What's a fair handicap?

Question

I really enjoy the Game-Of-Thrones board game. (We only own the first edition, so no ports or siege engines etc.). My wife and friends tend to enjoy it also, well they used to.

The problem is that currently, every time we play the game I always win. I've tried playing whomever I think is the weakest army but that doesn't seem to help much. And by always win, what I mean is that a turn ends, and generally, I take the last castle, or they look at the board as the turn starts and see that no matter what they do, I'll get the last castle. They are normally only 1 or 2 castles behind me.

Is there some handicap I can give myself which will still make the game enjoyable but also even the odds a bit?

Answer 1

Take away a single unstarred order token from your set. Which one depends on how much handicap you think is needed. A huge handicap would be to remove a march token. A big handicap is to remove a support token or a defense token. A significant handicap would be to remove a consolidate power or raid token.

If you find those handicaps too hard on you, you can also try playing without an order token for a few turns (say, 3-5 turns) and then getting them back. Or, maybe, play the first 3 turns without a march token, then 1 turn without each one of the remaining tokens, then with all of them. This will make the game much harder to you, but then you'll not need to feel bad about doing your best against your opponents.

Something I do when I'm teaching the game is, for the first 3 rounds, play my orders facing up and explain the strategy. This shows players some possibilities they did not understand they could do and open their minds to new tactics. You can't do that for too long though, specially in games with more than 4 players.

Answer 2

Though we haven't tried it, it would seem the power tokens would be the way to go. Try some generous amount and see if the game starts swinging : it certainly should, once the player they are given to takes all the positions on the tracks, as longs as the player understands the rules and is not attacked ruthlessly in the beginning by the others.

Another tactic to be considered, employed by go-players where a strong player playing a significantly weaker opponent, is for the better player to attempt to win by as small a margin as possible. Making intentionally some mistakes and suboptimal moves, and gauging the situation to allow the weaker players more 'life'.

AGOT is a pretty complex game and so much depends on how the others are playing, like if you get stuck fighting your neighbour and nobody pays attention to the guy peacefully expanding his power, and so forth, that one more tack might be to allow for more diplomacy, perhaps even encourage somebody to team up with the weaker player to start with, or to play an 'open game' where tactics are discussed as the game progresses.

Answer 3

The best way to get a good handicap going is to attack ruthless and try and make the other players ban together to stop you.( this works best with lanister since no one like them in the first place) this can give you a huge handicap if you are playing with a 4-6 player game and I can assure you that if your fighting 5 players by yourself, then your going to lose.