Just to remind people what the second LCG OP kit includes: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

I've received the copies of the kit I've ordered from FFG just a few days ago. The pins are again nice (I perhaps like the "shield" shaped ones that were used for the first kit and some of the monthly "hedge" tournaments when FFG was promoting those a bit more). I suspect some people might not agree, but I like the power markers. True, they don't scream high quality, but they are nice enough and look good being in a house's colors with its official symbol embossed into it. And they are small, but I like that; I've always thought the old Gold Dragon redemption wooden ones were nice but a little too big to be practical. I'd be happy to win these and would use them to play. The new League documentation isn't posted, but along the lines of recent announcements, it says Night's Watch have wide latitude in structuring their Leagues and distributing the swag from the kit, which I appreciate. (I'm shying away from the official League rules and going with a less structured format for this season --I describe it on our group's site (www.agotny.net) if anyone is at all interested.)

This season's Storyline ballot has one item to vote on: Which house will get the "Melee Champion"?

Melee Champion

[house affiliation to be determined]

4G, 3STR, Mil and Int

Knight

No attachments except Weapon.

After you win a challenge in which Melee Champion participated as the attacker, each opponent (in addition to the defending player) must also fulfill the claim of that challenge.

So, if you don't play melee, you just groaned. But if you do, I say he's a pretty nice addition. He'll be a lightning rod, but the attachments restriction thwarts some of the obvious counters that would be used on him. I don't think he's a beast, so while I'd rather have him on my team, I don't think he's too powerful by any stretch (though if you can get a Power icon on him, he could be an awesome closer). Personally, I think getting to vote on design decisions/directions is one of the coolest forms of prizes that FFG can offer, so I would have liked to have seen more to vote on this ballot, but so long as there's more to come down the road, I'll be happy.

I'm very excited to see there's a new league ready to roll finally. I'm digging the Melee Champion card so far, but I think I'll want to playtest with him a little bit just to see how he does in actual play. I am, however, a little bummed that there's only the one thing to vote on. I very much liked that the previous league (when did that start? Last February or something?) had several things going for it all at once. Did we ever hear any sort of results from that, btw?

Kennon said:

Am I remembering correctly in thinking that Daemon Blackfyre was one of the 'legends' voting options? And since we now have him, that would at least answer the question as to the result of that challenge.

Don't know about AHoTh Tywin though.

We've been pretty hit or miss the last couple months on consistent group play, but with the new league kit out perhaps we'll get back on track.

Yeah, we've been hit-or-miss of late as well, but I'm optimistic with summer winding down (during which two of regulars were pretty much unavailable) and starting our next running competition with the season two of League play that we'll return to a more regular pattern of getting together.

Daemon Blackfyre was not one of the characters that you could vote for on the first Storylines ballot, so I don't think we've seen anything official results-wise from the voting. Given that the new ballot is out, I'm hoping we'll hear about the first Storylines results soon.

The next legend options for Storyline Leagues Part 1 was:

Vote BALE for Balerion the Black
Vote LANC for Lann the Clever
Vote BRAN for Bran the Builder
Vote THEL for The Laughing Storm

Obviously there was a hidden fifth option that no one saw coming: Vote DAEM for Daemon Blackfyre.

This hidden option was wearing its House Keyword proud: ambush!

LetsGoRed said:

And i just thought i would begin to like melee play when "kingsmoot rules" were released! Seriously i can´t stand that kind of cards, where everyone has to pay the bill for a lost challenge. Other examples which also cause regular embarrasment in our play group are cards like "wintertime marauders". It just doesn´t make sense to me, that player A wins a challenge against player B and player C has to discard his Crossroads, big non-unique army, whatever..... I can see that this could also be an argument for melee because some may say i like the indirect influence these kind of cards grant. And i would probably agree if it was ensured that the card can be used only once and not in every challenge.

But cards like wintertime marauders are just misworded in my book and melee champion seems to be intentional misworded. Just imagine for a moment a card that adds a power icon .... and besides that there are several cards that already allow to stand the card.

So hopefully there´s also the option to vote "Don´t print the card!".

Old Ben said:

well, the great thing about melee is that if you are player C you don't have to just sit there and take it if player B can't win. You can try and make a deal with player A, (hey don;t hit me with that this round and i won't do X) or with player B (hey if you try to win this challenge i will or won't do X for or against you) or even player D (if there is one; hey you support player B, why don't you defend and win this challenge and you'll get X from me).

Melee Champion is just another catalyst for melee deal making/game structure. If melee champion was neutral he would be a lot more annoying as then everyone would have one out on the board and deal making would be harder to accomplish (why should i stop his melee champ from going off when your melee champ will just go off later...)

