We're a year into LCG and there still is no neutral attachment control. Am I the only LCG player bothered by this?

nope. especially since compelled by the rock is soooooo good.

kpmccoy21 said:

Well before KoTS and the latest chapters there was hardly any location control, now there is sufficient. I think attachment control will be next.

I was expecting another kingsguard character though.

kpmccoy21 said:

In fact there is sort of neutral attachment control. If you run the shadow agenda you could use "the shadow of the east" for neutral attachment control.

Wow - that's really reaching.

But yeah - neutral attachment control is needed, clearly. It lagged behind cancel and location control on my list of problems, mostly becuase of teh nature of attachments in general, but it certainly is hte next problem spot in the card pool that needs to be fixed.

Stag Lord said:

See, I would argue that without actual attachment control, the nature of attachments isn't a particular hinderance. The nature of attachments being doubly vulnerable (to specific removal as well as the removal of whatever they are attached to) doesn't show up if there isn't any common specific removal. Right now - outside of Targ anyway - there are very few options for knocking an attachment out of play on its own. The only way to really deal with an attachment is to knock the card it is attached to out of the way, which means they are not particularly subject to their "doubly vulnerable" nature.

I wouldn't be so worried about nuetral attachment control if there weren't 2 good to really good take control of attachment effects right now. Its come to the point where i won't play an attachment against a lanni deck because of compelled by the rock. Why should i play an attachment that my lanni opponent can just turn right around and start using against me?

True. We do have Valar with no Plot counter - and plenty of character control. Maybe that's why I haven't really noticed. Still - when you do get those pain in the ass attachments agaisnt you, I'm find myself regretting not having a tool to answer it.

But I play a lot of Baratheon and Targ, so tis not often an issue (especially now that those little Asshai are viable in LCG - just in time!)

Stag Lord said:

but we have ways to counter valar both neutral and in every house. I believe every house except lanni (~my heart bleeds for them) has a save, dupes are a fine answer (~yes yes i know i know Stag you don't like dupes), bodyguard is fine (even more so know that bleeds might be appearing more with the Red Keep), thne there is power of blood and stay of execution if you want some form of limited plot answer. I like that valar can always go off, but can be minimized by good deck building and good game play.

Attachment control is spares in some houses (Martell and stark), iffy to ok in other houses (bara and GJ), and really really good in two houses (targ and lanni). a neutral form of attachment control would make it a tad bit more reliable for all houses and not just the favored one plus the house that has always been good at it. The only other answer is to stop printing these nasty attachments (flogged, and the GJ as examples in the recent CP)

ktom said:

I'm amused that there was so much complaining about the uselessness of attachments from so many quarters (with some admitting that negative attachments were okay to run sparringly) because of the double vulnerability, and now that attachment control is sparse people are complaining about the lack of attachment control. Some of the same people IIRC.

The fact that there is in house attachment control, some of which is very efficient, I'm willing to bet will keep the amount of attachments non-Targ decks run under control. I'd rather see every House with some unique flavor of attachment control, in time, rather than a neutral solution. It keeps House distinction primary, and makes it a harder choice for it to be included.

dormouse said:

I'm more amused that "in the old days," people were usually so convinced of the double vulnerability that they didn't run many attachments (in general), which led, though the metagame, to people not running much specific removal. But the pendulum never swung back to people running many attachments (in general) - until LCG. I personally rarely found attachments to be doubly vulnerable in practice because specific attachment control was so rarely a part of most people's decks (from about WED on).

i don't remember if i was one of those people, but i don't think i was. I've always liked and used attachments, espeically the ones that served as other means of character control.

