Warning: This is long and rant-like at times, so stop reading here if you’re not in the mood for that sort of thing.

Background
Finite and I played a few games yesterday. He played his GenCon joust deck (Lanni), and I played a Targ summer deck. Mine was an updated version of a deck I've played against Finite's Lanni deck 40+ times in the run-up to Kingsmoot and GenCon. Despite my tinkering, I lost three games in a row--all different reasons.

As I see it, Targ vs Lanni should be an even matchup. The Targ and Lanni Fury plots do not target each other. Kneel isn't disproportionately stronger against Targ (as it arguably is against rush deckbuilds that rely on 1-2 unique characters to claim renown), and Targ has quite a bit of draw (in the form of recursion) and can take advantage of the summer agenda the best. Of all the houses, I think Targ will typically give Lanni the hardest time--at least until Martell is released. Indeed, the most successful version of my Targ deck (before Kingsmoot) won against the Lanni deck about 40% of the time.

All this aside, the most recent version of my deck, which added (a) the +1 gold kingdom location to make it more resilient against first-turn blockade and speed it up in general and (b) neutral shadow tech to make it more resistant to kneel, performed poorly against Lanni.

Why Finite's deck won--and Lanni dominates more generally
#1: Lannister’s biggest advantage is that its starts are usually much faster than other houses. If a Lanni deck runs three Weaponsmith and three Stewards, it will be less reliant on locations, freeing up space for characters while still having more gold than a non-Lanni player. In addition, unlike Targ and GJ, Lanni doesn't have much use for influence so it doesn’t need to choose between +gold and +influence locations; it also does not suffer from the lack of influence-providing cards in the current cardpool. A first-turn blockade, which should be strongest out of GJ, is strongest out of house Lannister.

#2: Lannister's draw is efficient. Unlike Samwell or seasonal draw, Lanni draw does not involve intricate combos or foundational cards. Only Greyjoy and Stark warship locations offer sustained draw that does not require a complicated combo, and both of these houses half less than 1/2 the draw Lanni does. Whereas Targ's recursion arguably makes it a stronger sustained draw engine, cards like Xaro's home and Lady Dany's chambers involve 3-card combos. (To draw from Xaro's Home, one needs influence and an attachment in hand; to use Lady Dany's chambers, one needs a TARG character in hand and an attachment in the discard pile.) In addition, as more cards are printed, seasonal mechanics--and seasonal draw--become less attractive. For Targ, as the shadow mechanic develops, Lady Dany's chambers becomes less useful. Combined with Lanni's gold dominance, a Lanni player's hand dominance quickly translates into board control.

#3: Lannister's playable characters tend to be cheap. The highest gold cost character that a Lannister deck must play is 3 gold, excepting Jaime (optional), Tyrion, and the shadow armies that draw a card when they come into play (also optional). (Note that because of the shadow mechanic, the 4-gold cost of most of these characters is broken into two 2-gold payments, however, making the high cost more affordable.) In addition, these 3-gold characters (Castellan and Enemy Informant) neutralize more expensive characters with kneel effects. In contrast, Bara relies on 4-gold characters to rush, and Targ's 4-gold dragons have very gold-intensive mechanics, making their true cost much higher. To be sure, Greyjoy and Stark (and even Targ) decks can be built with low-cost characters, but this means that some of the more beefy, late-game characters are excluded. Meanwhile, Lanni's +2 STR event cards and kneel make their 2 and 3 STR characters relatively more powerful, so they are less disadvantaged by having "weenie" characters late game.

#4: Lanni has the most cohesive control mechanic in the game. Like draw, Lanni control does not rely on toolbox or foundational cards to work. Castellan triggers himself and is easily repeated each round, and other kneel cards work immediately and build upon each other. In contrast, Targ burn relies heavily on attachments that cannot target characters with "no attachments"--and several of the mechanics cannot target characters that already have an attachment. Targ burn--arguably the second-strongest control mechanic in LCG format--also often relies on combining attachments/effects with Forever burning. The Flame-Pitch Tower is, in theory, burn, but it's conditions are completely inconsistent--though not mutually exclusive--with attachment burn. The same is true for Dragon burn. Whereas it is difficult to integrate a "win by 4 mechanic," attachment recursion with influence, and lots of gold into a deck, it is relatively easy to add more characters that kneel opponents’ characters when they come into/leave play.