Lars said:

Making deals or pacts is great. It´s not exactly the thing i expect from a LCG/CCG/TCG, i would rather like to see these things in strategical board games like Diplomacy, Imperial, the AGOt boardgame etc. But like i said that´s also okay for me as a part of the melee game. But i fail to see how melee champion engages those deals/pacts, because it hurts everyone but me. And there is only one opponent (which might be my alliance partner) that has the chance to actually to something against that. It´s just plain stupid and discouraging in my book. I rather prefer an effect which allows me to intervent in that situation, i think a great card for melee play would be e.g. archery contest from tourney of swords. Why can´t the melee champion card just challenge every player at the same time? Thus only loosing players will suffer from the claim. That would finally be a real melee.

So the usual melee situations happens: "Hey player C since you don´t have any cards in hand may i attack you on intrigue. My claim is 2 and i have winter has come in hand." Or if you just like it more depicted " The great Host of the north lead by the melee champion chooses to attack the great cities of the east. Honor and glory is theirs, they find an abandoned an empty land where the last Dothraki died rounds ago. Little birds tell queen Cersei and king Stannis about the outcome of the war and so thousands of people in the stormlands and around casterly rock die and suffer in pain." :-P

I love the card. It is extremely dangerous to play with however. This guy is going to hit the board and not only is the card going to be the target but the player. If you are willing to take that risk then by all means play with it.

And last time I checked this essentially was a strategic board game... just one where you and your opponent(s) create the board between you. It is the high levels of strategy that make it stand out from most other card games... and often the reason it appears most people don't like melee, because it requires too much "strategery."

I'm surprised a card like this hasn't been printed before... under the Sun and Spear banner. Hopefully the league will put it where it belongs.

dormouse said:

I´m in the mood to disagree. ;-) A strategic board game has for me a lot of strategic decisions and only few externalities. I think we can agree that e.g. Diplomacy is a strategic board game. It´s relative statical in the decisions you can make and there are few externalities. So your chances to win depend on the course you choose for the game and treaties you make. You can also rely on the fact that some of the parties involved aren´t a threat to you. Such like it will take a long time for France to intervene in any Russian matters. So you might want to ignore the France player till a situation occurs were things get interesting. You may also make some minor arrangements in foresight e.g. to keep France from an treaty with Austria- Hungary (or another country which is directly involved in you matters).

And that´s for me totally different to the board game value offered by a usual melee AGOT game. All players are potential against you, the regional factor is totally missing. Other card games already tried to solve the matter with play variants (there are e.g. several Magic multiplayer variants) , but it just ain´t the same.

And for me melee champion is just the tip of the iceberg of AGOT the chaos melee variant. ;-) Too many externalities means low strategic value for me.

Then we really disagree and I'd love to be in a diplo game with you.You leave a country, any country, alone and not as an active threat in the group i play with and you are looking at a sure fire loss. If the country cannot attack you themselves they certainly can directly influence someone to do it for them... I've done it dozens of dozens of times... and had it done to me even when I have tried to engage them in truces and alliances.

I'm not sure what you are calling externalities. Is it factors (luck) outside of your control? Forces (players) that can interfere directly with your plans? Are you talking about multiple players in general? Is it a combination of these?

Risk has all of those, Diplomacy has those, Tri-Chess has all of those. Is it the amount of chaos (things not under your control that can directly or indirectly FUBAR your placs) that makes you believe AGoT melee is not a strategic game? Let me put it this way, anyone who has ever studied real world strategic planning, especially in the realm of politics or military engagement, will tell you the more things are out of your control, the more of a free-for-all you can simulate the closer to reality you get. In short, what you seem to be saying disqualify AGoT melee are the very factors that military and political strategists are most likely to cite as the elements that make it qualify as a game of strategy and tactics...

Unless that is your point, there are too many tactical decisions that must be dealt with rather than a game that relies on strategy alone... though short of turn based strategy games that refuse to allow you to adapt your decisions once an engagement is under way I can't think of any F2F game that falls into that catagpry, including AGoT joust.

Old Ben said:

thats why its up to the other players to come up with a better deal. Hey player C, do you really want me and the guy after me to attack you for all three challenges? then don't let him win intrigue. Or, psst I have a milk of the poppy in my hand that i've been saving for a juicy target, but i'll slap it right on your samwell if you make that deal. etc. etc. ad nausem depending on the game situation. Its also why picking titles is so important and more then just for the +3 in x challenge or gold/draw....

