Today I was surfing through tzumainn's updated site, and was looking at some card ratings (warning! small sample size!).

Anyways, I saw some composite ratings that really surprised me and got me thinking about a topic we have discussed before on the GoT Message boards, what are the most underrated cards?

First, underrated means different things to different people, but for the purpose of this conversation, lets referrence the card ratings on tzumainn's site. What card has an extremely low rating on the site that you find is much stronger and usable than the ratings would imply? Basically, what card appears to suck according to the masses, but you think it rocks?

I'll offer my two:

Distinct Mastery (Rating of 1.67 out of 5)

Head of a Dwarf (Rating 2.75 out of 5)

Outside of the "To Be A..." cycle, there are so very few cards that stand characters. While Distinct Mastery is limited by its targeting, often the best characters in the game have a Crest.

Most people can't find room in their Lannister deck for Head of a Dwarf, which is understandable considering their high number of power cards. But we've had alot of fun with Head of a Dwarf around here, and found it to be influential.

So what are some of yours?

I think a lot of those bad LCG ratings, come from people who were voting when 'standard' was still part of the environment, as well. You can even follow some of the shift of opinion if you read through the comments and the dates on which they were made. Kinda fun.

And I agree Distinct Mastery, while not a game breaking effect on its own, is very versatile in a lot of deck setups in LCG.

I like head of a dwarf. i just think its in the wrong house. In lanni i like when my opponent has power on their house card, it helps speed up my deck. Plus, they really only have one kill card (unless you want to find a 2 str character they are going to keep around long enough for them to put power on and then Payne him...) and i'm not sure if i want to pay 2 extra to make an attachment work (in lanni by running mel OOH or any other house by running this OOH).

to answer the question, i think most of the cards are rated well (there are some over-rated ones, i.e. lords of the narrow sea).

That said i think in a bara summer deck Summer Port (1.80) is better then rated (plsu its not limited). I also think compelled by the sun and the sea (two different cards) are a tad underrated. And RJM is dead on about standard ratings creeping in, look at To be a Viper and the comparasions to older events.

Lars said:

That should hardly be a surprise. The spoilers for the Core Set and first two Ravens CPs were up on the sight for something like 3 months before the product hit store shelves because tzu went to Gencon '08, shortly before FFG's LCG supply line imploded.

Ratings on tzu's site always need to be taken with a grain of salt. They are 90% reactions to spoilers, not to game experience.

I think the rating system is flawed.

The best way to measure a card would be to track tournement data and score it based on that.

After all, the more a card is in top tier decks... the better it is. At least from an end standpoint.

Granted thats not even perfect... but I mean the rating system right now is horrible since I could go in and just rate all the good cards (like Ghost of High Heart) and give it a 0, and then give cards like Daybreak, Parting Blow, Liars and Thieves, Turmoil in the realm, Punnishment of Thieves all 5.0 ratings.

~ And definitly give Flea Bottom a 0, just for a why not :-P

Sure, all ratings systems where players vote are subject to manipulation. But when a person sees a trend in your voting, I can learn to adjust for it and ignore your comments. But I think most of us are willing to vote exactly how we feel.

As for Lords of the Narrow Sea, I play that card in Bara not for the chance of getting the power benefit, but to stop my opponent from getting the effect of their plot card. I love forcing them to reveal a new plot after they drop Winds of Winter and expect a 2 claim win with all my charaters at a lower strength. I'd rate it a 3, though, as it is conditional.

I do think Bandit of Summer/Winter are underrated at 2, but that might cange when Kings of the Sea comes out with more Kingdom cards. Sure, these aren't great cards, as they are quite limited to which houses they affect, but they are decent cards for the cost. A tri-con for 2 gold in Martell/Targ -- I'm not going to complain.

bloodycelt said:

I can´t help to think that such a rating system would have more problems than benefits. Starting with the initial question "how is a top tier deck defined?" or pointing in another direction how do i know that a given tournament has a serious field of participators? Is it bound to the number of participators in that tournament, special players, "the name of the tournament / title granted"?

Sure a way can be found, never the less the solution will also be subjective.

Than you will have problems with the weighting you suggested, for different reasons:

• cards that can usually be found in every deck are resources, some neutral stuff like Iron throne, some of the beloved plots like the gathering storm, outfox etc. , so these cards will by definition "card often appears in top decks" be considered to be the best cards, ~Hooray for searoad we never saw a better card. ;-)
• cards which are unique are often only one times in a deck = advantage for non- uniques to appear at the top spots
• the out of house gold penalty will be hard to include in the rating system, usually every card with only one house affiliation is only played in evry sixth deck right?! There were and are even today some notable exceptions like Seal of the lion etc.
• if you manage to weight the OOH penalty by adding a factor to the rating system you´ll still have problems with "house xy only" cards. Could the rating really be representative if "Scorpion sting" would end up with a relative low rating when a simple resource would become one of the best cards?!
• Also we don´t have that many tournaments at the moment to draw our conclusions. That means a lot of good sideboard cards won´t receive a rating for a long time.

That said, i think the subjective rating system Tzumainn offers is fine. It´s part of the fun to give a very subjective rating and to see after 3 months or so, that neither you nor others ever played that card you rated 5. ;-)

It´s also interesting to see how players rate, while some of them are showing reactions to spoilers like Ktom mentioned others usually take their time. My personal habit is to give perspective ratings like "the card could be great some day when other cards supporting the theme show up". Though these can naturally proof to be very wrong in the long run. :-)

Probably... by tying the cards to match records. If a card was in a deck that won worlds... the card is considered to have won worlds.

And why shouldn't searoad have a high rating.... it's dreadfully useful.

Agreed searoad is useful, but it´s nothing special and not a game changing card and i think that these cards should receive a 5 star ranking which are special and have influence on the tournament scene. Cards like Massing at twilight, injurious poison, bounty of the realm ....

"Worlds" is referring to my point about tournaments, the tournament which is called "worlds" is if you are willing to break it down, just a "national" USA/Canada event. If the tournament would be at another location every year and would have many international participators it could be represantative. Well i´m aware that the most AGOT players are from the USA and thus it´s okay, but without a bigger appeal than just a title, foreign attenders will be rarely seen at the GenCon event.

It all comes down to the question why the decks at the GenCon event should be any better than the decks that were e.g. played at one of the big tournaments (with an equal number of participators) we had in France in the past. There are of course also other examples in the USA and Europe. Other CCG/TCG games had qualifiers, so that some of the main tournaments were not open to everyone willing to play a deck, but just for national champions and runner ups. Don´t get me wrong, i appreciate that you could participate in every tournament you would like to, but it really blurs the representativeness of decks.

I would love to see the breakdown from a tournament like GenCon (in addition to ChiCon, Castle Stahleck, etc.). The info would be very useful and interesting to most of us, I would think.

Old Ben makes a fair point. It makes me sad that I'll probably never get to play some of the European players (unless I make it to the Essen game fair one day?).

It brings up a question for me, however, and that is how different would the sample from a large European tourney be from a large American tourney? I'm honestly asking here, as I'm not sure. One thing I really miss is top 8 decklists from various larger tournaments that used to be put up on Tzu's site. I'd like to see more of that come back. I realize that probably means more work for a TD, however, unless more players take initiative in posting their decks afterwards.

The flip side of that is some players don't want their decklists made public, I guess.