Recommendations
#1: Make more options for neutral draw. By this I do not mean the shadow draw King’s Landing, which will likely favor Lannister the most because that house has the most King’s Landing locations and will therefore be able to meet the requirement the easiest. If all houses had more access to non-combo (i.e. non seasonal/Samwell) draw, they could run weenies and thus be less reliant on gold. Other houses could trim away a lot of the fat that is required to make the current draw engines work. (For example, a Targ deck that didn’t need to run summer to draw would have a lot more space for burn, ambush, and other Targ-flavor mechanics.) Though Lannister’s flavor--from the books--is that it has lots of gold, the house didn’t have more options. So why do they have more draw? Even if Lannister draw is a game tradition, more draw for other houses would go A LONG WAY toward the LCG environment.

#2: Make more gold and influence providing locations. We’ve gotten some--we just received a couple +gold and +influence locations in the GJ expansion, but more options for gold and/or cost reduction would be better. (Though Lannister had lots of gold in GRRM’s books, Stark had other ways of rallying forces--honor/loyalty drove lords to join the Starks. Similarly, prestige, valor, and a hint of ambition drove armies to support Renly. These houses should have other means--if they don’t have adequate gold--to marshall their forces.) And if we really want to even things out, give Lannister more cards that require influence. Targ and other houses often choose between gold or influence. If any house should rely on influence to function, Lanni should. Making influence a bigger part of Lanni deckbuilding will encourage more variety in deckbuilding while naturally providing more balance to the environment.

#3: Make mechanics more cohesive. I realize that the LCG block, to date, was all planned as an expansion to the 5KE set and therefore would have been better balanced and complimented by ITE/5KE cards. Nevertheless, the seemingly half-baked Bannerman mechanic, The Brotherhood trait (and other traits), and seasonal stuff in general were halfheartedly explored. Bannerman are only played in Bara (and GJ?), and seasons are largely played only for the added draw of the agenda and/or Samwell. (Targ, GJ, and Martell have decent seasonal cards and could be played for that reason, but I think seasons would be much less common even in Targ/Martell if other options for card draw existed.)

I suspect many of the above changes are probably already underway, but if they aren’t, they should be. LCG AGOT is at the point where it is now playable AND fun, which is a big accomplishment. The next step is to balance the environment, making it more appealing for people that refuse to play (or are just plain tired of playing) a Lannister deck.

I'm about to head out, so a more cohesive discussion will be forthcoming later, but I did want to briefly mention your point #4 which talks about Targaryen burn that cannot target characters with an attachment on them. I think often people tend to forget that the Castellan of the Rock while being a Limited Response also cannot target characters with attachments, something that I know I kept forgetting for a very long time.

I just want to say that 2 of the top 4 at worlds (including 1st) were not lanni.

I really don't think they are that dominating. Card advantage and effective income come in many forms (you can have tons of $$ and draw, but still get wiped easily by GJ/Valor/Saves for example).

I agree, however, that they are the most talentless - and this from a long-time Lanni player. They are probably more talentless now than ever in their history for many of the reasons stated above.

GenCon results notwithstanding, does anyone doubt that Lannister has by far the strongest card base? Tournament results rely on other factors, like player's relative skill and also luck.

The key question is - given two players of similar skill and experience, playing relatively optimized, tuned decks - does Lanni have a significant advantage over all or most of the other houses? Based personal experience and posts on this board, the consensus answer is Yes.

Twn2dn's proposals are excellent, and here are some additions:

Castellan
Why not admit Castellan is unbalanced and remove it from the environment. Seriously - does anyone really think that this card is anywhere near the design parameters of the rest of the game? Yes, it does not have any special survivabiliyt and is vulnerable to all the usual mechanics - Valar, Milk, Burn, etc. - but this is one card that produces an auto-win if an opponent cannot deal with it quickly. Would love to hear arguments that any other LCG character is as dominant.

