Alekyne said:

How is a Stark player doing that and keeping it going turn after turn like AGH? If two of those kills are from successfully winning a claim 2 military challenge, I personally wouldn't consider them the same as AGH when making the "ridiculous" calculation as the player has to win the challenge (or pay 2 influence for Feigned Retreat ), which means committing characters and STR at the expensive of winning other challenges which I think should be better rewarded than simply taking a card out of shadows each round.

Just FYI Letsgored, I think you're misquoting...Zsa didn't say that (I think Alekyne said it after Zsa said something else).

Anyway, I agree.

Please... can any of you confirm me that in your Core Sets, in US, there´s a card called "Fleeing to the Wall?". Well used is devastating. But hey! it´s better to cry and let them others solve your problems than to search your own solutions to it.

EDIT: +1 Masi

I suppose everybody understand the necesity to pull down the kneeling deck. A so efficient NPE deck is nothing good for a game. It's boring for both players. French Lanni players have sort of tabooed kneeling decks during 4 months. The point is, when you're playing Lannister in big tournaments, you've got no choice but to play a kneeling deck. You can try what you want, maybe it'll be fun but you've got no chance to win against Bara rush or Martell "Red Viper" or, of course, in front of a Lanni kneel. So seeing one of the most efficient card of the only deck you can play competitively be crushed like that is quite painfull. I'd have prefered teh same errata than the brothel one. Make the Alchemist Guild Hall unique would have retire its mad side, but not his entire efficiency. Remember that with this errata, AGH become the fifth kneeling card with a limited response... There is no other mechanic with so many limited response.

The new cycle will bring nothing consistent for Lannister decks, but some anti-kneelings cards are coming. Loyal shield or the new Starfall advisor will become some great cards again the kneeling effects. I prefer that way to limit the kneeling decks than errrating/bannig so many cards. It's boring when a new lannister player comes to a tournament to say him "this card is ban, you can't play it, and this one too. Oh, and this one is now unique... And this one doesn't work very good now, it's errated, and... well, I'll lend you one of my deck." A bit disgusting for new players...

I'm very happy with this ERRATA most of all because now it is the time Lanni player can use some sort of "fantasy" to create a deck and not only "put all 3x" or "copy one deck of another player and change one card"... All lanni deck looks the same at the moment and the only way to win against them is:

1-draw very good and hope a bad draw of my opponent

2-create a deck ONLY against them

At the end, I fear that Lanni kneel will not suffer to match this... they will play City of shadow and play 3x OOH Black Cells... and it is better now that valar dohaeris is around :-)

finitesquarewell said:

So American players are better and, if an AGOT meta is not just like the American one, it's because they don't build their decks well. Great, thanks for sharing it with us Europeans; now we know we're stupid, we'll stop playing AGoT and we'll go back to Snakes and Ladders.

Maybe you're the ones that haven't made any competitive deck except with House Lannister, given that Lannister shadow decks are the same around the world, but no one can beat them in America and plenty of decks have a good chance against them in Europe. But, hey, just saying.

As Arthur Lannister has said, there is 1 Lannister competitive deck. It's sad, it's really sad. You can make other kinds of decks but, until now, none of them have a chance against an optimized deck of the other dominant houses (because, yeah, you can optimize a Martell or Baratheon or Greyjoy deck too). So this is not about specific decks: when they ban a card (which is what they have done) like this, they are reducing the efficiency of the entire Lannister card pool. And I don't think a house should be worse now than they were 3-4 months ago; not comparatively, but in absolute terms, because their card pool is worse now than it was at the end of King's Landing (Defenders of the North=nothing at all for Lanni), thanks to the banning of Compelled and AGH.

I don't know about you all, but I don't buy a card game in order to see how my faction has less useable cards and less absolute power month after month. Imagine that, in Magic, every color received new cards in every new expansion but for White; instead of white cards, in the boosters you'd find erratas and bans for random cards of that color. That's the recent history of House Lannister.

Gualdo said:

Thanks! So I have been copying decks since the Core Set started! Good to know.

I would like to be a Stark player, with all that fantasy with 6xNorthern Cav/Inf, 3x Boltons, 3x Ravens, 3x Hungry Mob, and starting with Fear to Winter (with claim 2 and that overrides shadows decks, by the way...) thats really to have a lot of imagination building a deck. It´s great to have such fantasy and imagination building decks.

