I just played my third game, and my first melee, with 3 similarly new players. We each used one of the starter House decks from the Core set. After about 3 hours of play, we called it quits as it seemed nobody would ever win. Any time someone got close to 12 or so power, the other 3 players would team up on them and reduce them to about 7, at which point 3 players would team up on the next most powerful player, and so on. At some point, we just gave up.

Is this a common experience? Basically, how do I convince the 3 people I played with (who were kind of bored) that it's worth playing again!

Well, there is always more power being added in the game due to dominance and unopposed challenges. So eventually, everyone will be at 12 or 13 power, and someone wins a challenge or plays a card to boost them up to 15 power.

The pre-made decks in the core set are fairly "vanilla" and are really only designed for the most basic of mechanics. Modifying and customizing them will go a long way.

However, if you went 3-hours without a winner, my guess is that none of you were playing aggressively enough. The 4-player game is designed for deal-making, backstabbing, and furthering your own position - usually at the expense of the weakest guy on the board. If you aren't taking some chances, or if you are going through a round with no one declaring all three challenges, I'd venture to say you are all playing too defensively.

Also, if you're playing a four player game, the "support" mechanic of the multiplayer titles should make it more difficult for 3 players to gang up on the remaining one.

 Ah yeah … we weren't playing with titles bc we're so new to the game. Clearly playing by the rules of the game would help us with the balance of the game. 

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and insights. I greatly appreciate it. 

poisson7 said:

I certainly recommend using the Multiplayer titles if you're playing with more than 2 people.  While I can understand hesitating because you're new to the game, the fact is that the titles greatly benefit the game.  In fact, before they were introduced, I generally refused to play multiplayer for some of the reasons you've encountered.

That being said, I wish you luck in trying again, and hope you enjoy the game!

Titles definitely force the action with supporting and opposing roles.

Not to mention the benefits they give speed up the game (extra gold, extra draw, extra influence, extra STR).

By the way about balancing. Ive played around 10 games with my core set and PotS expansion and it seems to me that house Baratheon core deck have significantly advantage over other basic houses. With their "Asshai threesome" and Robert Baratheon that gains 2 power for every victory, they can get 10 power tokens in two turns just by ignoring defense and gaining power for renown on offense.

Phantazm said:

You know, the claim that the core set decks are not suberbly balanced against each other is made fairly often by newer players - and they might well be right. The funny thing, though, is that there doesn't seem to be any agreement which houses are best. For you Bara has an edge, for others Stark is nigh unbeatable, yet others claim Lanni is the top dog in the core set. I'm not positive if I've read anybody make the case for Targ, but I'm sure someone must have.

Ratatoskr said:

Targ may not be the most… not beginner friendly.  With the other houses having distinct attributes to military, intrigue and power challenges, Targs… don't… at least in core.  Personally, I'll say that in a 1v1 with a single core, Lanni is top but not by much… but I play Lannister so I'm biased!  As for doubling core sets, I feel that Baratheon wins out in melee formats.  With 4/6 expansions (I don't have Kings of the Storm or Kings of the Sea) I find that Baratheon can still be pretty competitive in our melee circle.  Though this may be a combination of human and luck factors but whatevers.

Titles and support mechanics really make melee games fun… and mean…  If you plan on playing the same group of friends a lot, don't let things get personal, or build grudges that carry over into different matches.  It can lead to bad things a lot.

Actually… it may make things really funny in hindsight, but NOT during the actual game.