Did anyone else notice the posting of FAQ 1.5 today?

Essentially, it has one errata: Alchemist's Guildhall is now a Limited Response.

Oh, there are a couple of other wording changes to make it extra clear that a card that goes from play into Shadows leaves play - and goes through a moribund state - but it's mostly a 1-card errata. I guess Greg's Lanni-Shadows deck made an impression over the weekend.

Holy smokes, Rogue30 wastes no time and has already updated his card spoiler site with this errata. Thanks, Rogue.

It's pretty devastating once Lanni gets the second or third Alchemist's Guild Hall on the table, but I've only had to suffer through it once or twice, so I hadn't yet gotten out my pitchfork and torch to start clamoring for errata.

I do feel bad, we have one fairly new player in our meta (started in December) who predominantly plays Lanni and most recently had a Shadows deck with AGH x3 in it (one of my said sufferings being a game against him). He's already suffered through learning that Pyromancer's Cache is banned and then having Compelled by the Rock banned.

GREAT!

Only 2 Steps more.

1st. Ban the Castellan.

2nd. Ban the Lannister Card House.

This is fantastic news. Should make for a much more diverse meta for Regionals, for sure. It's an elegant solution that keeps Lannister strong but doesn't give them so much repeatable kneel that it becomes ridiculous. After seeing the power of the two Lannister shadows decks in the finals of the last OCTGN tournament, this seems like a terrific change. Otherwise, Lannister Shadows would probably have been ubiquitous at Regionals.

LetsGoRed said:

No time to waste! Those **** Lanni need to be punished!

LetsGoRed said:

Yeah, but he surely will understand that this is for better game experience. I wonder how 3 guild halls went unnoticed through playtesting.

Hi...

First post on this board... i feel sorry that i came to complain...

First of all, i'm all but a Lannister player... I usually play greyjoy or stark.

My point is that lannister is one of the best house for the moment, but not the only one. Here, in France, we have another way of playing and some houses are more powerful than Lannister...

Here, Martell and Baratheon have somme very strong deck playing on noble character that can win on T2 most of the Time (or T3 plot phase).

Now, with the guild errated, the ONLY build that is effective here looks like a old crippled man... from the top, lannister seems to fall to the bottom.

I wish that this errata is the first of a long list that will equilibrate the game and like to see cards like the Red viper or Power of Blood been errated too...

PS : Sorry for my poor english :/

Alekyne said:

Very interesting. Could you please post such decks lists?

Rogue30 said:

There some decklist of bara and martell rush that win T2 on the french forum. There: http://letronedeferjce.forumactif.com/maisons-c1/

Concerning the errata, if your purpose is to bannish Lannister house, just do it clearly, not bannishing or badly errating all the strongs cards one after one.

What about the blacks cells ? That's the same card except that Distinct Mastery won't save you from it.

I was wondering: did you just discover that week end with Greg's deck that AGH were too much strong ? 5 months ago, I won the french championnship (a biggest tournament than the world's) with a Lanni/Shadow and we all constated it was a monster. Now, new cards are there, and some are even stronger. And Compelled By the Rock is now bannished. Lanni are not as strongs as 5 month ago. Juste stop killing my house !!

And Lannister cards in the new cycle are so strong, i understand the need to pull them under...

Seems not to hard to build a strong Barath or Martell deck that win on T2 or 3...

Martell player have juste to put 3 red Viper and that's all they need... Baratheon player put all their renown personnality... Power of Bloodx2... and that's nearly all...

what i dont like at all, is, that this erratum has been made DURING the regional season.

the card is 5 months old (as someone stated here).

is there any info about when a new FAQ is relevant for tourneys? guess its immediatedly, but then, a change like this can have a major effect on a deck that was prepared for a tourney. (this is not the case here, i am just curious)

Arthur Lannister said:

It´s not a question of killing the house, and the power of AGH was shown also in Stalheck, for example.

Ok, It´s clear that people prefer to complaint that to search solutions to their decks, so instead of ban or errate more Lanni cards, give us an alternative to kneel, (preferably a VERY LOOSER one...) so they stop their complaints. No, the cards we are having this block are not in this group, since they are not an alternative mechanic or whatever, but just awful cards.

And PLEASE, tell the betatesters to play a couple of rounds (better a whole game, but I will not ask for sooooooo much work) with all the cards, so we can avoid more bans and erratas.

Thanks.

thorondor said:

Same 1-week "for full potency" rule of thumb as cards. TO could reasonably not be expected to use FAQ 1.5 until May 4th.

~ All those Regionals this weekend are good to go.

Masi said:

I agree with you masi. The real problem is that there are no efficient alternative to kneeling decks in Lannister. You can do fun decks, but no competitive ones. I tried during 4 months (since Stahleck, i was bored with kneeling decks) to build no-kneeling Lannister decks. I made some good ones, like noble decks with some OOH characters, some lannister kill decks, shadow ones, all were funs but not competitives. The French nationals will take place in two months and i'm looking for a Lannister deck to defend my title... It will be a kneeling one.

