Well - no. But be careful

Staton and I were talking about simply the steal effect on the street. Again - taken by itself - no big deal and not worth three gold.

You are throwing in the reinfriocement character as well. Fine - taht makes the play a littel stronger. but again - counter that with teh efefct of lsoing a challenge. The cost becoems a little steeper and the argument a little less clear. UO power challenge costs me a Street adn nets you a stealthy rneown guy? not so great for me. But if you ahd to kill a halfway decent chaarcter for claim or I got a good pull on the INT, and I may be a little more prepared to accept that swap.

And of course its still a good play most of the tiem for the MwNK player. I just don't think is worth worrying about nine times out iof ten, and I don't wnat teh four gold slot taken up with these guys anymore. Not for Ravens, or Streets. Talk to me when there are lots of neutrals seeing play that are worth losing a challenge and a substantial gold investment.

and BTW - i'm still running the reinforcement events in teh deck - one gold is a lot more reasonable than four gold. Lets see if the MWNK thing hurts them. Maybe I'll have to put them back in as a counter at that point, but I am going to try LCG for a while without them.

It just doesn't sound liek a lot of metas are as neutral heavy as yours. I thought dormouse was pretty accurate in his description on the Clans thread. and again - i am more with you than against you. Perma steal is worth discussing and worth watching very closely. It just hasn't had the efefct here I thought it would. Maybe I'll rgret running the reinforcements without their shield. we'll see.

I didn't care for the way Ghost could trigger off my opponent's Jon and Ghost back in League play so i dropped them - though they are a good accelerant. And I ahven't seen them since Scattered Armies hit - so they are two cards that definitely HAVE been affected by these guys.

Lars said:

See, here is where I think you are losing people in this whole thread. The premise from the title seems to be "Men With no King is a horribly (near) broken card and the fact that I put it in a deck built to take advantage of the steal mechanism combo means that I have a huge advantage over nearly all comers in the LCG environment." My personal experience with MWnK, and specifically with neutrals and OOH in the LCG environment outside of a Martell or Greyjoy House card, does not really bear this out. Maybe we're playing differently. Maybe the Chicago "hive mind" is just blind to it. But that's the experience.

What we've kind of moved to here, though, is "a 3-STR monocon with Stealth and Renown at 1 gold is a great deal in LCG, whether you throw 2 more gold in for the steal or not!" That, I wholeheartedly agree with. Like Stag, the Reinforcement events are in a lot more of my decks than MWnK!

So yeah, the Reinforcement events are a great "revenge" mechanic and adding the insult of perma-steal/3-character swing to the injury of my Reinforcement is outstanding to the border of "stupid." But I see the Reinforcement events as the power here. MWnK is gravy - and not particularly integral - in my opinion/experience. That's why I can't seem to get myself as worked up about it, despite all your careful analysis.

have you tried to build a stark deck lately? it has 3 inhouse characters who have renown...2 of them are dependent on other things happening to have it. 2 inhouse with stealth, both dependent on other things happening. Now i used to be a big defender of stark. That was because i could plug in Benjen instead of Ranger of Winter and Jon / Ghost for Ser Rodrick / Grey Wind. I had an interesting martell deck centered around Dayne and tower of joy....but now its pointless to even explore those deckbuilding options.(whats the point of having any neutral locations or characters?)

i get that the power behind the throne is the reins events. but that throne chokes off ways to counter reins w/out drinking the kool-aid yourself. I get that MWnK was supposed to be the checks and balances of the Reins events...but it is turning into President Bush w/ a republican Congress. They make each other worse, the only real defense to them is to join them, the democratic party is not yet established enough to unset them, and its the environment at large that pays the price.

There are two houses(out of 6!) that are less hurt by lack of neutrals....~oddly enough they also can run MWnK easily. If you are okay with any one of the following scenerios then no need to respond:

1) everyone plays MWnK and its a race to out MWnK (~ohhhh fun...)

