I wasn't trying to say that the restricted list was necessarily a bad thing (that's a different question). I was just trying to offer a reasonable situation where the combo could appear Ok in playtest (as the testers were able to beat it) but then end up being a problem in the wild.

I wasn't trying to say that the restricted list was necessarily a bad thing (that's a different question). I was just trying to offer a reasonable situation where the combo could appear Ok in playtest (as the testers were able to beat it) but then end up being a problem in the wild.

Well in that case, I'll agree 100% with you. I'd bet that's exactly what happened.

There are of course other reasonable ways it could be missed. I don't know how many testers there are, but the sad fact might be that they didn't have enough collective time to dedicate to this combo to show that it's broken. They're likely trying to test out a ton of different possibilities and may not have gotten the reps in to see how big of a problem this deck could be. To be completely fair to FFG and the playtesters, I'm sure they don't have nearly the man-hours available to test as, say, WotC has for Magic. WotC still misses things... Maybe this is a combo that should have been given more time and messed with more (we don't know if it was worse in testing and tone down), but we don't know how many broken combos are discovered and caught in testing that we never see.

I know I'm probably being too generous, but I've met Nate and Eric at GenCon last year and in general I like to assume that they and the testers really are trying to make this a great game. They responded swiftly and decisively when it became clear that there was a problem, and I can't ask for much more.

I'm just an echo chamber in this kind of thread, really, but I do think there have been some good points all around. I've been really vacillating over the issue for a while, myself, and I think that's the point: issues like this come up in games. Their doing so is simply the nature of the beast. Whenever I want to point the finger at someone (the designers/developers, playtesters, even people who play the dang combo) I always find myself pausing. I don't think there's a clear-cut way from A to B here, and that's okay. The problem has been stopped, at least for now.

Also, dbmeboy's "in the wild" has me inserting the cards into Pokémon quotes. That'll probably be with me for the whole day. Blah.

I choose you, Freeholders!

A wild Icetromper appears!

A wild LUKE SKYWALKER appears!

JABBA used RANCOR PIT BUTTON.

It's not very effective...

Luckily, I only play with my friends, and we'll be ignoring the restricted list. I mean, those sets were designed to play in the same deck together. It's called synergy. Sure it's really powerful combo, but why not just make good combos for the other factions, instead of teasing us with good combos we can't legally use anymore?

why not just make good combos for the other factions, instead of teasing us with good combos we can't legally use anymore?

It can also be very bad for a game to just bring everything up to that power level. One of the major complaints about the combo is that a decent draw could basically end the game on the first turn. What do you do to counter that? Give every faction a one-turn win combo? The problem with speed in card games is that the only way to deal with it is more speed, and once you get there it's nothing but a question of who draws into their über combo first.

Quick shoutout in appreciation for the umlaut!