New Chapter pack spoliers are up - and OMG!

The new Melisandre is a freaking All Star and immedaitely suppalnts the Ocre set version upon release.

And we are getting Balerion the Black (no abilities or text yet) but the first really legendary character we ahve seen. Dear Lord - he is oging to have to have incredible stats to live up to his leagcy form teh novels. Thsi would finally eb an appropriate palce for an eight or ten STR Dragon.

Can't wait.

I realise the legendary character debate was done to death over Rhaegar, but I still feel that they are bad for the nedliness of the game. I am a player first and foremost, but I'd like the gameplay - so far as it is possible - to maintain a plausible relationship to events in the books. When there are so many uniques or non-uniques to draw upon, it seems a shame to plunder the legends of Westeros for characters in a game that simulates the war of the 5 kings.

The next CP sounds fun and the new Melissandre is excellent. I think she will replace the Core Set version in many decks. On a related note, it will be interesting to see what Stannis, King at the Wall, is like... (based on the cover image of the previous CP, which has not yet been released).

Baratheon are certainly getting some good cards from the latest cycle.

Wasn't Balerion the Black one of legendary characters we could vote on in the first Storyline ballet? Perhaps we get answers to the some of the other votes as well in this Chapter Pack cycle (like who gets the potent plot card).

BTW: When they say "latest," do they mean "next to be released" or "next in the series." By my reasoning with all the CPs that have been announced, this one is 4 packs out, meaning that we aren't likely to see it until the end of June.

Which brings up an interesting point. Does the Regional-legal card pool remain static with what is available 1-week prior to the first Regional at the end of April, or does it continue to grow with what is available 1-week prior to each individual event?

Okay, Melisandre is really impressive!

And maybe its just me, but reading

"..this spring, prepare to face a foe like no other... a foe that won’t die."

.. I intantly started wishing for an Others promo deck.

Do you think there´s any chance for that?

Moneylender said:

Personally, no. This is just me, but one of the whole points, the whole draws, of the LCG is that there are no limited access cards. There is no card in the entire card pool that can only be accessed by winning a particular match, attending a particular event, etc. Every person has exactly the same avenues to obtain every card. A promo card, let alone a promo deck, flies in the face of the whole LCG philosophy.

But as I said, that's only me.

My guess is that the line refers to a character (worth playing) with an unconditional "cannot be killed" or some revisitation of the old Wight events.

I like the new mel a lot. I'm glad that she is a pure rush card (and she doesn't need to be standing to be good for you).

I'm not sure if she supplants core set mel right away though. Mel's albilty to turn off power can be game winning, and not just in mirror matches. Martell and GJ can go pretty fast w/ renown and I liked having an answer for infamy (one of the easiest ways to cripple a bara deck, when it was more prevelant) in lanni decks.

Balerion the Black.......~text box = no stealing of characters. seriously thought this could be very interesting or very disapointing. RE Legandary characters. Any character that I read about I'm excited to play.

Wow, Mel is going to be a monster in Bara rush decks. This is probably just what Bara needed...or at least a step in the right direction. (I think Bara could still use a tad bit more speed or some in-house draw.) It honestly strikes me as a bit strange that Bara received support for unopposed mechanic, which has typically been reserved for Greyjoy, but I'm still glad to see it.

As far as Balarion goes, sounds neat, but I'll reserve judgment until I see his stats/text. I liked the idea of Rhaegar, but I can't say that he makes many of my decks (or that I even see him played much in general).

Twn2dn said:

I look at her more as support for a power accumulation mechanic, not an unopposed mechanic. The majority of GJ's mechanic tends to be about improving the chances for a challenge to go unopposed or for capitalizing on them by creating additional new benefits. Mel just magnifies an existing benefit without improving the odds at achieving an unopposed challenge. She makes small power accumulations - that you still have to make happen on your own - into large power accumulations. So not really the same thing as GJ's overall mechanic.

My imagination ;-)

Mel is pretty amazing.

I, for one, love the historical characters. ~Although I would like to see Joffrey #4 instead...

Sarcasm aside...as of PotS, Joffrey is already at #4...I'm gonna skip ahead one and look forward to a #6.
(Never seeing another Joffrey for the next few years would do everybody some good I imagine.)

Nice card, Gualdo. Hope we never see a card with that ability in the actual game. Would be crazy!

What are you trying to do with "When Balerion enters play, no Dragon characters die"? I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean.

"When Balerion enters play kill all non-Dragon characters"

Yes Kuba translated correctly. I explain you all my "fantasies". I tried to create a very strong Epic dragon, undercosted and with a great ability.