2) half the players forgo MWnK and the game becomes Bara Lannister vs. Bara Lannister MWnK

everyone is holding their breath for the GJ expansion providing an answer, but isn't the better answer to take the amount of control away from MWnK? Why should the choice be Reins or no neutrals in the environment or vice versa? With no treaties and now an additonal penalty for neutral or OOH cards the game is becoming much more stale. Again, am i just missing the deck build that doesn't need nuetrals and can compete w/ reins? right now its not GJ...nor is GJ garaunteed to be it. i think i've disscussed the majority of the current builds out there right now. I've left out winter...but i don;t see winter as a threat. Winter GJ is still a ?, winter Stark is hurt by its own winter, and winter bara is very reosurce intensive. I have 3 cards at 3x in my deck. MWnK, Seductive promise, and Black raven...so i don't really need to build anythingmore into my deck to compensate for winter (especially since i can use your ravens if you follow the theory that KAT group neutrals are worth the risk).

So Lars, your agitation is, at this point to get an official errata issued early enough to provide a rebalancing of the metagame prior to GenCon?

Do we need to see more people agreeing with you to have that happen? Or just some additional anecdotal evidence to agree with you.

I'm not trying to sound too snarky, just seems like the proverbial horse carcass has been sufficiently flogged... at least until you show up and lay waste to all the naysayers at Indy. And I'm really regretting the carcass-flog terminology... there's too many pervs around here, but I'm too lazy to change it.

The thing that bothers me about the anti-MWnK arguement is Lars talking about stealing mu neutral unique characters. Do you not run these characters in your deck? If you have Jon Snow in play, or in your dead pile, then mine is safe from MWnK. If I am playing Barristan Selmy or Benjen Stark, often it is only for the recursion effect. I may even kill off Selmy before you get a chance to steal him, if I can. I will admit that since MWnK and the last CP came out, I have played my Martell deck less often, as it relies heavily on Neutrals. But at the same time, I am facing decks built by other in our meta that run minimal neutrals, and almost all of them unique. What good does it do to try and steal Mance Rayder if I have my own in play?

About the only benefit I can see from this is I can use my opponent's Jon Snow and then after he dies bring mine into play.

JerusalemJones said:

or dupe him with yours. The better point is that that i don't have to put jon snow in my deck to get toolboxing of my own and have the added of benefit of denying you toolbox or using your cards to my advantage. Though if i want jon snow in my deck i don't have to worry about losing him since i can get him back. The question then becomes do you want to risk that I'm running MWnK w/out jon snow and include him in your deck anyway?

Maester_LUke said:

GenCon is a timeframe defining event. I'll play at Gencon with the evironment as it is now...i won;t have fun but i'll play. Sure, eventually the card pool might even out (or MwnK might get rotated). I don;t knwo when that is oging to happen anymore. WIth the LCG we get cards is drips and drops. Now we get a card that blows the whole card pool up...i don;t know when the cardpool will readjust anymore (do you?).

If i could get this card changed by myself it would be changed already (obviously). I've mainly asked to community to prove me wrong in the actual stages. There has been a lot of talk about in theory MWnK isn't that huge. Stag has decided to run events an risk losing them to MwnK right now...soon someone in his meta will decide to run MWnK to steal Stag's and then will start including some reins of their own. Next Stag will have to put MWnK in to prtoect his reins (a toolbox that he things is worht his deck spots). Now a natural counter to such MWnK elavation is to toolbox of a different sort...what are you going to use? MWnK hist eveyrthing. This happened in about 2 secound in our meta. I literally sat across form kevin as he took every neutral out of his deck. I've seen/heard Jeff cursing the Reins events everytime he has them out...yet he is forced to run MWnK. JJ talks baout using Selmy for Recurssion and then killing him...well i've played against a deck with selmy and he made a good Handhold for Jerry becuase he couldn;t risk giving me even more renown even for recursion. I keep hearing the rationalization "that the Neutrals i run i don't care if they get stolen" I can't fathom that, I can't fathom giving any extra advantage form my deck to my opponets deck. I could live with it if it was maybe one or a one time shot, but repeatable permant use of the cards in my deck against me turns my stomach. Furthermore i can't fathom my opponent having any amount of more deck building options then me (if he builds a better deck then me, thats fine he sees different things with the same cards i have access to)....maybe thats where you are viewing agitation which is more disbelief.