But you can show more fantasy and imagination finding for yourself a way to win, using the cards that exists. My friends do it, even if we stay in a 60-40 for me, that is far from the 100% of winnings for Lanni that seems to be in US.

A single "Pay 1gold and Kneel AGH..." should have been enough. But a tearis stronger than wildfire...

Masi said:

I think it is a FFG error to have create a "deck template" so strong and they are trying to solve this funny situation and balance it. I have played greyjoy for 6 months, now I'm trying stark and baratheon... I always said I would never played lannister until they become not "an easy win"... I understand the andgry lanni player that tested a lot a deck and now, near to regionals, has to change all that tactic... actually now GAH it's unusable but I'm really sure we will have all lanny kneel with city agenda playing Black Cells... nothing will change until Lanni will have so much card draw advantage...

There are some player that take Lannister template and add 4-5 unexpected cards (ie River Bandit by Erick), but the template is the same for all of them...

Ps I play stark but only 1x infantry e 1x cavalry... but yes... against lanni I start with "Fear" cause If I let them play city of Lies, game ends the first round...

What deck won French nationals last year? What deck won Tourney of Stahleck last year? What deck finished #1 and #2 after the Swiss rounds on the European side of the last OCTGN tournament?

How can you claim that it is an American bias to weaken Lannister? Those are the most prominent European tournaments I know of and Lannister won all of them.

It also won the first Regional of this season last week, both OCTGN tournaments over all, rings' Seattle regional last year, Calicon 2009, and Black Friday and the Kingsmoot in the East (two big tournaments in NYC last year). At least it only finished second at Gencon....

Perfect errata! The repeatable kneel thing was just over the top - and it keyed off your opponent's Shadows play as well. Lanni can still kneel multiple characters a turn even after this - and given all their other effects, cards, gold, characters yada yada yada ....I can't see how anyone can shed any tears.

The jury is out folks. when your House wins or places in every major event aroudn the world for eighteen months or so - its not good for the game and someone will do somehting about it.

No sympathy from this quarter - Lannister players will have to start to think a little now. (Still not enough)

Lannister shadow had (we have yet to see their performance after this) an edge over most decks. That's a fact; of course I won't deny it. But that doesn't mean that Lannister won every game in every tourney. If they did it in America, like so many people claim, it must have been their opponents's fault.

Anyway, back to the Lannister shadow deck's excessive power: you, as a company, balance this by adding to the environment meta cards against shadows, or meta against locations, or meta against bowing. And they don't need to be dead cards against other decks, if their design is good enough. Then, with plenty of tools to beat Lannister, the good players will make good decks that can win consistently against Lannister shadow and make a stand against many other decks as well. The bad players won't add any of that to their decks and they will lose anyway, but, hey, losing is what bad players should do.

But you do not balance the environment by banning their cards. That's poor game design: that's way more than poor game design. It makes the game worse for Lannister players, because they have incresingly less cards to build their deck (less options=less fun), and it doesn't reward wise deck-building by their opponents (Lannis won't ever use AGH, period; there's nothing you, as an oponent, have to do about it) while rewarding mindless complaining. "Why should I make the effort to think a good deck that can beat X? It's way easier to cry and cry and cry and beg for X to disappear!".

Oops on botching the quote (Twn2dn, thanks for catching that).

So why is there so much hostility here between players and where is the US vs Europe antagonism coming from? People, let's try to keep our cool and some perspective...

I understand a Lanni-devoted player, especially if they're anticipating participating in a regional, being upset if they had AGH in their tested deck. I'm not going to argue about the timing of the errata I think it's a legitimate gripe to complain about the timing, but I don't have a strong view on it either way. It's not the first time FFG has done this see Prince's Loyalist.

