Yeah, good point there. Oh well. Lanni will just keep on being the best house, just like in the books.

after a hell of a lot of testing within the DC meta over the last few months, it's clear that stag lord is exactly on target in the following quotes:

Stag Lord said:

Stag Lord said:

first, i will say that seasonless lannister kneel is very clearly the best LCG joust deck. to echo stag lord: player skill being equal, properly optimized lannister kneel beats stark (with 3x bound by duty, 3x to be a wolf, and 3x distinct mastery) or baratheon (with 3x to be a stag, 3x distinct mastery, and 3x bannermen) 4+/5 times. we have found that stark just plain runs out of steam due to the coupling of lack of defense on intrigue and inability to draw; being relatively sucky on resources generation; and not having many gimmicks worthy of mention aside from the aforementioned standing/defensive events. baratheon seems to be a closer matchup, but with all the standing stuff it has, it still can't seem to keep up with lannister on military and intrigue after kneelers are laid out; lacks card draw and ability to field resources as quickly; etc.

before the release of city of secrets targ seemed to lose something closer to 3/5 to lannister, but we haven't tested any of some new, possibly more efficient builds we're toying around at the moment.

and there is indeed a misconception that baratheon has enough vigilant characters to do much against a properly focused/optimized lannister kneel build (the best of the possible lannister LCG builds at the moment, imo). none of the vigilant characters save the arena knight do much to advance the power rush theme, and just make a baratheon deck feel overloaded with weenies and lacking in cohesion. and after a lot of playing around with straight baratheon and baratheon summer builds, we found that the arena knight is one gold too pricey to be included in the deck and used consistently; i have since swapped them out in my own build for house florent scouts, which help to make up for baratheon's natural imbalance in challenge icons.

Nah, I don't think that people think that just having enough vigilant characters means you'll beat lanni kneel. The vigilant mechanic in general gives bara the edge against the kneel. Couple it with some standing events and you have a pretty good chance of outmuscling lanni. You do need to have a way to go first alot though. The problem is that you need to outlast the lanni player, which is hard now that Good God's Own Kiss isn't still around in LCG. And Baratheon has an inbalance in icons? I thought they had the best spread of icons out of all the houses.

Staton said:

a few responses based on observations from our playtesting:

first point: it is indeed true -- i played against someone in NYC this weekend who thought that it probably would work coming into that matchup (the games we played convinced him that even standing events + vigilant aren't enough with the card pool at present)

second point: vigilant + standing events just aren't enough to "outmuscle" lannister because baratheon doesn't have enough teeth in military and intrigue relative to lannister, as was discussed a bit above

third point: ignoring the overall pool of bara characters, a competitive bara deck is way imbalanced in favor of power; a competitive targ build is the best balanced by far

it's sad that there isn't a way of carrying out such demonstrations over the internets anymore, haha

Staton said:

Plots i think are a big problem in LCG at least with house inbalance issues that might arise. The 'control' plots (blockade, resets, 2 claims, snowed under, 1 attacker/defender per challange, and +2 str for having less characters) all have bad gold or low initiative (or both). Rule by decree and rains of autum being the only 2 excepts. A lot of the plot decks start to look the same, and if you need control via your plots your losing something resource wise. Lanni has the abilty to run those plots ands not lose any real resources (if the deck is built right). Also, if lanni wants plot gold they are the only house in LCG with access to more then 2 5 gold plots.

that said: those that have problems w/ lanni, do you run fleeing and rule and a reset (or 2)?

Staton said:

Bara has good icon diversity. i think if you build a straight rush deck you do lose some of that diversity and this might have been where the original comment came from.

I want to go back to something someone said about shadows. Yes everyhouse got shadows, but lannister not only got the best Shadow card that we know about (and probably in the game), but they also get the most help from shadows. realisitically they are the only ones who can/should run the agenda and the two events just help lanni do what it is already geared for.

ahhhhh see I consider a deck that is skewed towards one type of icon is already a noncompetative deck. Maybe if the bara player would go for a more well rounded icon balance and worry less about rush and more about trying to outlast lannister. a rush deck focused on the power challenge is going to be really easy to stop, regardless of what house you're playing. At least in LCG format, if this was VED then we might have another story, but its not. So, my advice to him is to go ahead and make it a summer deck, the extra draw is REALLY helpful, as is the gold. And try to balance out the icons. Make the lannister deck try and stop more than just one type of challenge. Also, Family and Honor might help if he's running the bannerman. and Lannister can't kneel outside of the marshalling phase, right? and their only kill card(now I'm not counting I'm you writ small), is Lanni pays its debts, right? Oh, I just thought of You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf, that's still around, right? Also, adobting a more defensive playstyle should help against Lannister as well since they don't have much renown, so if they aren't getting uo challenges, they aren't getting that much power per turn.