Let me try one last time with my Jaguen analogy. I didn't think Jaguen needed much work. I think he got less powerful, but still useful wiht the erratta, and yet he is banned (and not just from LCG, but in standard and legacy...where MWnK is deemed acceptable[a question i'm not concerened with]). The reason i thought Jaguen was okay? The meta was already geared toward character control and he was not immune to that. Things that worked against him were good to have in any deck, he didn't exlude cards, he didn't make deckbuilding harder, and he didn't force you to play him yourself as the only defense to him. MWnK blasts not only a good chunk of the current (and upcoming) card pool, he makes OOH impossible (maybe not a huge loss in a treaty-less world, but OOH was always a good thing at competative levels before), and the only real defense against him to to run your own. How can Jaguen, or pyromancer's cache (i believe the reason was it was more accessable to some house then others becuase of the cardpool limtations) get banned while MWnK isn;t even erratted?

people are still ducking/not responding/unsure of an answer to the real question of this thread. What deck w/out neutrals [including MwnK reins]/OOH beats MWnK? Staton challenged me to an AIM game...but doesn't have an LCG deck and is playing mostly standard. Stag is about a step behind seeing the need for MWnK and already has the reins events (~but if i know him his godl curve is all screwey anyway). Maybe the problem is that the LCG meta isn't being explored enough? i dunno. I don't see an answer other then erratta (i don't think banning is neccessary) when somehting effects 20% of your deck wouldn't it bother you? even if the effect is to make you find different cards that make up the 20% (especially after a lot of bashing on the limitations of the cardpool, which is now limited even more)?

I've got a Targaryen LCG deck that runs as summer, and has only ever run 5 neutral chars/locations since before MwNK got released. 2x Carrion Bird, 1x each of the streets... and it has yet to lose to a MwNK deck. I'm not quite ready to back it up 100%, as I want to test it against a few more things first and might be running something very similar at GenCon too. But its pretty much a total toolbox/control deck, and runs surpisingly smooth.

Daenerys, Targ's season control w/ Dany's Chambers (to not rely heavily on Carrion Birds for anti-Winter), and Seductive Promise are all strong against MwNK/Reinforcements without having to alter my plan significantly at all.

Lars said:

How serious are you about the "no neutrals" clause? Seems to me that a lot of folks are challenging the premise that MWnK necessitates playing either no neutrals or OOH whatsoever. I don't think people are ducking the question or unsure of an answer so much as they are not convinced the question is pressing or even needs an answer.

Off the top of my head:

- Baratheon Asshai with plenty of Renown doesn't use a lot of neutrals and could use Melisandre to shut down any meaningful Renown on your Reinforcements. Seductive Promise and Support of the Kingdom would also help.

- Targaryen, possibly with summer and recycling Bones of the Child, built around Queen Dany and emptying your gold pool. There is enough Stealth and burn that against your weenie-Reinforcement-MWnK deck, they could push through the challenge STR for Flaming-Pitch Tower and possibly use Seductive Promise and Support of the Kingdom against you, too.

- A solid Lanni-Winter deck running Horn of Winter and Wintertime Marauders. Sure, it's OOH, but hitting your location base could keep MWnK under control quite well. And if I win the challenge that would allow you to play your Reinforcement event with the Wintertime Marauders (anyone else ever put a Devious Intentions on a Wintertime Marauders?), they can get rid of MWnK before you can play your Reinforcement (on a 1-to-1 basis) - and continue on to discarding your Reinforcement characters after that.

- And seriously, assuming additional in-House characters and basic resources in the Greyjoy expansion, I anticipate that the GJ Winter/Marauders deck is going to be far more powerful than a MWnK deck.