As to whether AGH needed errata, I think there's a strong argument it did. Players mostly change their fate in the game from a losing position to a winning one by deft plot choice (both in the sense of what plots they put into their plot decks and then the timing of playing it in the game) coupled with maneuvers in the Challenges phase to win a key challenge or two to trigger effects and start to turn things around. Other than plot effects, most potent effects happen within the Challenge phase as it plays out, usually playing off of something done in the challenge phase, or after, say during Dominance. What's so tough about AGH and Castellan is their strong effects are hitting the opponent before the Challenge phase begins. When you can't initiate challenges or defend challenges, it's next to impossible to change your status in the game. What if, say, Bear Island was a Challenges phase effect? Even with its baggage (can't hit Stark characters or characters with attachments, significant restriction on your deck building since you can only have Stark cards in play to trigger), that would be devastatingly powerful if it could be triggered before any Challenges happened. Whether the errata choice to make AGH a Limited Response versus, say, unique was the "right" one, I don't know.

LetsGoRed said:

I see your point, and we agree on almost everything.

If they had errata'd AGH to make it Unique, it would have been cool for me. That card was very powerful and it needed a change, I won't argue with that, because it's true. Making it Unique makes sense from a fluff perspective too (there's ONE Alchemist's Guild Hall).

I would still complain about the timing, which has been horrible, and about the philosophy of reducing our card pool, but I would have no problem with the errata itself.

LetsGoRed said:

I'm sorry but it seems like French vs others. In last OCTGN tournament there were players from Italy, Spain, Finland, Luxembourg, Israel and Poland. Lanni won. Gualdo asked French guys but they didn't want to join. Maybe next time? I would love to see those Bara and Martell second turn win.

Some French Players wrote me that will surely join us next tournament. I think it is not French vs Rest of the World cause OCTG is not "UNIVERSAL" and it is not mandatory to play only with this system... But now it is the only easy way to play "over Ocean" so I'd love to see a not Lanni win in future... maybe European :-)

Gualdo said:

That's great. I love Italian people, but in the next tournament I want to play some other nationalities too (I played 4 x Italians )

Rogue30 said:

me too!

Making it unique only solved the problem if AGH was the only problem. As has been mentioned in the previous posts the real erratta here isn't that it nukes AGH, which still works quite nicely kneeling one character a turn in a shadows deck, its that now a shadows deck doesn't get the extra benefiit of Castellan of the Rock's one kneel a turn on top of it, you get one or the other. if you have both out you are still ensured one kneel a turn, don't have to work that hard fo ra second, its just that the third or 4th kneel that turn might be a little harder.

I do here you about the timing, it sucks when you are in the middle of preparing for a regional and yes the card has been out there forever (~does no one in MN play it for Nate to see it ), but it really really needed to be done and a little late is always better then a lot late or never. the good news is you have a few weeks to playtest it and it actually makes lannister a little less suspectible to Fleeing to the Wall as you keep the other two copies of AGH in shadows until Fleeing then discard AGH and bring out the next one.

Lars said:

BTW Fleeing to the wall is not a remedy, as someone said. I always have it and it helps just a little - although against heavy location Targ is precious - you are losing a slot for good effect/numbers plot, reducing your own locations possibilities... and still are losing because of kneeling synergy.

Lars said:

I do here you about the timing, it sucks when you are in the middle of preparing for a regional and yes the card has been out there forever (~does no one in MN play it for Nate to see it ), but it really really needed to be done and a little late is always better then a lot late or never. the good news is you have a few weeks to playtest it and it actually makes lannister a little less susceptible to Fleeing to the Wall as you keep the other two copies of AGH in shadows until Fleeing then discard AGH and bring out the next one.

Well, in our local meta nobody really plays Lannister, so other than a few decks that come and go we've never had to deal with Lanni kneel. As for Nate, it has been months since he's been able to attend any events at our store (and, frankly, we've gotten very casual in our play, preferring the leagues over tournament nights, as we play so many different games now) and at the events center they are also more focused on league play and getting in new players, so at the stores in his area I doubt there is any serious competition taking place for him to really see what is going on. Sure, he must be getting reports from certain players Luke, Greg, Will, Kevin, etc. but how many people have written him or FFG and says "Hey, watch this card its super powerful?" I don't follow the OCTGN reports, so I don't know who is playing what and who is winning, and I visit these pages pretty often and I don't recall seeing any threads about the power of this card, only just occasionally reports about how deadly Lanni kneel can be and the same thing is often said about Stark MIL and Bara Power rush, and there's no way I can form an opinion based on that.