Since in every cicle there is also a epic attachement I would like to have "the Euron's Horn from asshai". So the dragon will be relativly risky to play

Dragon horn - Cost 3 neutral - unique

Unique characters only.

[EDIT]Response: After you win dominance kneel Dragon horn to take control of a Dragon character.

That wouldn't make it risky. You just got off a valor, and now they have to get a unique out, the attachment on him/her, and win dominance w/ a strength 8 on the table first

We had a Dragon's Horn at one point, and it didn't stop the # of dragons that was for sure. However, it was silly in trait manipulation decks

This was just an idea ;-) in fact both card would not be playable... but was fun think about dragons and horns... waiting for dance with them ;-)

Gualdo's Horn isn't too far off the one that came out officially. Though I think that one gave the wielder +4 STR to boot. It actually saw quite a bit of play around here - in lots of GJ builds.

Stag Lord said:

~The ochre set version? Did I miss the crap-brown colored borders?

Do you first legendary in this sequence of CPs? Were they're an attachment/event/location in KLE, after the Daemon Blackfyre?

And yes, we did have the Horn of Dragons in VED as part of that cycle of uber-unique weapons. Ice, Widow's Wail, Lightbringer, Aegon's Blade and (ugh) Prince Oberyn's Spear... one of my candidates for "Worst... Card... Ever."

Maester_LUke said:

As far as I know, the "legendary" cards would be considered:

Clash: Rhaegar, Rhaegar's Harp, Battle of the Ruby Ford (the last of which is horribly named since the place was not the Ruby Ford until after the battle; even Ned and Robert refer to it in the books as "The Battle of the Trident")

Ravens: Ser Arthur Dayne, Dawn (as it references Dayne, I think you have to count it), The Tower of Joy

KLE: Jon Arryn, Daemon Blackfyre

Defenders: Balerion announced - but there are 3 other CPs between then and now. Who knows?

ktom said:

Hmm, I'd say Daemon Blackfyre and Balerion are the only ones of those that are "legendary." I would refer to the others as something like "historical" because they are all tied to events within memory of most of the characters in the books - events that have played such big roles in the plot (and in the thoughts of characters like Eddard and Jaime) that they feel as much a part of the action (to me at least) as the characters still around once AGoT starts. Daemon though predates AGoT by ~100 years and Balerion by ~300. If you allow the tales of Dunk and Egg into the pantheon though, even Daemon doesn't seem so legendary (on that storyline ballot, Balerion was competing with people like Lann the Clever and Bran the Builder: characters far removed from the action in either AGoT or the tales of Dunk and Egg).

schrecklich said:

Sorry. I forgot to define "legendary" as I apply it to the card game.

I completely agree with your definition of "legendary" as it applies the source material. Your differentiation between "legendary" and "historical" is quite accurate (and I'll even throw in that there is at least one character in the books - not the Dunk and Egg stories - for whom Daemon Blackfyre is living memory).

However, in terms of the cards, questions about which characters would be represented have been floated since the game was first introduced way back in 2002. The requests for Rhaegar, Aerys and his Kingsguard, Lyanna and Brandon Stark, Jon Arryn, Ashara Dayne, etc. started almost immediately. However, until Clash of Arms, FFG's stated policy was that they would be sticking to characters that were alive at the opening of A Game of Thrones. Whether "historical" or "legendary," if their story was only told in memory and flashback in the actual books, they would not be represented in the card game. With the idea that the game worked within the framework of the action that takes place in the books, that policy made a lot of sense.

FFG always reserved the right to change that policy, but never wavered until Rhaegar, which was an obvious exception in 2009.

So my list comes primarily from the exceptions to that "only those who were alive when the books open" policy. And, you must admit, whether you call them "legendary" or "historical," cards that are represented in living memory instead of direct interaction are by far the exception in the game.

Interesting, I didn't realize FFG had a policy about these sorts of historical characters. The main point of my previous post was just to try to explain why Stag Lord described Balerion as the "first really legendary character we have seen."

I'm kind of ambivalent about these sorts of characters in the game. On the one hand, I like variety and love the backstory to ASoIaF, so it's cool to see these characters in addition the main actors in the books, but on the other hand it does start to take away from the sense of the game "reimagining" the plot from the books once you start to have characters like Daemon Blackfyre and Rhaegar Targaren interacting with Theon Greyjoy and Arya Stark. I think they are fine as long as they remain fringe cards, but if their status as legendary allowed for them to be high on the utility/power curve, I think it could be problematic if after a while a deck of all legendary characters was viable.

I still think it's interesting how people talk about the mis-match of eras. Especially given the lifespan of certain and/or most characters.