Irony is a lost art, it seems.

Lars said:

Exactly.

This, boiled down, is the disconnect between you and the rest of the community that are posting.

We all agree that the card is undercosted. We all agree that perma steal is very strong and needs to be watched carefully. We all agree that the reinforcments provide a very attainable trigger. Some of us disagree on how much gold will be left around in Challenge, but this is a relatively minor quibble.

What the rest of us disagree with you on is the impact. It seems that most of the rest of us just don't think neutrals and OOH are that critical to competitve decks. And yeha - with the alck of a national program, There isn't a lot of impetus to test the theory. All Thrones is Local at the moment.

BAically that's it. After six weeks of this we're not going to change your mind, and I doubt you will change anyone elses. No one else is worried about neutrals being less effective - becuase for most os is they didn't seem to be anyway. Again - certain cool uniques will see less play, but tis not the end of the world that Jon Snow doesn't see a lot of action for the next however many months.

Meta after meta has weighed in on this. I just don't see anything more productive to say. Maybe a thread on neutrals shoudl be opened up?

Stag Lord said:

Let the issue sit for awhile, then see if people have changed their opinion on the use of neutrals and OOH cards after they have tried using the three new Agendas for awhile (not that anyone is likely to be using the Greyjoy/Martell ones...).

Stag Lord said:

forget their impact on the quality of a deck (though i still maintain that Dthjstr's deck is a great example of how neutrals make a deck so much better right now) for a second.

I'm still perplexed why we are accepting a card that changes the way the game is supposed to be played (and i don't mean by adding a new play area or a new mechinic) at the deck building level. Yes, i get that a lot of people don't use neutrals, but why are we okay with not being able to if we wanted? Why is it okay that OOH combos (a recent gencon winning build) is no longer playable? Why is it okay that one card makes two house unplayable for the the next 2+ months and then still 1 more for who knows how much longer? Why is it okay to tell people not to use named neutral characters (since playing named characters is a giant rallying cry of this community)? I don't think it is, why does everyone else seem okay with it? because it 'doesn't affect how i play competatively' or how i like to build my decks'? Well thats fine and dandy, but a little selfish, and very unhealthy for the game.

Its like a restrictive covenant (i.e. you can't sell this house to 'x' 'y' or 'z'). The court won't enforce them, which is their way of saying they don't like them (and also makes them not applicible) becuase while it doesn't affect people who ignore them it still affects the community and the courts don't sit idly by and say...your fault for wanting to buy that house, there were a lot of other house to buy and you shouldn't have choosen that option (despite the fact its your dream house or the only house in your economic/geographic range, etc.). Or, yeah that sucks, but hey it doesn't affect my house so its not really that big of a deal. Ever sign a non-compete clause? A lot of courts won't enforce these or long ones of these becuase of the limitations it puts on the options for people to find ways to better society (em,plyment is good fro society, having all options avliable to you for employment strengthens society). Now the person who signed the non-compete didn't have to, it was their choice, just as it was your choice to sign a contract without a non-compete clause. It doesn;t affect you, but that doesn't make it right to allow it to affect others becuase of that.

I might just be in a strange mood today but, Lars, have you considered that possibly, rather than the rest of the community viewing this matter as incorrectly downplayed that perhaps you've incorrectly overblown it?

It wasn't so long ago that I can't remember ranting quite profusely about ARoK Hand of the King, particularly in combination with The Blackfish. And then there was the out of house Cersei's Favor discussion shortly after that..... Or who else remembers the accusations leveled at Dothraki Sea in the last year of WED's legality by..... ok, I forget who. It's entirely possibly for one meta to have an extremely negative play experience for reasons that other metas simply aren't capable of really understanding. That does not, however, mean that the one group experiencing an NPE is correct, and all others wrong. Who else was being single handedly smacked around by HotK while I was? Not many people. No mater how vehemently I felt on the topic (and in case you weren't around at the time, let me tell you, it was bad. Someone like Ktom or Stags can back me up on that, I'm sure.) it didn't change the fact that other groups were simply not facing the same kind of issues.

its very possible that i'm overblowing it. And i'd be willing to agree with you if it wasn't just me (is my meta over blwoing it, well then you have 4 long time players with very different temperments/playstyles reacting the same way, not counting the new guys becuase after losing neutrals to MWnK they stop playing them). The possibility is also why i framed the thread at the begning the way i did.

