Yesterday I met up with some friends to play some boardgames. Since we had six players we decided to play a game of "A Game of Thrones", one of my all-time favourite games. I haven't play aGoT in a long time, probably not since the the TV series first aired.
When they pulled out the box I got a bit worried. It looked nothing like it was supposed to. I feared that this was some new, watered down game released as a marketing gimmick. But when the board was laid out it looked different but very familiar.
I found out that the game in question was the second edition. A remake that combines in elements from the Clash of Kings and Storm of Swords expansions. There are also some clever changes made to the board and cards. The main house cards are now screens, this is a quite good addition as it gives the opportunity to hide your orders and power tokens. Another small change is a victory track, where you mark down your cities and castles, so everyone can see better where people stand.
The Second Edition Board. The game area is identical to the Clash of Kings version of the board.
The wooden markers are replaced by plastic ones, that are identical to the old ones in shape, but the colours are much harder to distinguish.
The Iron Throne, Valyrian Steel Blade and Messenger Raven are printed on only one side. This means that you can turn them when you use them, so that you know. This is of course really only useful for the Sword, but still a useful improvement.
First Edition Board. Original Gansta, without expansions.
There are some small boosts as well, like the fact that the starred "consolidate power" order can muster troops, and the starred raid can raid defence orders. Changes that make the king's court track even more useful. I'm a bit divided about if these changes are good since they unbalance the tracks more than they used to be, but it makes the game a bit more interesting.
As a side-note, I noticed that we had been playing with a bit more harsher rules all this time. Apparently a supporting army can support as many times as they wish and not just once as we had been playing it. This makes rear guard support really useful, and it makes ships very powerful, but this was just something we read wrong with my "old" group.
There are also some new random combat event cards, but they are optional, and we didn't use them. So I can't say much about them.
All in all I think this is an improvement. It streamlines the game by using the "best" parts of the expansions. Some things that I enjoyed from them where missing, like the leader units from A Storm of Swords. But the game is quite streamlined as it is, and feels a bit more unified than the original with expansions.