For the betatesters, spanish and french communities are bigger than the american one. Maybe it could be a good idea to have some betatesting teams in Europe to confront the point of view of the metas from both sides of Atlantic ocean...

Wow, I think this is a very fair (and needed) errata. I have been on the losing end of 2x Guild Hall + 1x Castellan on the field at the same time, and those three kneels together seem a bit unbalanced. It's nice to know that instead of three kneels, these will now just net 1 kneel.

As far as how much this will "impair" Lanni's ability, I'm pretty sure they'll remain very strong. They have the best gold and draw, and with those they have easier access to shadows. Considering Lanni's in-house shadows cards are arguably the best in the game, Lanni plays shadows + city plots (which are also very strong) probably easier than any other house. So while this change may deter some players who were on the fence about playing Lanni at regionals, I doubt it will restrict Lanni's ability to perform (or the devoted, core Lanni players).

I see why people wonder why it took five months (or however long), but then I guess that means you can't really say FFG "made a rushed/uninformed" decision Honestly, it's better now than never, I think.

I also think this is a good change.

It does get ridiculous when you can kneel 3-4 characters a turn, every turn and the opponent has to just sit twiddle his thumbs.

I disagree that Baratheon decks can win in round 3 against Lannister. In the current format, besides getting Stalwart shield OOH, baratheon will have most, if not all nobles knelt against lannister every round.

Sure, you can play some stand effects like distinct mastery or to be a stag, but how many will you get in your hand / be able to play?

I won against a Bowing Lannister deck with a just made House Dayne Martell deck played by one of the best card game players i ever met. It's hard, and it's fun.

But this is full of fanboys who just want easy brainless wins, and complains whenever they meet something that makes them think and change their strategy.

I do not play Lannister, and never did, but i love a game plenty of gaming modes such as bowing, table cleaning, honor rush, etc. And LAnnister bowing deck only win when a good player uses it, and good players tend to use decks that make them think.

Zsa said:

A kneeling deck can, at turn 3/4 kneel 3-4 character a turn when all the good cards turn up... I have seen too many times Stark player killin 3-4 character a turn... IMO it's far more ridiculous...

Baratheon is one of the most powerful house here as I said earlier... Kneeling lanni gets one less card to deal with the top competitive deck here in France (Kill the Wrong Dwarf or Castellan don't work if you're noble or get an attachment pretty easy in Baratheon... and all characters kneeling ability and events don't work against the Red viper...)

Flogged and Chained will work against the Viper.

And one major difference between how this card worked in European events and American events is that this last weekend Nate got to watch a deck built around Kneel kneel out the opponent's deck on virtually every turn. There is a difference between hearing about how broken a combo is (and did anyone post about how broken the combo was, or did they just report their results) vs. seeing it in action.

Rogue30 said:

~i dunno how they could have missed something....

JJ its not new, i guess we just didn't talk about it loud enough (~my fault) after NYC events and our local games. ~I was too busty condeming compelled

Based on a few posts above, it sounds like some players have had different experiences with Lanni from what our meta's players tend to have (that is, they haven't had bad experiences). If so, that's great. The DC meta has had many negative play experiences with the Guild Hall + Castellan combination, so this is a welcome change. And for the record, this certainly is not because better players tend to play more competitive decks or because the potency of Lanni is in someway balanced by the difficulty of building/playing Lanni kneel decks. (I actually feel that Lanni kneel has become fairly cookie cutter, with most tournament-competitive Lanni decks playing 52+ of the same 60 cards. Given the prevalence of fundamentally similar builds, I'd say these decks are relatively easy to build, at least for people that play with/against them in tournaments.) I suspect the DC meta isn't the only group of players that feels this way though...Lanni has been winning tournaments with similar deck concepts (if not very similar deck lists) across metas for the past year. I'm not saying we should penalize a house for working well, but FFG should (of course) be mindful of relative power levels among houses.

Honestly though, I really doubt that this is going to slow Lanni down that much. It prevents Lanni from stacking up its most efficient, sustainable kneel effects together in a way that is very NPE, but it otherwise does little to mitigate Lanni's superior access to gold, draw, and shadows cards. Also, a Lanni player that plays city plots will still have little problem kneeling 2-5 characters a turn. (Sustainable effects from Castellan + Brothel can easily be combined with one-time effects like Enemy Informer to reliably kneel my 3 best characters each turn.)

This is... weird, very weird. The timing of this errata is WEIRD.

AGH wasn't a strange location with which you could make a crazy combo. It was probably the most important card, because of its solidity, in the Lannister shadows deck, which is also the only competitive Lannister deck as of now (and I talk about AGH in the past tense because the errata destroyed it; there's no reason now to include it in any deck). And you're all talking about the impression made by Lannister shadow decks which used it in a recent tourney to, wow, KNEEL THINGS... Ok, wait a moment, that's the whole purpose of the card. In every game I have played since AGH was released, I have played a card from the Shadows every turn in order to activate my 1, 2 or 3 AGH's. That's what AGH does. That's the only way to use it. No mystery about it. Is it a powerful effect? Sure, it is, but that's what FFG chose to give us! No crazy combos with latter cards involved: everything you needed to make it work was right there, in plain view, in the King's Landing chapters.