What i think bothers me to the point of erattaing isn't that its a strong card combo. Isn't that it affects the way i prefer to deckbuild, but as i mentioned that it really and severly hampers the way the game was designed to be played/decks built. Whats the point of having neutral characters and locations if one card makes them unplayable? WHy have an OOH penalty at all if your going to severly cripple that as a strategy? As i've said before (sorry Ktom) I've never been a ban person. I'd be fine with Jagen w/ erratta in LCG and w/out in legacy (easyier to handle him) and i still maintain that if you dedicate a little more location hate to a deck Ployalist is just a mnor pain. I'm still not really a ban person, i just think MWnK should not have a reach into deckbuilding (hence my non-pulse about Robb, even he was hard to kill or stop) and if he is supposed to be a coutner to Reins (as i htink he is) than that is what and all he should do. Why should he work better with the cards that he is supposed to counter and counter (obliterate actually...keeping with the over blown theme ) not only reins but 2 other viable deck builds/strategies?

What I feel you are missing is that we've had cards like this before, cards where specific metas thought were horribly NPE, decktypes that were unbeatable, cards or combos that made other cards, decks, or playstyles pointless/useless/untenable.

Yet very rarely did any of those become a problem on the national or international scene. Why? Because when people adapted their decks or playstyles there was no longer the point in running the combo or decktype, others created decks that would take advantage of the necessary focus those decks/combos needed to function.

Once this happened those cards/combos/decks/playstyles fell out of favor because they were no longer the best way to deal with your opponents adapted decks. Once this happened those adapted decks were no longer necessary and things balanced out. Neither specialized deck was necessary so they adapted again to a state somewhere between the decks that were being raided, but less vulnerable, and the cards that created the NPE were still played but not with such singular focus.

That is why so many of us long time players are saying give it time. As location destruction and event cancel become more readily available you may find it very difficult to have enough gold to reliably steal characters when you can get a reinforcement event in play. Between KLE and Kings of the Sea, and the Greyjoy winter build that will inevitably come from it, I think we will see the Baratheon/MWnK deck become less assured of victory. With Martell's expansion and Shadow of the South added to cancels we expect coming down the pike, and the potential inability for you to play any reinforcement events for huge swaths of the game the deck may fall apart in Joust with two likely popular builds that can stand up to it (and I've always questioned its effectiveness in Melee).

I'm going to stick with my original stance, until the deck starts dominating multiple metas and reigning supreme in regionals and nationals, I say give it time. If the deck is so unbeatable nearly everyone will be joining you in the call for errata. I think 6-8 months is not too big a time to find out if your beliefs and fears are true. Not to forget, if the deck is so powerful that it creats an NPE then why not just play smething else socially in your meta as your default deck and save the Bara/MWnK for your tourneys and your tune-up matches before a tourney?

dormouse said:

like? I don't Think MWnK is an NPE. Its not negativeto play against with no neutrals, it just creates an unfair advantage before the game starts. Has there been a card that does that before?

dormouse said:

You talk about waiting and adapting, but i'm not sure thats really viable right now. We get a slow trickle of cards, are pinning a lot of hopes on very few cards in the GJ expansion. The Martell expansion is still a long way off, in the mean time we have a card that is not just hard to play aginst, but makes the enviornment of the community/game stagnant by dening choices and options. There is a lot of expectation riding on an answer showing up. Why wait and risk being crestfallen when a simple fix keeps the card strong, keeps its use as intended and allows for the game to be played as it should (with all options avilable to you)?

