Dobbler said:

Why not have both?

FFG would be making a smart moving in supporting both a regular competitive, tournament Joust environment and also having Melee World Championships as well.

-Laughing Tree (Bittersteel)

Thankfully, they have supported each for the last few years.

LaughingTree said:

For the last 2 years, they have. The overall champion is the person who has the highest combined placement in both the Joust and Melee Championships.

Check out the PotS expansion. There are 3 "Championship" cards; one for Joust, one for Melee and one for the Overall. (Of course, that year, the Melee and the Overall were the same guy.)

I'd like to point out that there have actually been THREE multiplayer championships. The first one just never got to make a card. Poor Charlie.

Yeah, that's a real bummer. He was supposed to get to make a Title, if I recall.

Sure would be nice if FFG reached out and gave him another chance to design a card. *hint hint*

John! Oh how I've missed you. I'm doing my best to keep this fantastic card game alive up here in NorCal but I am only one man...I need your help bringing California back to the pinnacle of AGoT Greatness. Will you join our cause and take up the banner once more?

P.S. It's good to hear from you and I hope all is well. Talk to you soon.

1) I'm still around. I miss you ya medium sized lug.

2) Yes you should. I'll add my voice to what everyone else is saying about the cardpool. I've got a slightly different feel about the problems regarding board discussion though. I think the biggest detractor to in depth conversation is that so many of the old timers do rather quickly devolve it down to how the LCG is different from the CCG with the very clear implication that the LCG is inferior. The various calls for fixes to the environment almost exclusively ignore the new direction of the LCG (NSTAAFL) and ask for the cream of the crop CCG cards back which were easy and required little commitment, or effort for a major effect. I think it is pretty clear these kinds of cards aren't coming back. I think the LCG is actually more tactical because you have more to manage, and have to work harder to get a similar payoff.

I certainly get tired of every tactical or strategic conversation after 2-3 pages of becoming reprint card X to solve the problem. Or CCG card Y was a better version of this. Why bother? It is the LCG equivalent to, "the Simpsons did it." We aren't the CCG anymore. Let it go, embrace the new paradigm, or at least allow the discussion to continue with, well in the CCG it was this way, but in LCG it could be..." I think this is especially daunting to our newer players who don't have the same frame of reference, and the finality that it sometimes comes with isn't always encouraging of dissenting opinions or even continuing the discussion.

Again that is just my take.

3) In a word - No. In more words, while I thought at first it was a great way to protect yourself from being swarmed and loosing to a horde of cheap and easy disposables, after I made my first real swarm deck I noticed that it never made me lose a game. No matter how many characters it wiped out, the commitment of the players to stopping the best swarm decks was never there. It took 3-4 resets to really be able to stop me, and two of those had to be Fleeing and RBD. With so much of their plot deck keyed to stopping a swarm they were usually unable to stop the other builds reliably so didn't commit. End result was the decks that First Sow did hammer me were non-swarm decks of Martell and Greyjoy whose utility characters often cost 3 gold at 1 or 2 STR. They weren't my heavy hitters, but they weren't my weenie claim soak either. They were my middle management and it just destroyed certain deck types, all for the cost of a single plot slot. If it had been an event that could be canceled and had to be drawn or searched for I would have been fine. I love you, but a reprint of that card would seriously hamper how much fun I'd have with non-swarm decks. It would drive me into making an NPE Shadows control deck where I never had to worry about someone flipping a plot and ruining my own fun.

I do miss your face though. The least you can do is show it around every once in awhile.

1 - Your name rings a bell, truly, but your Avatar? Weren't you that dumb Cowboys fan from eons ago? And a year and a half? Really? Wow, time flies.

2 - You really should come back, Bruno. Things are pretty sedate on the boards at times, but I'm sure you could fix that. The toughest thing for me with the switch to LCG was the sharp decline in card pool, but I don't even feel that anymore. We have enough cards in the environment to make deckbuilding quite fun again, and with that, the game really hasn't changed much. Sure, I miss some of the old stuff, but the new is great as well.

As for the national scene, your return would be a big help. I'm sure you could lead some of the more wayward Cali players back into the fold and thus GenCon, and a few more metas added to Worlds and it would feel like old times. And that's not to say that I didn't have fun this year. Although numbers were down, I really feel like our numbers could grow substantiallly with a few more metas being able to travel. We missed Seattle (with the exception of Rings), Cali, and NY this year. We could go into the reasons why those metas weren't represented, but I'll just say I'm optimistic. Certainly, having Mathlete and The Sheik post in one week is a good sign.

And besides, you do want us to have to stop calling you "washed up," don't you?

3 - I always liked First Snow, and usually ran it. I don't think it would be a bad thing right now, especially with the Refugees around. But I can understand why some don't want it.

I'll add my own number 4 - GO VIKINGS!

mathlete said:

1) Who knows me that is still playing this game out there?

John, I know you've asked again and again, and I've seen your illustration, but "knowing you" in the biblical sense just isn't going to happen. I'm saving myself for johnnymcguy.

2) Should I really make an attempt to come back and play this game? (Sell me on your opinion)

I think I'd echo both Ktom and Longclaw. Though we still seem to have our good times on here that aren't just nostalgia-fests.

From the community perspective, it's much more about your local scene and what you make of it. Given FFG's decision to discontinue all CCG publishing, and the complaints that were heard about how support was going for those I will be interested to see if we actually have a regional/national season again... and what kind of format GenCon might see without any sort of sustained competitive play outside of the pockets we hear about. Alternatively, with their renewed focus on the LCG format that Steve alluded, they may come up with some sort of innovative promotion to bridge the gap between the kitchen table gaming group and tourney players. Or what kind of informal organization/loose tourney confederation that player's create a la SWCCG... albeit with the fact that FFG has done us the courtesy of continuing to print cards for us.

Regardless of that, I think the card pool has grown to the point that it's certainly got a richness that satisfies... even if you need to remember back to Ice & Fire days to consider comparable depth and breadth. As several people mentioned, there's plenty of dissatisfaction if you compare things to where they were LCG, but the tension and choices in game play are still there. It's just a matter of total rotation, and the expected reset in overall power level and game tempo (I might have done better at GenCon if I could learn to oppose a few more challenges just to slow that sort of power accumulation in a "retarded" environment). There's going to be your typical arguments on play balance between houses/deck-archetypes and necessary improvements to the card pool, the flow's just going to be a lot more casual given the development cycle and the feel of cards coming out in trickle rather than a full flush.

In the end, I'd say jump right in if you feel comfortable with the investment. The game's still fun, the card pool's growing and it's all about the people you play with. And that's still up too us. I'm coming off a longer than usual post-GenCon lull and I'm looking forward to digging in to a complete cycle of cards I haven't bought or played with (waiting to buy a whole cycle of CPs at once is like getting a full expansoin), especially this cool new attachment I heard about.

3) Don't you miss that really cool Plot from A Song of Night?

The already reprinted Fleeing to the Wall in the Core Set. But I heard there's an even sexier card in Princes of the South.

Plus several players from the more active CCG days seem to be making or toying with making a comeback lately. Combine that with an increased turnout of new players in many metas and I think we have the recipe for a nice revival. We just need a little more organization and though on the OPP from FFG and I think we'll be there.

longclaw said:

Strange. I could only remember that avatar of mathlete were he´s hugging Hayden Panetierre. :-D Too bad that this forum won´t allow your own avatars. ;-)