I posted this on BGG but thought I'd copy it here as well.

While it might not be a big or common problem, is anyone worried about the possibility of completely shutting a player out of playing, activating, or discarding anything?

If you can continually (which is possible due to creature, card, and discard interactions) force an opponent to choose a specific house and they don't have that house in hand then it is possible to lock an opponent in an unwinnable state.

Should it be possible to discard a card(s) (or maybe just cards of a specific different house?) if you do nothing on a turn? The penalty of playing/activating nothing seems severe enough to prevent abuse. I'd be fine with an even more punishing penalty like doing nothing, clearing your entire board, discarding your hand, and then drawing a new hand. You could even unforge a key if you really want to make the penalty sting but I really don't like even a small chance of permament lock-out.

Thoughts?

There's one card that prohibits your opponent from picking a specific house. I haven't seen any card that requires you to play a specific house, though, and definitely not as a permanent effect, rather than a one-off instant.

If your opponent manages to use the card that lets him force you away from a house, and all you have in hand is that house (and nothing to remove the card that he's been restricting you with... well, this is a fast game anyway, right? Having to concede from such a lucky coincidence just fits in.

I've heard of this happening a handful of times so it certainly appears to be possible, but I agree it seems to be a reasonable outcome as long as it's not too common. We may see some rules clarifications that sort out some of these scenarios but I think it will always be possible under certain circumstances and yeah, that's probably okay.

I think its a trick that's only going to happen once to most people.

Just like you have to play around Bait & Switch, you're going to be aware of a possible Restringuntus. You'll have to keep your head on a swivel when facing Dis that this guy might come out, and so try to keep your hand a little more diverse.

3 hours ago, Xelto said:

I haven't seen any card that requires you to play a specific house.

Dis has a card like that called "Control the Weak", as you guessed though, it is an action card. Haven't seen any Dis cards that would allow recursion, though.

You could, however do this if you had a Dominator Bauble (Dis artifact that lets you use any friendly creature) and a Witch of the Eye (Untamed creature that lets you grab a card from discard when it reaps)

Not sure about other potential combos for this, but if you are against Dis and see those 2 cards show up, probably a wise choice to keep at least one card of each house in your hand (or in play)

3 hours ago, Xelto said:

There's one card that prohibits your opponent from picking a specific house. I haven't seen any card that requires you to play a specific house, though, and definitely not as a permanent effect, rather than a one-off instant.

11 minutes ago, uhhsam said:

Dis has a card like that called "Control the Weak", as you guessed though, it is an action card. Haven't seen any Dis cards that would allow recursion, though.

You could, however do this if you had a Dominator Bauble (Dis artifact that lets you use any friendly creature) and a Witch of the Eye (Untamed creature that lets you grab a card from discard when it reaps)

Not sure about other potential combos for this, but if you are against Dis and see those 2 cards show up, probably a wise choice to keep at least one card of each house in your hand (or in play)

Either that or kill the Witch of the Eye fast.

Though that combo means that the person doing it is forced to play nothing but Dis if he wants to keep it going, so he ends up being caught in the same trap. It's not a problem for him if he has any creatures capable of reaping and you run out of attackers, but otherwise, at some point, he has to switch houses as well.

It seems all of the lock-out’s I have seen so far include With of the Eye in some form or another ( or Pitlord, but then you did it to yourself).

I guess it’s possible she’ll be errata’d if things get out of hand, but so far it’s been extremely rare.

Any sort of recursion machine that can't be stopped (or that requires specific pre-planning to stop) is potentially a problem. I watched a TTS game today with a steal 4 can't be attacked recursion combo. If you don't have a means of killing or removing creatures without attacking then it's pretty much over at that point.

39 minutes ago, PickleTheHutt said:

Any sort of recursion machine that can't be stopped (or that requires specific pre-planning to stop) is potentially a problem. I watched a TTS game today with a steal 4 can't be attacked recursion combo. If you don't have a means of killing or removing creatures without attacking then it's pretty much over at that point.

Thank god that won't be a popular meta build... because these decks are random.

But unless reliable counterplay can be found with a very wide variety of decks, decks with this recursion built in will dominate in tournaments, and this will not really reflect player skill.