Its not that its "the bara/MwnK" deck thats the problem. As i've said, it can be run fine (and with a slightly different emphasis) out of lanni. And heck i think you could do it out of Stark if you really wanted to (there charcater base isn't as cheap, but you could do a kill w/ minimal characters/MWnK deck).

dormouse said:

Trust me, we do (and again its not the deck, its the one sigle card, the fact that it is next to impossible to control w/ the current cards, and that if you want to beat it you have to join it). This isn't a dothraki sea situation even though many people want to paint it that way. There is not an answer out there just by changing the way i play (i.e. adding location control...all 4 cards of it...). I'm not so concerned with the fact that i can't play my Martell deck if i want to win or that Kevin took 5 neutral charcaters out of his deck. I'm concerned with the effect i see it having on the community (those of them that want to do more then run in house cards) as i illustrated a few posts back. Its fine to tell me to wait 6-8 months to play my favorite house, i'm committed to the game. However, why does the community at large (which includes people looking to spend their money elsewhere, mazimize their fun to time qoutitent, and new players looking to get into the game and play Jon in Stark, Jaime and Brieene together, or littlefinger in his own themed deck) have to wait? do we think saying "hey give it time, this game might balance again and be approachable by all sorts" is beter then saying "lets balance this thing out right now and let people be able to approach the game however they want"?

The thing is no other meta is reporting these problems as far as I can tell. That really weakens all your claims about how it is impacting the game. It is impacting your meta.

And yes, there have been cards that made people completey change how they built decks and there play style. If the old boards (any of them) were around you could see the talk about First Snow of Winter, Prince's Loyalist, in my old meta Storm Raiders and Pyromancers both caused quite the stir.

I'd rather face a MWnK deck for every round of a tournament than the old Bara Joust decks that would win on turn 1 or the Lannister Story Event decks. With MWnK I can vastly minimize your effectiveness with just some tweaks, those decks... it was **** near luck of the draw.

dormouse said:

QFT

No one else is reporting similar problems - and at leat Chicago, East Bay and New York have tried to abuse the deck.

People just don't see neutrals as that critical. .They just don't. You are entitled to your opinion, but no one else is seeing neutrals becoming a risky play as an: "unfair advantage before the game starts". You can still build competitively and withing without them. If competitively neutrals are viable at the moment - this is just cyclical, like many spectra of cards in the past. If you want casual decks featuring Littlefinger or Jon SNow or something - you're going to have to restrict MWNK in some fashion, in meta.

Sorry if the Dothraki Sea analogy bothers you - but its really starting to feel that way to many of us. One meta is having a porblem with a card, calls it out to the community - and when the community doesn't concede the card is a huge problem , seems to go on and on about it. And yes -a lot of us never got Kennon's hate for HoK but he was vehement and vocal about it! And Shipbreaker's Bay had a fourteen page thread way back when as well. I've seen these dicsussiions every so often over the years - and serioulsy, we have reached the point where no one is going to change anyone's mind on either side of this.

And also, sorry if you "don't think there is time to wait". But, I suspect you're going to have to. House rule it however you like in Philly - maybe even share with us what you decide to do. But I think the rest of us will continue to play the card the way it stands, since it is a nice counter to the reinforcements and doesn't seem to be hurting anyone else's enjoyment.

Lars said:

To me, this is extreme.

Does this one card really mean that no one is able to run neutrals and OOH combos? One thing that has come out clearly in this discussion is that using MwNK to it's full potential takes a dedicated deck. MWnK is not something that can be slotted into a deck with a few Reinforcements if it is going to truly, reliably and completely shut down the use of neutrals and OOH combos. So why is it that this one card, by enabling a deck type, makes neutrals completely unplayable? Why does MwNK make neutrals and OOH completely unplayable, but a deck built around Wintertime Marauders and Seductive Promise doesn't make non-unique cards completely unplayable (and believe me, that deck is coming - some of us are already having outstanding results with precursors)?

In order for the MwNK deck to make neutrals and OOH combos "no longer playable," the dedicated deck would have to be everywhere (since we know just the card isn't enough), with multiple people playing it at every event in one form or another. Until it gets to that point, I don't see neutrals and OOH as "no longer playable." I see it as a calculated risk whereby if I'm going to build a deck where they factor in prominently, I'm going to have to have a mechanism by which to control for a potential MwNK (and they are out there, though they are not plentiful at the moment - we've discussed them). To me, it is no more "unhealthy for the game" or making neutrals and OOH "no longer playable" than the possibility of seeing the old "2-STR Killer" dedicated deck (usually centered around First Snow and promo Ilyn Payne - cards that were far easier to slot into any deck) made 0-2 STR characters "no longer playable." Sure, you had to re-evaluate characters with those printed STRs and weigh the risks, but they were still playable, with planning.