Will they win every time? Probably not. Will they roll over and die without putting up a fight against MWnK? Nope.

Agreed with ktom, and to round out the Core set bulds: A Stark Bear Island deck, wiht lots of high claim and as much targeted kill you can puit in. I speak from personal experience here.

And again Lars: i'm right there with you on most of your concerns.

A. I don't like perma steal, especially when its very easy

B. The card has indisuptably had a chilling effect on neutral unique characters seeing play.

C. The lack of cancels and immuniity makes this way to easy to pull off

D. Teh card is soild at 4 gold with its STR and icon mix as is - the steal ability makes the card way undercosted.

That being said: I'm not buying the argument that it is/will dominating hte environment. Becuase I am just not seeing, and haven't seen a plehtora of neutral cards running around in LCG. Maybe there were last fall, but I wasn't really playing LCG until we had about ten Chapter Packs available. and I ahve seen some really solid LCG decks in the past couple of weeks, including a few that can handle standard decks. I've seen a lot more builds along the lines of RJM's deck than neutral heavy decks. So, since I don't agree that neutrals are cirticla to have a competitive deck, adn don't think MwNK need a fix at the moment. they are just an incredibly annoying and undercosted card - that will probably see a lot fo action this summer.

ktom said:

the first suggestion that we haven't used here (and wasn't in our discussion that i highlighted in my first thread). very gold intensive and if you miss your combo before mine...well. Interesting idea, though.

Targ, to us, has been discounted as a viable house right now (and Jeff, our nights watch, has an almost unhealthy love of dragons and therefore House Targ). They seem to fall into the jack of trades master of none. I do like their stealth, but do they have it on anyone who costs less then 3 gold? They are also severely disadvantage by Fury of the stag. Maybe we just play them wrong...

I've liked Stark Bear Island for a while, though every time i've brought that up as a valid build on here its gotten shot down. I think it has potiential, i might focus on this for a while and see what i can do with it. but don't you give up the little toolbox that is still left and their in house keywords are seemingly devistatingly lacking.

Bara Asshai (or renown in general, especially out of summer w/ a bit of vigiliant) can be fast, but i'm running a simular build but with the bonus of MWnK/Reins. Its pretty much a race for mel/milk.

ktom said:

LOL. I just pulled out my cards and was getting ready to post my current LCG decks... two of which are ktom's first two (my bara is a little more vigilant focused than what he implied) and I tore apart my Lannister Winter Kneel deck which is very similar to the one he just posted about a month ago.

I run no more than 10% neutrals in my decks... I just don't see the need for anything more outside of Greyjoy and Martell. It has absolutely nothing to do with MWnK, everything to do with my playstyle. Rings prides himself on uniques, me on in House cards.

Stag Lord said:

And this was my other which runs no neutral characters or locations... just to prove that mass murder is the most efficient form of control. 4 Claim two plots goes a long way with Bear Island out first or second turn... and so many easy targets against a MWnK deck (which can't afford to run enough toolbox cards of its own to protect it characers.

Also Lars it sounds like your meta is in the middle of the cycle... first thing is someone sees a weakness that can be exploited by a new card. Everyone is forced to remove that weakness either by usin g the same card/strategy or by completely removing the hole that is being exploited... soon there is no hole to exploit and the card/strategy begins to have less and less effect and other cards would be much more impactful. Those cards are slowly reduced and then removed to the point where the threat is nothing more than a threat. Sometimes this starts the cycle all over again, and other times it is simply left on the wayside as new mechnics, cards, and strategies exploit new holes.

My meta has pretty much already moved through all three phases, which is why I just don't see it as a problem. There are enough non-grinding control decks that will be able to handle MWnK that I'm not convinced in a tournament it can rack up enough wins to make it to the Top 8 and when once there will be able to dominate... and if the deck type can't dominate competitive play I don't see a reason to errata the card.