Precisely.

dormouse said:

That wouldn´t change the situation so far, if i´m playing Russia in diplo i will mainly have to deal with the bord units of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. If you are the France player an try to influence Austria-Hungary, that´s okay for me i´ll have to expect that, it´s the nature and the fun of the game. But a multiplayer card game is different from that, if i´ve 5 opponents in a melee game a situation may occur where i must deal with all 5 opponents and the cards they got one at a time. And that´s the thing that buggers me, maybe i can bribe player A and B, but that doesn´t help a thing if C, D and E turn on me.

dormouse said:

Externalities are things for me in a AGOT game which i can´t change/influence and i´m counting deals/ pacts also into this. Don´t get me wrong, of course i´m not counting every single card into that. But if you are playing a 1vs1 game you can player a little more prepared, e.g. if you are expecting a Seductive promise, you may calculate how many charachters you´ve to hold back to don´t loose that power challenge by 4 or more. Such calculations are simply impossible and folly if you face many opponents. Than you can try diplomatic skills and maybe you succed or not, but anyway your influence on the outcome of the situation is rarely.

dormouse said:

A game is nothing more than a model of the real world for me, that means it mustn´t, shouldn´t and can´t try to display all the problems of a real world strategic planning. To win a 1vs1 game in AGOT, you need very different play skills than in a melee game and i favor those skills for a card game, that´s all. Melee champion is just a step in the direction i dislike and i think it will keep more people which are unfomfortable with melee games in general away from that format.

@Lars: That milk of the poppy example is kind of lame, since Samwell and Melee Champion both can´t have the attachment, but "overlooking the details" i got your point. :-P

Old Ben said:

eh....insert character here didn't sound as good as a named character with a solid textbox that you wouldn't want turned off. but like i said there are tons of gasme situations (without me dreaming up examples) in each and ever melee game where a bargin could be struck if you really didn't want melee champion to go off.

So I'm a little confused here, Old Ben. From what I gather, you don't like AGOT Melee because there aren't opponents that you can safely ignore?

Actually in melee you don't have to worry about5 everyone at the same time, that is the point of the titles, they control who can attack who at any given time if chosen correctly (or incorrectly) and smart choices with the right initiative can give you the choice of titles to ensure that you can take the most advantage out of support and opposition. Keeping track of who has how many characters at what strength with power icons available is not that hard for me. I will have to take calculated risks at times, which is something I may not have to do in joust as frequently but still happens.

I get that you don't like it and even why, but understand that has no bearing what-so-ever on whether it is strategic or not.

I also get that you and several other established joust tournament players don't like it, but as a general rule, multi-player games attract different people than one-on-one games (or I should say are attractive for different reasons). And while 1-on-1 CCG's have done better than MP CCG's, MP board games are FAR more popular across the board (sorry couldn't resist). As the LCG comes into its own I suspect melee really will end up being the more popular format socially if it isn't already (look at how many new people come on the board with the Core Set fresh in their hot little hands talking about their brothers and wives they are going to play with and how to keep the decks balanced as they mod them). Whether that ever translates into melee dominating competitive play, i don't know.

Lars said:

One of which is, "look if you attack me I'm going to attack Opponent X who can't defend the challenge and nail you to, send it somewhere else, and I won't use the melee champion this turn."

He is also awesome in that he will be an instant target for negative attachments and direct kill leaving your other characters safe... well safer.

i'm going to weigh in quickly here: i agree with most of old ben's points, and come to the same conclusion: the melee champion shouldn't be printed. the card circumvents the core principle of melee: to do damage to an opponent you should have to attack that opponent; and cards that circumvent core principles of just about anything are too dangerous to be printed, period. i also don't like the idea of the existence of a card in the melee environment that has the potential to cause such an incredible power swing; in my opinion, melee champion would have to be a factor thereafter in the choice to print cards that grant power icons, whether permanently (as a condition) or temporarily (as a triggered effect). of course, one could argue that it won't really matter as more cards are added to the LCG pool and we begin to see more attachment hate and effect cancel. on the case side, though, the argument that "it just becomes a huge target for all the character hate in a melee game" is weak in that there are plenty of very strong melee characters that warrant enough attention as is (core set robert, arya, melisandre, jalabar xho, etc.). that argument also demonstrates some ignorance of how competitive melee games tend to play out: character hate tends to be less plentiful between the three opponents than one might expect, and there is plenty of hate for character hate itself (briefly, in the form of cards like maester cressen, cancel events, standing effects like distinct mastery, etc.).

finitesquare I'm going to pretend you didn't just call me ignorant because you don't know anything about me, but please becareful about how you word things. My having a different view point does not make me ignorant (I've been playing this game competitively since VED and socially since I&F) it just means we don't agree. You are speaking about meta differences. In my meta, and in the multi meta events in the West Coast there is tons of character hate in melee, and certain cards draw it like lightning rods. I spoke of it through my actual experiences, not some hypothetical situation. Please do not deny my experiences or invalidate them (especially when they include playing peoploe like rings, kevdawg, bruno, freerider, dethjester, and cha0s).