As for the Shadows, I'm gonna wait and see what other Shadow cards we are getting before saying that lanni got the best or that only they should run the agenda. I'm guessing that there are at least a couple of bomb shadow cards we haven't seen yet. And they SHOULD be for someone other than lanni.

How do you outlast Lannister? The longer the game goes - the stronger they get with their draw and their gold. The whole key is to end the game before they get enough into play to get a lock.

And they definitely have challenge phase kneel as well as the stupid non unique Brothel.

And if its not winter - they have the amazing Lion's Mouth location to just hammer away at your key cards. That sucker alone is one of the best remvoal cards out there.

It sounds like the DC meta has come to many of the same cocnlusions we have in NY. i ahve also foudn that in LCG Targ gives you the best chance to handle Lannister. And @Lars: every deck around here runs at least one reset: several run both Valar and Widlfire. Rule By Decree is extremely popular. Fleeing doesn't see a lot of play - i think in LCG everyone wnats to be resource intensive becuase the Plot selection still leaves a little to be desired in terms of gold production - though it has gotten better.

Wait a minute. I thought we'd been over this. Hasn't Lannisport Brothel been errated umpteen times now?

No one has managed to build an undefeated Lannister deck in our Meta. There are two with high win ratios, but they are also manned by our two players with probably the highest win ratios outside of Lannister also.

I think I'm going to have to go with the idea that Lannister is a pretty simple House to build for card advantage. I don't see it as being especially stronger than other Houses, just easier to build, and in Joust easier to pilot.

I think however it is the hardest to build and use in Melee. They don't have a lot of permanent character control, and while they can certainly limit options in any givin round, as soon as they have to spread that out amongst multiple opponents. Building and piloting a melee deck is much harder. You want to get even with your Lanni player, suggest more melee.

yeah, we've tried lanni kneel in multiplayer -- it does well in 3 player melee, but awfully in 4 player melee. it's easier to open up the opponent who balloons in power first using kneeling tactics in 3 player, but lanni seems to be an easy target for the few power it can manage to snag in 4 player. all that aside, lions gate is an outstanding tool in multi to a baratheon player in check.

Stag Lord said:

Kennon said:

Yeah, check the FAQ/Eratta. Lannisport Brothel is Unique.

finitesquarewell said:

I've been trying my lanni shadows deck in multiplayer. Tyrion/reins give it some rush. its interesting.

First off, gotta say I hate these forums and their stupid login problems. (I realize "hate" is a relative term, so it's hard to convey in words how bass ackward I think they are. Let's just say if these forums followed the rules that Darwin laid out, they would have died a long time ago.)

Now, onto the topic at hand. As Finite explained, Lanni is the strongest LCG at the moment, at least in our meta, for the following reasons:

• A variety of in-house (and flexible) gold options;
• Various in-house draw (how often do you see a Lannister deck relying on Samwell for draw?); and
• Extremely efficient character control (It says something that "A Lannister Pays His Debts" is one of the less efficient cards Lannister has).

I think that Bara is pretty close to being competitive against Lanni. I think if it were to receive a few "claim power" events, it would be able to pull off a round 2 win every once in awhile, which could give Lanni headaches. (Not that Bara would always win, just that it would be a close matchup.)

Like Finite said, Targ puts up a good fight, and given the right draws I think it can win. The problem is that with Lanni's draw, it is fairly consistent at getting to the cards it needs. That means it's basically up to Targ to draw well and/or get out what it needs to win early. Unfortunately, Targ draw tends to kick in later in the game (when enough influence is out to use Xaro's Home and when you have the attachments/gold/Dany's chambers in place to get recursion going.) This means that Targ get's better later in the game as Lannister's does. If Targ has a strong start, a good build has a good chance of winning. If the draw is mediocre or poor, it's going to be a long game and Lannister will probably win.

As far as other houses go, I think they're pretty much 2nd tier until the Greyjoy expansion comes out. Greyjoy and Martell for obvious reasons, Stark because of the reasons others highlighted. (Location contronl and neutral gold-providing locations could help a lot, and more neutral draw options would be HUGE.)

Staton said:

Wow, I'm just cringing reading this. Guys I appreciate the ideas; but- this is a terrible idea - the math just doesn't work. Unbanning this card is not going to close the gap between the houses, it should only expand the gap. Sure, other houses would have draw; but, Lanni also gains more draw, and cheaper draw, and at the very least replaces some current draw cards with the Cache (=better scale).

A problem in this game cannot be fixed by bringing a card into the environment that is more cost effective for the dominant house than for the houses trying to catch up.

Of course, the ceiling of diminishing returns hits Lannister much earlier when you have all those draw effects. Eventually it becomes less effecient to run them because you start wasting them. With less competing effects, other houses have a wider margin there and more room for efficiency to grow, giving them a higher percieved (and possibly actually, I'm too lazy when it comes to numbers) return on the investment. Not that I'm advocating an unbanning at the moment, but I do see the perception there.