Lars said:

You know, the "very gold intensive" comment rings kinda hollow considering how many times you've challenged it when it has been brought up as a potential problem with the MWnK deck. It's Lannister ! Gold intensive, even in a Winter deck, is usually the last issue. And remember, Lannister has an in-House GJ character reducer.

my 6 gold verse your 6 gold. for fun lets say its out of lannister for both of us (~i borrowed jeff's deck for the sake of this argument.

My 6 = 5 STR MIL POW + 3 STR MIL POW that you paid for and the ability to start discarding your cards and possible discard pile recursion

Your 6 = 3 STR MIL POW + Delaying the steal of your character

we are both in lanni so winter has no effect right?

You kneel my guy(s), i can still get the effect off.

I kneel your guy(s), you can't get the effect off.

also we are now in scenerio #2

Lannister/bara vs. Lannister/bara MWnK....

Dormouse, I really want to believe in a bear island deck, trust me i'm not trying to be obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. I just don't see them doing enough w/ a bear island deck (and 4 2 claim plots...3 gold each and max 3 initiative...right?) aside from kill in the dominece phase. Can you protect your hand from a concentrated Lanni attack? do you have enough charcaters to hold up to lanni kneel (which is majority pre-challenges)? heck i think a bara w/out reins deck would be able to be faster then a Stark BI deck right now. I just started my bear island deck (again) and it just feels like its missing something. there are about 3-5 in house charcaters i feel are a good cost to charcater ratio, unless i'm just suppossed to spam the deck w/ military icons

With no targets for MWnK and my military claim being higher than your likely Rein replacement, plus losing your best intrigue characters every phase, added to that the occasional lethal counter attack, guilty, Rob, Umber Beserker, deadly dire wolves, and icy catapults, even with me going last most of the time, you will lose 2-3 characters a turn pretty much every turn... In a 5 round game you're most likely to lose about half your characters.

It is FAR from perfect, but it is far more resilient than most people give credit to... and if I may be so bold as to say, part of it is the man piloting it. Rather than use neutrals and OOH characters to fill my holes, I use Starks strengths to fill those holes. I wipe boards starting with your biggest threats... which in a Lanni/Stark match up is not your military icons but your intrigue icons. I use my Valar and Wild Fire to keep your board empty trusting that I can always kill more than you can. I don't even have to have standing characters to kill multiple characters in a turn, and I will almost definitely have more characters in my deck than you have kneel effects.

The biggest problem is lack of draw... which I try to minimize with To Be a Wolf (which also conveniently stands a knelt character), Herald of the Wolf, and Winterfell Castle.

My win ratio in joust with this is better than 50% against every LCG build I've come across (including MWnK), and in melee it actually does better, almost. 70%. If stark gets some in house draw and cooler Winter effects this deck will be even more dangerous.

I'm finding Stark to be killer in our meta right now. My brother (who has been playing for only a few months now, and strictly LCG) is beating my standard decks with his Stark deck. The other night he took down a standard Bara deck with promo Eyrie in play (took him forever, but he did finally get the 25 power). Two other guys are running Stark decks, and I've stopped using MWnK because there just aren't enough people using enough neutrals to make it worthwhile -- and not because they are afraid of MWnK, they just don't build with many neutrals. Oh, and I'm one of two people in the meta who actually runs Valar. Sure, not the greatest examples, but this does seem to be meta-related. Anyone remember back when the Toronto meta wanted to ban Dothraki Sea because Targ burn was too powerful?

I think the issue with the bannig of Jaqen had to do with a) Infamy, Intimidate and +1 STR made for a bad combination, b) in limited formats, everyone would be playing Jaqen and c) the "errata" was pretty **** wordy. Slio9 put it pretty well once -- power errata isn't a good solution. Either allow the card or ban it. Changing a card after it comes out doesn't fix the problem, just adds a layer of complexity and confusion to the card.