That core principle you state is something you invented. There have been cards that let you target peoploe who you have not won a challenge directly against since melee was put forward as an official format and created after. I'm tempted to say you are simply wrong, but instead I'll say that because these cards were produced after melee was an officially sanctioned format and put forward during a time when FFG was saying melee was going to be the only official format that would decide the world championship, there is plenty of evidence that one could say leads to a different conclusion.

But please continue to air your concerns, and for good measure you may want to send Nate a brief email stating your concerns and why. He is a very open and reasonable guy. If he sees your points he may send it back to internal testing or even external testing (though I'm not sure they use that process for these kinds of things) and changes could happen. Probably with a much greater chance of doing it before those kits all get sent out than later, but before the card goes into production is obviously going to be paramount. I doubt he reads the boards regularly so direct communication is probably in your best interest if you feel so strongly about it that you are saying things that could easily be taken as insults.

finitesquarewell said:

I agree that in melee decks people might run less character hate/targeted hate than they would in a joust deck (that's true for me usually, at least, when I'm build a melee specific deck), but you still have 2-5 other people at the table which, in the aggregate, might have a large amount of character hate --and they can all turn their eyes to your Melee Champion. There's been other characters that are devastating and/or natural lightning rods in melee. ITE Robb, Promo Payne, 5KE Eddard, etc. You play those at your own peril because opponents will gang up on you and then, often, hold a "grudge" in my experience. I see the same for Melee Champion. If you can play him at an optimum time, get the benefit of his ability once or twice before he's beat down, I think that he's a good card for you and not a NPE for everyone else.

Kennon said:

That´s half the truth. It´s not just safely ignoring the opponents, but the possibilities they bring along to influence the game. And these possibilities are far too hand-tight for my taste. Dormouse mentioned that in a game of diplomacy he´will try to bribe my neigbhour countries to do some action on the land i´m leading in the game. AGOT melee is different because you do both, bribe other opponents and send your own troops, as well use some events, charachter abilities etc. to intervene, which is in my book far too much for a half way regulated game play and too much for any tactic to suceed. I wouldn´t go to far to say that it ain´t fun playig a melee every now an than, but it just ain´t my favorite choice, i would rather prefer a startegical board game over AGOT melee e.g. the AGOT board game. But that´s just me.

dormouse said:

Let me just put that straight, one of my basic ideas is/was also that there "should be" kind of a rational expectation that only losing a challenge "should" cause you to loose charachters/cards/powers for claim. As i stated i don´t like these crossfire cards, but it´s okay to have some around. But at least the need to fulfill a claim from a challenge "should" require that you are directly involved in thet challenge. That´s a thesis of course, but i think it isn´t unimaginable and follows some logic.

dormouse said:

Once more. Given that the actual wording will be printe on the card, melee champion has the text "No attachments except weapon:" There is exactly one negative attachment in the whole LCG enviroment which is also a weapon - fishing net from the song of summer chapter pack. Also please take into consideration how many direct kills can be found in the LCG enviroment, that work nearly without requirements just like e.g. Arya´s revenge or flame-kissed. Of course there are enough cards in total to deal with a 3 strength knight , any kneel effect would also solve the problem for a round. But one of the good things in LCG is (in my opinion) that there are less immediate direct kills.

LetsGoRed said:

This is right on the money. Add 5K Davos to the top of that list. There is another way to deal with problem cards than simply other cards, namely, the way the Melee game is played itself. If you are perceived to be an inordinate threat, you will likely be ganged up on to the point that you are no longer a danger to anyone.

In fact, I imagine that the reason Kennon wasn't running White Ravens with his Wintertime Marauders at Worlds this year was because he didn't want to be on the receiving end of 3 against 1 (and the amount of control he would have gained with the combo would not have been worth the risk).

Old Ben said:

I guess that would depend on how you interpret 'target of a negative attachment.' I've been known on a number of occasions to put War Scorpion on my opponents characters, and Icy Catapult is a wonderful example of an attachment with a negative effect that can hit Melee Champion, of course that is really moving around your point and on to the new one that the card has limited protection (which also does wonder of keeping him from gaining any new benefits that would make him harder to kill and easier for him to win challenges) and there are other effects that can get rid of him.