Card Draw
Twn2dn suggests adding neutral card draw. This is a good solution, but could easily escalate and make the game revolve around draw engines. I would rather see draw become less important, with new efficient cards that punish draw engines as a means to balance the environment.

Resources
One of best features of this game is that while resources are important, it is not an economy centered game - i.e. there are many other important elements other than having more resources than your opponent. That being said, it would be good to have more neutral resources and also alternative resource mechanics for the other houses. For example, more combos like if you have X then reduce the cost of Y.

Events
It was not mentioned in the post, but a major source of Lanni's advantage is access to more and stronger Event cards. Not the least of which are the kill cards: A Lannister Pays His Debts and I'm You Writ Small. The environment would be more balanced and more interesting if more Events were available to the other houses.

Yeah - I don't tkae worlds to serioulsy as a reflection of the overall metagame. Most metas seem to argue that Lannister is by far the strongest House as a function of their themes, and the relative wekaness of other Houses's themes.

My solutions are similar to twn2dn's.:

Neutral, or in House draw is needed. Sam just isn't a sufficient answer and the summer agenda has a crippling drawback that makes it alomst unplayable outside of Targaryen. The game is about draw enegines anyway. Give Stark, Greyjoy and Baratheon the chance to draw into their themes.

Cancel: Hand;'s Judgement is a step, but more is needed. Seasick is house specific, and Eddard is costly and olny offers limited protection. A few more cancel cards would certainly slow up Lannister.

Immunity: it is still here (see the latest joff - WTF BTW) Immunity was a big counter to both Targ and Lannister form VED through Winter block - and I think if there was a way to give characters immunity, or a few more with the keyword, it would be a big help.

More Vigilant for Baratheon. A boat that stands characters is something Baratheon has always had, and would help. Vigilant has not kept pace with kneel and Baratheon is on the short end of that arms race at the moment.

Ahh, this argument again.

I find it extremely odd that people want to throw out Gencon results. Its the largest tournament thats been held within the LCG environment. I have a strong feeling that if Lannister had won, everyone would be saying "See, Lannister is the strongest and too powerful!" Instead, they didn't win, so those that want to make the case that Lannister is still too powerful conveniently throw out the results.

As is often said "Don't let facts get in the way of a good argument"

My Gencon deck went 4-1 against Lanny, playing some of the best players along the way (Rings, Finite x2, Corey). I'm sorry, but I am completely unwiling to throw out those results because it doesn't meet someone else's notion of the power level of Lanny.

On that note, I will agree with the point that Lannister is the easiest house to build a deck out of. The ease of Gold and Card draw as well as the lack of need for influence have already been pointed out. It is simply too easy to build a strong deck out of them without putting much thought into the deck. For this reason they are the strongest house. I won't argue that point. HOwever....

1) At no point in time do they need banning, even of their strongest card the Castellan. The Castellan is an Ally (see Varys), it is non-unique (see Seductive Promise), it has two limits to his ability (See Limited Response and only being able to target characters without attachments). It is absolutely a beast to deal with. But I have a much harder time dealing with Chapter pack Eddard, CHapter pack Robert Baratheon, Core set Drogon, and Wintertime Marauders. Castellan of the ROck is an extremely strong card which effectively defines Lannister at this time. Removing it would a reactive decision which in my mind would be bad for the game.

2) All the extra gold in the world means little without card draw. Golden Tooth Mines and Insidious Ways seem to be the most common forms of draw I see out of Lanny, although there are other cards of course. Are you not using location destruction yet? One successful Price of War does a lot to whack those Mines.

3) Think outside the box! Don't be a mindless Lanny player! Try some new ideas like...

a) Stark noble deck (non-seasonal) running 3x copies of Eddard and multiple copies of other nobles. Try using Lion's Gate (out of house) to trigger Eddard during the Plot phase or Draw phase. Also run 2x Power of Blood. We had success with this deck against Lanny.

b) Try a Baratheon stand deck using some of their underutilized attachments like Hunting Spear (particularly on Renly or Chapter pack Robert)

c) Give Greyjoy a good run. Trust me, lots of saves makes that Lanny player's Valar often hurt himself more than you.