I will also agre with Lars that there sure seems to be a strong European v American vibe taking place in this thread. Flame war comes to mind. And yet, with all the Euro players taking about how Lanni kneel has been dominating their scene, weren't there also Europeans who said, when Lords of Winter was announced, that Stark was a dominant house and didn't need the help a deluxe expansion provides? We don't need to berate one set of players over another because of this we all have our views of the game, and deck design, and what houses and builds are more powerful than others.

Prior to the event (or perhaps during, I don't exactly remember when he mentioned it) Nate was already telling us that there were certain cards on his "watch" list for errata and banning. He already had some ideas about what was adversely affecting the game. Watching Greg's deck in action perhaps reinforced some of those ideas, and led to this errata. But I can't say for sure, I am only speculating. With only a few exceptions, Nate has not let us know why these cards were banned or errata'd. Some are obvious, others less so. But I don't think he woke up on Saturday thinking there were no issues with the game at present, watched one game and went "Hold it that cards needs to be nerfed."

And, as an aside, considering that three of the games that Greg played were against two players in my meta, and that both of them did not heed my advice to run Fleeing to the Wall and perhaps some other form of location control, does prove that they made design mistakes. It is not a cure-all plot, but after seeing too many games with rampant locations I always try to find a way to include it in my decks.

#1 - stop on the playtester hate. If you have never been a playtester, you have no idea what goes on in playtesting, how much time is given, if the testers are even listened to, if new sets are being considered, or many other details. I am a former playtester myself, who saw CBK put in a major set AFTER playtesting was over. This isn't MTG, there isn't unlimited time and resources being put into organized play for such a small game (how many people played at Worlds last year...? Even a Regional...?). MTG even has bannings/errata, and they throw TONS of $$ and time at their playtesters.

#2 - I laugh at Fleeing the Wall. It is not an answer in the least...oh, I ONLY get to keep two kneeling locations and a location that draws me 1-2 cards per turn? In the house w/ the most ways to create $$?

#3 - the main problem is that Shadows is just very strong, and Lanni got the most things that work well w/ Shadows. Shadows decks give gold (a first turn 7/6/1 plot basically - that fuels stronger plots later on), protection vs. Valar/Wildfire (most of my wins are not via kneeling, it is via Valar, then flopping 2-3 cards out of shadows), and just strong cost-effective cards to begin with.

#4 - What is with the across the ocean stuff? I don't think I have seen us bashing the Euro's much...? I know it is hard to feel like FFG isn't listening - we can relate, trust me FFG has to use what they can see, and they see Lanni dominance right now. Personally I think after errata and after the Stark box comes out there will be a much leveler playing field (IMHO it is already as level as it has been in awhile), which is a good thing - right? Are people really saying this errata is going to nerf Lanni?

#5 - why again can't the tourneyment scene be regulated by errata where needed? I never got this logic. Every game does it, and I like that better than thinking a 'silver bullet' card is a better solution (they are rarely played, and games turn into more of a rock/paper/scissors thing). Every errata is always met w/ outrage, and then usually 2 months later everyone is pretty happy with it. I know I wouldn't want to return to cards as printed...

rings said:

1-4 are great points (i'll try to be less tongue in check about playtesting ) though on 2, i'll say a little bit helps (especially in certain house like bara where the best location control card is just not accessible)

i think people get so mad is because, while it isn't personal, it can feel personal. Oh i'm using this card and they banned/erratted it, especially when you get a few in a row with compelled and then this.

I'm with the Euros on this one, Rings. i'd ALWAYS prefer silver bullets to errata. Lots of casual players these days, lots of newbies - and it does suck when they show up at the FLGS and the cards don't work the way they read. Of course, i was saying this back in competitive CCg days as well...bit its even more true now.

That being said: this errata is still a good one and Shadows is still overpwoered. If we aren't goign to get the anit shadows tech Lars and i and a few others were suggesting last fall - I hope the erratas keep on comuing.

Stag Lord said:

well there is a silver bullet, its just not that good (cannot be bribed...)

i think casual player and 3x AGH don;t go together like love and marriage, but I could be wrong

Stag Lord said:

I'd still prefer anti shadows tech or maybe some plot cancel.

rings said:

Stag Lord said:

Thanks... Happy to know that I'm an autist who never think when deckbuilding. Send me a non-kneeling decklist that can win in a big tournament and I'll consider you're right. I suppose all the attemps I did in 4 month to find such a decklist were useless because I'm brainless...