So the card has been errata'd now, in the middle of the regional tourney season, because the FFG people didn't know how to use the card until now? They didn't know you could activate 2+ AGHs every turn with ease? No beta-tester found about it? Even when hundreds of Lannister players have been kneeling all of their opponent's characters every turn with AGH for months, for so many months, they didn't know it could be done until now?

That's... impressive.

I'd be very glad to have an European beta-tester team, too.

Rogue30 said:

I think you guys are forgetting something very important here that's been brought up in older threads on the forums: Defenders is the first block that was designed and playtested for the LCG-only environment. Castellans and Guild Halls got through testing just fine because they were tested in the old Standard block (which had a level of power *significantly* higher than the card pool does today), at a point at which design/playtesting had no clue that everything from the Core Set forward were going to exist as a stand-alone when the cards hit the retailers. Fixes like these are responses necessary to strike a better balance in the LCG environment due to cards that were designed to be played with a much, much higher power card pool overall. Indeed, from what I remember of the little bit of Standard that I played at the beginning of my AGOT career, Lanni kneel would have needed this level of cohesion to keep up with the immense power of decks like Stark murder, Martell control, Targ burn, etc. Something very relevant to keep in mind when evaluating the power level of cards from the sets up to King's Landing. Don't take such a simplistic view of the design and playtesting process; it's inaccurate.

Hmmm, I thought that King's Landing was the first set designed for the LCG....

I think this is a good change but still not far enough. Not only is Lannister too powerful, it's not that interesting to play. In our meta, no one plays Lannister because it's no fun to win so easily each game.

schrecklich said:

I'm pretty sure that's the case with KL, but not 100% certain.

I really don't like to get too much into these "thread wars," but I suppose it's worth saying this one thing in the hope that it will clear matters up a bit:

The power level of Lanni is far out of balance, and the "Shadows lite" version I played in the last two OCTGN tournaments (very similar to Zsa's, which also made it to the final game of the last tourney) can beat every deck in the environment with absolute consistency. It's amazingly cohesive in its ability to kneel out an opponent's board, fueled by its absolutely superior card advantage (the best access to draw, gold, and low cost characters; and particularly solid on military and intrigue, and not lacking in the power challenge either). All sorts of slightly different versions of this same core "Lanni kneel" deck have dominated at the highest levels of competitive play for the last year or so. Not to be insulting, but if your local meta is seeing Bara, Martell, or Stark rush decks crush the Lanni players week in and week out, it's not because your group's play style is "different" than everywhere else unless you mean to say that it's "less competitive" -- rather, it's because you're not building and playing optimized Lanni decks, plain and simple. If you were, this wouldn't be happening -- it's not a simple matter of locality.

Lanni has overwhelmingly dominated every large tournament we've seen for the last -- well, I can't even remember how long; it's gone on for a good while now. And the results of our cross-Atlantic OCTGN tournament put to rest the idea that Stark/high-claim can be viable at the higher levels of competitive play, despite the fact that it was doing okay in some European scenes. These versions of Lanni aren't particularly hard to play, either; I've seen the best players and n00bs alike playing solid such builds, and they just tend to do far better than any other deck in the environment on average. When push comes to shove, if you want to ensure success at a competitive tournament you almost have to play Lanni at the moment. We've seen very few exceptions in the past, and these only in the hands of highly skilled competitive players: Martell as played by longclaw and twn2dn in the cross-Atlantic tournament, or twn2dn's outstanding performance with the D.C. Meta's "secret sauce" Targ/Shadows deck at Black Friday. Indeed, even these examples lost to optimized Lanni decks multiple times in each of those tournaments.

This fix takes some of that cohesion away. If you've played regularly against a well-built Lanni deck that gets out just two AGH, or one AGH and a Castellan -- to say nothing of when Lannisport Brothel is out, or when combined with a bunch of kneel events or the Enemy Informer, or heaven forbid the incredibly powerful City plots -- you likely understand how good and necessary a decision this was. Whatever the case, I think only time will tell as to whether this solution helped restore some balance between the disgustingness that is Lanni kneel and the rest of the houses, but it's likely to help at least marginally either way. It's no secret that I prefer to win at things, and I've grown tired of feeling it necessary to use Lanni tourney after competitive tourney to smack everyone around over and over again. I too have a highly optimized Baratheon rush deck that I kick my meta-mates around with, but I use it only in our local tourneys to make it more fun for everyone else, and because we have an unsaid agreement among us not to play abusive Lanni decks that would just roll over my Bara and everything else if we weren't just playing "for fun."