Dobbler: how many Lanni decks were there in total of the 20 something players at GenCon? Two made Top Four anyway - so 50% of the final cut were Lannis. And at that point it becomes teh driver more than the deck - you are a World Champ and oyu have now won two genCon jousts. Becuase you were able to handle the Lanni decks doens't persuade me that Greyjoy rivlas them for number one yet. If I start seeing local metas reporting that Greyjoy is running neck and neck wiht the Lannis - i'll back off a little. But right now I think its Lanni head and shoulders above the rest.

I like Chapter Pack Robert as well - but his abiltiy is negated by one single card in shadows. Given that I am seeing 2-5 cards in shadows every turn, its hardly the sort of thing I would count on to lock down the Lannisters.

I also wouldn't cast Worlds aside too quickly based on what I saw. But for the sake of argument, you could look at it the other way. If there had been a cut to top 8, I'm pretty sure 3 of the next 4 at least would have been Lannister decks. (Any way to confirm this?) If correct that's more than half of the top 8, possibly as high as 75%. I played 4 of my 5 games against Lannister, and I was playing Lannister myself. The upper half of the field was pretty dominated by Lannister decks, so much so that I jokingly referred to it as the 1st Annual Lannister World Championships.

Part of the reason for that is like rings and Dobbler said, that they are the easiest house to play right now. It's one of the reasons I played them, I know. But they are easy to play precisely because they do have by far the strongest card pool overall, I think. Lannister's draw means you have a limited time to gain the upper hand, otherwise they are just going to wear you down with card advantage. Couple that with so many ways to lock down your best characters, and it means that they have to have a pretty sub-optimal draw in order for some houses to even compete.

Castellan is a great card, no doubt. But I'm more concerned with just how much more draw Lannister has than everyone else. They should have better draw than most since it's kind of a house theme, but the gap is just too wide right now with the lack of good neutral draw.

We too have had some success with Stark against Lannister, as they probably match up the best out of all the houses. But Stark was not an option for me at GenCon since I expected to see lots of Greyjoy (and they were the second most represented house). Stark has a horrible matchup against all those saves. Greyjoy is much closer in power level of their cards to Lannister than anything else right now, so it doesn't shock me that Greyjoy won worlds. (We could insert a car vs. driver debate here as well, since I think the driver should take some major responsibility for the performance.)

I don't think anyone is saying that other decks can't ever beat Lannister. But I'm going to play the deck that gives me the best chance of winning, and right now, I don't think it's even close. But maybe all this will iron itself out as more chapter packs and the Martell expansion get released. The balance could shift quickly.

Stag Lord said:

Stag, in another thread we did a good job of breaking down the deck composition at Gencon. And about 50% of the participants were playing Lanny. So, if 50% were playing Lanny and 50% of the final four were Lanny, there is no big revelation there.

And 2-5 cards in Shadows every turn? What?! I'd love for someone to leave all those cards in Shadows against me, although I'm wondering how they managed to get that many cards in Shadows each turn.

longclaw said:

I'm not sure three of the next four would have been Lanny. For the sake of this argument, lets take the four of us who did make the cut (Finite, Myself, Justin, Rings). Then, lets look at who we played in the final round of swiss. Although not all of those players would have made a top 8 cut, they would have been in the strength of Schedule discussion. Erick beat Corey (playing Lanny), I beat Alec (playing Bara), Justin beat Bloodycelt (Playing Greyjoy), and I have no idea who Rings beat, but lets just say it was Lanny for sake of the argument. So that means the top 8 would have been 50% Lanny. Which was the same as the top 4 composition.

So for argument's sake: 50% of the GenCon field was playing Lannister? Ok, then. I think that's about representative of where the House is in the game at the moment. Rings's point was that two of the top four were NOT Lanni, and that they weren't that dominant. Sorry - i just don't buy that argument. It is pretty clearly car v driver at that point - and again: most drivers are buying Lannis.