LOB is dead on. I get what your saying kennon, but Cache would replace the 2 goldtooth mines in every one of my lanni decks, so i'm not running into any diminishing returns there.

I even considered adding a caveat specifically for you Jason, but i was in a hurry. I normally would agree... but given the size of our card pool and the rate at which it will grow... waiting for stuff to improve all around is going to seem glacial... and that's not good for competitive play.

Your math is one way to look at it, same for Lars... in this case, I prefer to take the Obi Wan approach:

Currently Lanni runs 3x Golden Tooth Mines @ 6 gold, plus whatever else they want, and easily max out. Stark can do the same @ 12 gold, but can't use the events, or they can wait to play "Bran the Builder's Legacy" in Dominance if they can hold the card/gold... (why that card got nerfed, I'll never know)

If you "un-ban" the Cache, esp. in an environment with little to no location/attachment control, Lanni (who's already afloat in a sea of gold) halve their cost, and Stark cuts from 12 to 9. (This is really making me wish for a reprint of Alliance or Under One Banner). Heck, ignore my comment about the GTM... Lanni cuts from 6 to 3 and stark goes from infinite (or null, but the idea of cost is going from non-existent to spendy isn't the point, it's going from untenable to "affordable") to 9.

This may seem crass Jason, but it's not so purely economics in this situation. If gold and card draw are Lannis paramount strengths, we could just redraw the curves to indicate that they'll also be more effiicent everywhere on the curve of Icons/STR/etc, because they can shift to the most desireable point of the curve, i.e. they have a bigger "sweet spot" to hit. I agree they would gain from an examination of comparative advantage... but the other end of that stick, is that in a situation where one producer is more efficient in both goods, you still have the less efficient producer in the marketplace. And in this case, those rates are only going to change by additions to the card-pool, by addition or anti-subtraction. I think almost anyone (who's not as antagonistic to draw a you... and trust me... I'm much closer to your position than most. But I guess that makes me a Michael Steele to your Rush.) would be happy to give Lanni a little (no, it's significant) improvement in exchange to having at least the option on the card, given the dearth of availabe effects out there.

Given the three draw cap, and given Lannisters appropriate and overwhelming gold advantage, I am not as worried about scaling abck their cost for draw by a gold or two here and there.

They've got the money, and they have the draw choices - they are going to hit the cap turn after turn reagrdless. I am more concerned about bringing the other Houses up to the same level, and making it easier for them to affordably hit the cap I really like the Cache and would love to see it "unbanned".

BTW - if we get the promised location control in kings of the sea, Cache becomes even more balanced since a removal effect will hit two cards for one.

OK, first let me say again that I've just about had it with these boards. My login works like 1 out of 10 times these last two weeks & I'm being automatically logged off after each session.

Luke - yeah, I hate all the card draw - but really that's not even relevant. The point is, you don't fix an inequity in any mechanic by making an in house option for the dominant house in that area. Period. For the sake of argument, let's say that House Tyrell existed and had a distinct advantage during setup/ could drop 7 cards 50% of the time(and it's not possible to drop more, so there's a similar cap issue). The problem wouldn't be fixed by adding another house Tyrell card to the pool that was still cost effective enough that other houses played it.

As stated above, the PERCEPTION may be that things are better because other houses can now drop more cards in setup (or draw more, or kill more, etc), but it's still easier for the dominant house, who now has more options and is either closer to maxing out the mechanic, or can achieve the same results with less cards in the deck & for less resources - freeing up slots to toolbox and diversify.

LordofBrewtown said:

I don't know if this will help, but when I was having a similar problem, somebody told me to change all my bookmarks to www.fantasyflightgames.com (instead of new.fantasyflightgames.com, which was, I guess, a transitionary URL last fall when I created all my bookmarks). I haven't had any problems since.

Hope that helps for you too. I wish I could remember who to give the credit to...

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=593

New spoiler article featuring King's Landing, providing some neutral draw. Does this change the discussion? ;-)

jmccarthy said:

At the moment, not especially impressive whatsoever. Of course, this is a card thats 3 packs away from seeing print too... So lots of time in between for things to change in terms of support and synergy. But paying 4G for a neutral unique location with a rather conditional draw effect is pretty much worthless with where we're at right now anyway.

RJM said:

I admit I am bummed about this card being three chapter packs away, and it is certainly not an auto-include. However, for those players who are addicted to card draw, this card will probably see use in most houses...

~oh goodie, more reliance on neutrals...

Actually, i'm w/ RJM on this one. Its not for every deck, heck its not even for every shadows deck. Also, anyone know what/if the other king's landing locations are?