Dethjester's deck (played by Kevdawg) at Kubla may have had a hard time standing up to a MwNK deck. But the flip side of that observation is that there wasn't a MwNK deck at the event - despite the fact that the participants knew the card was there and could have chose to build the dedicated deck! So are neutrals and OOH cards really no longer playable, or are they playable with planning (which includes a metagame analysis of the decks you're likely to see at a given event)?

So yeah, I agree with the potential power of MwNK. But I don't think that it makes neutrals and OOH unplayable in the current metagame. And I do not see the metagame evolving in a direction that would allow MwNK to make them unplayable. Planned risk and hoping you don't see the deck perfectly suited to smash yours (because there always is one) has always been part of competitive play.

dormouse said:

Oh my frakking goodness. If I ever play against another Lannister Story Event deck, it will be too soon.

Yeah, I loved my Lanni SE deck.. except how it practically destroyed my old meta. I had to retire it because no one would play against it any longer. Most other decks weren't even competitive against it.

I always loved that Symon Silvertongue first round, Marched to the Wall second round combo. Nice way to thin the deck and get the 3 SEs in your discard pile fast.

The "limit 1 per game" on Tyrion's Chain did a lot to neuter the deck. Of course, by the time they did that, people had largely done things similar to what dormouse describes locally.

Yeah, nothing pissed off my opponents quite as much. From that point on I was making unoppossed challenges and my opponent couldn't even attack back. *sigh* Oh for the combo of Tyrion's Chain, Archery Champion, and Elder Septon.

dormouse said:

Im new to game and trying to sort all this out. I am looking to try this deck out but the numbers are off. There are 40 characters instead of 35. Even with 35 characters, it makes the deck total 64. Shouldnt it be 60? If you could let me know what the correct numbers and characters it should be, Id appreciate it.

Thanks!

.

galonso said:

Yeah, there are 40 characters listed there for a total deck size of 69. Note that the 60 card deck size is a minimum, not a hard-and-fast rule or requirement.

I still recall the first shock at seeing decks with less than 15 resources.

60 is your minimum amount as ktom said. I think the posted version should not have Ranger of Winter in it (no white raven, no special benefit). The number of characters should 37.

I think the Winter version of the deck was actually stronger, but I never made a deck list for it.

So it is 66 cards by design. Any reason why? Isnt a 60-61 card deck (62 at the most) a good general rule?

Gabriel

galonso said:

For some people, yes, it is a rule they always follow. For others, like myself, I have had success with decks that are greatly over 60 cards. Sometimes upwards of 80.

A 60 card deck maximizes your likelihood of being able to see an example of every card in a game, and your draw makes this even more likely. Stark however has search and I'd rather have a few extra cards that I can pull out by choice trumping your greater but random draw... but what it really boils down to is dealing with multiple resets requires a good amount of characters, I need a specific amount of resources to ensure that I can play any character I draw, and my attachments and events provide some bite. This ratio for this deck worked very well for me. I flopped decently (4 cards at least 60% of the time), with at least one resource and two characters more often than not, and using 4-5 gold.

I would suggest playing the deck a bit and making tweaks to suit your meta and your playstyle. I like to flood the board early with inexpensive characters pushing my opponent into using his reset early so I'm the only one with it later in the game and can dictate under what conditions it is played. If you play multiplayer, or joust where you can expect to phase multiple resets you may play a lot more conservatively. If your meta tends to not use resets then play all your claim soakers you can as fast as you can prompting your opponents to do the same, then hit them with a Wildfire when you have an Icy Catapult in play.

Thrones, like all card games really, is about card advantage, but unlike many other games there are numerous ways of gaining card advantage. Stark's is by removing cards from play directly and in a high volume. Remember that and target the cards that would hit you were you are weakest and you should see a high rate of success.

Thanks very much for your reply dormouse. Much appreciated.