And also - half the Tp 4 WERE Lanni. Did they have to get to 75% to be called dominant?

More cancel, please. More non Lanni draw, please.

Re: Shadows. Yeah - five is the upper limit of it (i only saw that once over teh weekend) but with Refugees and other weenies in teh environment at the moment, and with no small character reset, its pretty easy to start saving up Shadows guys from Turn 1 on. And lots of people sit on their shadow characters until after the mid game reset. Not that any of this matters - all ti takes is one card in Shadows and Robert can't stand. Lannister is one of the better shadow Houses - he really isn't an answer to uber kneel decks.

I agree 100% that draw is the major problem, though extremely efficient cards like Castellan accentuate the problem when draw is hard to come by. Had Castellan been printed with a seasonal requirement rather than the "no attachments" limitation, I think it would be a lot less powerful and give Lanni a reason to consider running seasons.

That said, Lannister doesn't need (nor should it have) more draw than other houses. (It seems strange to me to give Lannister BOTH draw and gold advantage, as these are the two basic features that every deck needs.) Nor do I understand how Lanni draw matches GRRM's books. But like Targ attachment tech, Greyjoy mill, and Bara standing, Lanni draw has become a game tradition, and so all I ask is that other houses have equal access--whether it's recursion, reveal, etc.--that is easy to use and flexible.

On a side note, I doubt that World's results are indicative of the play environment as a whole, but if they are, it says something that Lanni was represented best. There were more Lanni players than any other house, strong competitors (Rings, Finite, etc.) played Lanni, and a Lanni deck (played by Finite) was the only to beat Dobbler in preliminary rounds, though that may be because Dobbler didn't play against any Targ decks. Even Dobbler noted in his GenCon writeup that he expected to see 50% Lanni decks and scrapped his fine-tuned Targ deck for a last-minute Greyjoy deck that was easily rolled by Targ in practice rounds. As far as I can tell, Dobbler chose Greyjoy because he thought it would perform best against Lanni. (Greg: If I'm misquoting, my apologies, but that's how I read your GenCon writeup.) Had Dobbler played against more Targ players in preliminary rounds, it's possible he may not have made it to finals and a Lanni player would have won the joust; instead, Dobbler anticipated the metagame perfectly. My point is that it really doesn't matter if Greyjoy or some other house won--Lanni certainly could have won the joust just as easily. In fact, I think it's odds were better than Greyjoy's, but because of Dobbler's unique deckbuild (which wasn't rush but hand control out of GJ!--I think) and his expert game playing, he won.

World's results notwithstanding, I think the reasons outlined above--and most metas' experiences in general--point to Lannister as the dominant house. That doesn't mean that a Lanni deck wins every game. In fact, in my original post I noted that one Targ build in our meta seemed to win about 40% of the time. It just means that when two players reveal their house cards, the one with the Lanni housecard is already one-step ahead.

Stag Lord said:

If I have 100 coins, and flip all 100 I expect to get 50% heads and 50% tails because I have an equal number of heads and tails represented. So at Gencon, if we have 50% Lannister decks represented, then I would expect 50% at the cut. So having 50% Lanny in top 4 doesn't tell me anything. Having 50% of the overall field of players using lannister tells me they are the easiest how to build out of, not the most powerful house. Those are two very different issues, although people tend to blur the lines. I totally agree that Lannister is the easiest house to build a good deck from. But that doesn't make them the best deck out there. Instead of people building decks that beat Lannister regularly, I see them either just going towards Lannister because its easy, or complaining about Lannister.

And Twn2dn, I built that Greyjoy deck for my friend Dan to use. Then I played it twice against Justin's Bara's deck and liked it so much that I decided to use it. The decision was that simple. It was not a metagame decision. I did not get to play a single full game against any deck other than Baratheon. Ask any of the guys in my hotel room. I figured I'd conjure the past (2004), where I did the same thing, built a late night deck, liked it, and ran with it. Nor was my deck hand control. It was a Winter deck, and most often won due to the Marauders. One game I got the Alannys/Support of Harlaw combo which was nasty, but that was only one game. But I can only remember one game that I won where it was NOT winter. This was a winter deck through and through.

