates the combat strength taking into account the unit's themselves the bonuses from the March and from the defense order the strength of the support depending on which side he's going to lend his support to as well as any garrison tokens if there are any there a garrison token is purely defensive and they're placed at the beginning of the game to defend a player's home turf so only if there's one there would you take that into account there's then announce their total so let's pretend that how stark is going to support the Lannisters so the Lannisters have one for each of their footmen so that's two plus one from their token gives them three plus two from the help from the Starks so that's a total of five meanwhile the Greyjoy's have two for their unit plus one for their defense token giving them three so it's five versus three at this point after announcing their strength both sides will choose one of their house cards and these are special warriors that will come into play and help in the battle these cards add strength to both sides of the battle that any text on the cards are resolved first also don't forget if you own the Valyrian steel token to flip it over because that's going to give you one additional combat the cards themselves give us a nine versus seven and using the blade gives us a nine versus eight so the Lannisters win by after the final outcome of the combat is determined resolve any win or lose conditions on the cards and then you're gonna look for any sword icons like this or fortification icons that look like that each sword icon if you won the battle represents one unit that can be destroyed of your enemies troops the person whose units are getting destroyed gets to choose which of his units to destroy each fortification icon represents one sword icon that's getting blocks that protects your units from getting completely destroyed after this the losing army must retreat if the attacker lost they retreat back to the area where they came in from if the defender lost they must retreat to either an adjacent empty area or an adjacent friendly area but they have to keep in mind the supply limits on the size of their armies a losing defender cannot retreat on to the space where the attacker came in from all units that retreated or placed on their side to show that they are routed for filming I'm putting all the units on their side so that you can tell the difference between the units but just remember normally they'd be upright if they're routed they're laying facedown routered units can't fight or march they can't be chosen as casualties using the swords in a future combat and they can't retreat again so if they're in an area where another combat happens while they're routed and they lose they're just going to be destroyed lastly siege engines cannot retreat so if it was a siege engine in that combat it just gets immediately destroyed and removed from the board if the defender wins the battle and the attacker retreats the defense order is going to stay out there just a protecting case another attack comes this round the house cards that are played form a discard pile and they won't be available to that player again until they've played all their cards and they finally played their last card then they can pick up the previous six cards and just have one in their discard sometimes combat might occur against a neutral force as long as there's a strength value on the token some tokens in small player count games they're going to have Tilda's on them and that means that that area can't be taken over at all a market order can't occur unless they have sufficient strength to meet or exceed the strength on the neutral force token the calculation is much simpler for this player using the strength of their units the modifier on the march order itself and the support of another player in an adjacent area if they lend it no support can be given to the neutral force there's no bonus from the Valyrian steel sword in this case and there's no house cards played in a combat against a neutral force the last orders to resolve or the consolidate power tokens which we touched on earlier they happen in turn order one order at a time and players gain one power for the order token and one for any additional crowns in that area after all orders are resolved a little bit of cleanup happens or any remaining tokens out there for orders which should just be support and defense at this point all removed any routed units on their side can stand upright which I'm keeping them all down for the filming of this video and then the Valyrian steel blade and the messenger Raven are flipped up back to their active side if they've been used that's the end of the round and a new round begins throughout the game players will be making pacts and alliances with each other and that's all done completely off the board and is non-binding players can't give or trade any items in the game so any promises made or simply what actions will be taken or conflicts avoided etc players also can't reveal secret information to each other such as unused order tokens and that will segue us into talking about what information in the game is public available power tokens are always kept outside the players screen for everyone to see and they're only put behind the player screen when it's time to do some bidding in the same manner all house cards either the ones in your hand or in the discard are public information as well except when players need to choose them in combat so players can always ask to see your hand of cards and you have to let them look through so they can see what your options are except when it comes time to use them in a battle after 10 rounds if a player hasn't already won by having 7 castles or strongholds in their control then the player who has the most is going to be the winner ties are broken by the player with more strongholds and additional ties go to the player who's highest on the supply track then the player with the most available power tokens then the player who's highest on the Iron Throne track I'm curious how often a tie on four separate aspects has occurred so there you have it nobody said a game of thrones was simple but it really boils down to a few core concepts with the splattering of ifs buts and wins don't hesitate to consult the rules the first time combat occurs or if something just feels wrong while you're playing thanks for watching teach the table I hope this video was helpful to you if you like these videos subscribe to my channel and I will see you next time don't forget to have fun [Music]