I'm not saying that attachments should or should not be run, right now i'm just asking for the gap in attachment control to be closed a little bit.

dormouse said:

I agree. Targ is popular enough that I always have a hard time including very many attachments in my deck. Or at least non-unique attachments. Lannister does have a devastatingly useful anti-attachment card. But every card slot for them is so competitive when building a deck that I don't always include it.

dormouse said:

I concur.

ktom said:

Yeah, If I were to generalize, I'd say I probably typically ran 5-6 attachments in my CCG decks. When the rotatation hit and we started playing LCG only decks, I found myself using more attachments, something like 9-10. But, I've been doing a hasty retreat from that with Compelled by the Rock becoming more and more popular in the Lanni decks in our group ~it's to attachments what MwNK is to characters. Seriously, knowing that pretty much any meetup is going to have me playing against one and probably multiple Lanni decks, I'm finding myself evaluating every attachment to see what it would do to me if I lost control --and it ain't pretty. For a Stark, I'm left with Nymeria. That's it! Perhaps I should go back to playing Lanni like I had been for the last few months of the CCG era *grumble*.

Interesting, considering that Compelled by the Rock predates the Core Set and the switch to LCG, huh? Obviously, attachments became a problem in LCG, so people went back to see what they could find to do about it - hence a "rediscovery" of Compelled by the Rock. Undoubtedly a great card, but the fact that it took over a year to really start showing up in decks says something about the metagame's view of attachments in general.

It'll be interesting to see if people stop playing attachments, or if they start packing Hand's Judgment.

I love the Distinguished Boatswain. I immediately found room for 3 in my Gencon Greyjoy deck.

I put Support for Harlaw, Risen from the Sea and the Bannerman in my deck specificly to deal with Castellian of the Rock and Flame-Kissed.

The fact that there are powerful cards in the environment that specify no attachments make using positive attachments as a manner to protect oneself from these cards.

I suspect most Lanni and Targ decks should be running attachment hate. And I think for GJ To Be A Kraken is a fine enough protection for it. If I feel the need, the Hand's Judgement can supplement. I don't run much anti-attachment because there just isn't room for it right now. The biggest offenders are from Targ and Baratheon. Targ's burn I deal with by using war crests and Just start off with Power of Arms and Risen... it's so far made it a fair fight with Targ.

As for Bara... well that stupid Lightbringer or other save related attachments can be annoying. I'm planning on trying out Scurvy to counteract it.

Personaly I think in-house attachment control is the way to go. (If it's needed). Also remember A Game of Cyvasse from Martell can be a form of attachment control (as Locked was before it).

Three reprints could help: Frozen Solid (made as House Stark only), Qarl the Maid and Seeress of Shadows (The Targ/Bara bounce attachment to hand).

or new cards of a similar nature.

Wow, I had the chance to play against Flogged and Chained last night. Nasty, nasty card.

I am kind of jazzed about Maester Malleon's tome now - at least Stark will be able to rip Valar out of the Plot deck. Very nice. That'll crimp up the Lannisters a little.

I think I'm going to try a Greyjoy discard deck, as the Fish Market and the Drowned characters in KotS make for some quite nice synergy, I think. I guess Ser Barristan will be the achilles heel for such a deck.

Winter said:

It depends in which direction you want to take your discard deck and which format you want to play. For some decks it´s better if your opponent still has some cards in his/her deck, e.g. Here´s my husband can´t cancel events if the deck is depletete, the latest charahcters released need to discard a special kind of card in order to do claim power. So it could be good if your opponent gets "some" cards back in the deck, of course it would be better to offer a well or better portioned recursion for your opponent than Ser Barristan. ;-)

Sorry, I should have mentioned format... I'm LCG-only.

I realise the new guys who grab power for discards are less useful when you've decked an opponent, but I figure they are a good way to build power while holding off an opponent, and I'd then rely on card advantage to kill them once I've decked them. I'll see how it runs... oddly for a greyjoy deck, it has few military icons because the Holy characters are often INT/POW.

I think i've seen a GJ mill themed deck actually deck someone once, and they still lost the game.....

Oh, twice actually, i forgot about Dobbler doing it to rings (and losing) at the legacy tourney.....

needless to say, i think focusing on milling is not a great idea (a few mill cards spread out here and there is okay...)

Stag Lord said:

really???? if valar is that big of a deal to stark just slip in 2 power of bloods (+4 twice gold as opposed to -5 three times) and put nymeria on Master Vyman. Between him, power of blood, Hand's judgment and the new eddard i don't think stark would have much of a problem with lanni. Though some attachment control would help................................

See, I think the real benefit of the Tome is getting to LOOK at the opponent's plot deck.