I'm also hoping that in Kings Landing and/or Kings of the Sea that we get some cancels. An effect that would cancel MWnK is going to hit it pretty hard, that's for sure. Then the issue of banning/errata is moot -- the evolution of the game has taken care of it.

JerusalemJones said:

I'm crossing my fingers it does too, but realistically, i'm not sure it will (illustrated a couple of times above). What happens if it doesn't? do we say...lets what for one more cycle and expanasion and then see? sounds veyr slippery slope to me.

Slippery Slope? No more than banning.

slippery slope as in constently waiting for more cards, if this next batch doesn't help, the next one surely will....wash rinse repeat.

And I maintain that the same can be said about banning. Someone has an effective and efficient card that a group doesn't like (read anything good in Martell) and the ban drum start beating. Eventually we're left with cards with no interesting or game defining abilities... and if that is true then we might as well be playing Uno.

If it is a choice between a card that is potentially to powerful and a losing cards I'll go with the too powerful cards until it has been shown to be a detriment to the game.

I've never been on a ban wagon before (still not, i think an erratta that takes away the bredth of MWnK reach would be fine)...even PL. I've never had a problem with strong cards because they didn't alter the environment. A good coutner to PL was location control (and milk...) and good counter to Jaquen was location control (and milk...) or character control. Milk and a kill effect...no more Jaquen.

After three more pages of discussion (with 1-2 persons saying the card should receive an errata, 2-3 saying they don´t like the effect/card and the rest saying no problem at all) about MwnK and some, ...ehm... interesting scenarios it might be time to bring up some decklists of the "magical" MwnK decks and the decks that constantly lose to the named decks. No?!

I mean i really wanna know what people are doing/playing that they see MwnK as such a threat? For me it somehow seems that one or two gaming metas run neutral cards in an overextending manner like other metas would never do. I could e.g. also come to the conclusion that Lady Daenarys chambers and Flame-kissed is way overpowered if 80 % of the usual charachters in my decks are 2 strength and below (and don´t have the no attachment restrictions) ?!

haven't i done so all along? haven't i started out this thread in such a way? haven't i told you pretty much excatly whats in my deck at various points? you don't need a deck list to know whats in my deck (look at house Baratheon...build a deck with 3x MWnK and at least 2x of 5 Reins events and seductive promise. 3x refugess, reducers, 0-2 cost charcaters, summer, mel, native renown, and gilly...there are not a whole lot of variables there).

anyway for the N-th time:

It plays against lanni kneel (that wanted to use Barristen Selmy and Benken Stark for recurssion and limited other charcaters...)

It plays against Summer Bara (which took Jon, Ghost, Aemon, and a few others out of the deck, but still uses streets and i still love stealing them)

It plays agaisnt Lanni MWnK (uses slightly less reins events, but still not a surprise when you see the cards in it)

It plays against Stark /theon...not that much anymore

It plays against Stark and baar winter

It played against Targ until targ got buried in the deck boxes.

forgot: if i wasn't the one who ran it it would have retired the martell deck too...oh wait it did....

Lars said:

And yet there must be because haven't Stag and I said that when we have built similar decks, our results have been significantly more lackluster than yours have been? Maybe your plot choice is just superior to ours. Old Ben's request for a specific deck list instead of the basic makeup is a worthy request and well supported by the direction the thread has taken because no one outside of your meta who has tried a deck based on the card choices you suggest are feeling the same urgency or outrage that you are.

Granted, not everyone has actually tried to build the deck, but for those of us who have, the experience seems to be different than yours. So either it's just you or no one else has hit on the specific deck makeup you have. Old Ben is simply suggesting that a decklist would clarify that difference.

Lars said:

Exactly. When people say that their experiences playing a MWnK deck is different from yours, you make your original points all over again instead of discussing why the different experiences may be taking place. No one seems to be disagreeing with you that the theory of the MWnK deck is bad. But they are saying that they haven't seen it put into practice, even when they try. Old Ben is asking for a decklist in order to help try to duplicate your experience since no one seems to be able to do so on their own.