Dobbler said:

My apologies if I misunderstood your GenCon writeup or deckbuilding rationale. I simply assumed that when you noted you expected 50% of the builds to be Lanni and that you weren't worried about your practice-game performance that you had considered the metagame when you built your Greyjoy deck. I don't mean to minimize your win, and your victory lends credit to the argument that the "driver" makes the biggest difference in AGOT. Even if you didn't consider the metagame, however, other players did. (For example, some Lanni players ran traitors in their decks to very good effect.)

I also agree with your conclusion: Lannister is the easiest house to build a competitive deck for, and a competitive Lanni deck is easier to play than most other decks. I disagree, however, that more players played Lanni because it was "the easiest" house to play. I am 100% certain that Finite played Lanni because he thought it was the most competitive house and not the easiest to play. Nor did Corey, the other DC-area player who attended GenCon, play Lanni because it was easy. (In fact, Corey has a reputation in our meta of playing more creative builds even if they are less likely to win.) Both Erick and Corey are fantastic gamers and would have played other houses had they felt other houses were more competitive. I suspect the same is true of many players who participated.

Also, as a general clarification to my original post, I don't mean to sound as if I think any one house needs a buff--sorry if my discussion of Targ confuses anyone. (Though I used Targ examples above, that's because I tend to play Targ the most, not because I believe it to be a weak house. I actually think that Targ is the second-strongest house in 1v1 at the moment.)

Funny, I don't really remember this sort of discussion when Stark was the deck you saw everywhere because it was so easy to build. And yes, I'll readily admit that Lannister is in some ways too easy to build right now, in that nearly every card they recieve fits into the same decktype. They aren't recieving any variety in the cards that represent their house themes, and so it becomes extremely easy to build a deck when you're not really given any choices. Of course, they've been pushed and pushed and pushed in this direction because of the complaints. Look at all the themes that Lannister formerly had that have been moved to other houses or dropped entirely- plot manipulation, event manipulation, challenge manipulation, cancel, power disruption, hand control, stealth, character/attachment immunity. Heck there's probably even some that I've forgotten. Now we hear cries to take away card draw and extra resources. What will that leave Lannister? Umm.... essentially kneel, kneel, kneel, or if you're feeling extremely creative- kneel! Which dumbs down thier builds and the variety of the game while making them even more of a no-brainer to play. Whether they would still be good without those smaller themes to work in would remain to be seen.

Likewise, I agree with Dobbler, in the absence of continual multi-meta gatherings, why the tendency to throw out the closest thing we've had all year? Sure, not every meta was represented, but then again, I can't think of any tournament I've been to that did. Some have more, some have less, but this is what we have to work with right now.

If action must be taken, I'd suggest that we stay as far away from intentional nerfing and any form of ban-hammer as we possibly can. There are certainly ways to build up other houses rather than tear down. In general really, it's easier to achieve relatively balance with small stable shifts upward rather than a large shift downward.

~why do i feel like all this might have been prevented had i just not kicked twn2dn around in casual play the other day? (i have almost no desire to weigh in on this thread in any serious fashion.)

finitesquarewell said:

~Yeah, my hopes were crushed on Sunday, along with my shadow-summer Targ build, which even I admit sounds like a bad idea in retrospect. Those mechanics don't jive well. (I also think my reluctance to play Lanni even in casual play is becoming a liability.) Actually, I'm pretty sure the reason I lost was that I picked all my plots at random...doing so to boost your confidence so that you'd be more inclined to ally against Japan in that side-by-side Diplomacy game we were also playing on Sunday.

Seriously though, I don't want any bans or nerfs--I think 95% of the problems would be fixed with more gold and draw in this environment, and the other 5% will naturally get better as more cards are printed. And even if things were perfectly balanced right now, I don't think more gold and draw would hurt the current environment--it would give people more flexibility in deckbuilding, which is always a good thing.

rings said:

this is where i'm at right now.

I also built my gencon deck to beat lanni, which it did fine. i just couldn't win the mirror match. once because i was a steo to slow and the other due to user error/mel