After i received the 3rd chapter pack of the chapter pack circle, i wondered if any player yet found a reason to competively play a nightwatch deck. So i´m referring to this kind of deck which could win a local tournament or something like that. I was my impression that the nightwatch theme was still unestablished after 3 cp. Now after the 4th cp it´s still my impression that there´s no reason to run the nightwatch for a competive deck and there are only 2 cp to release from the circle.

That brings me to the title of the topic, is the general consensus that new themes and mechanics are good impelemented in the LCG or not?. My very own answer is : maybe !

I think we had the the following major themes and mechanics since the release of the first chapter packs: seasons, shadows, kingsguard, nightwatch, wildling, return of house Greyjoy, return of house Martell.

I think the return of Martell and Greyjoy was good implemendted, as well as the shadow theme. Only a small number of the cards that were realeased for the season mechanic found their way into decks. A lot of the potential season themed cards see rarely play. At least that´s my observation.

And i´m very dissapointed about the traited themes. I think they generally lack trait synergy - however i still have faith that the wildlings could turn out to be different, at least the bonusses their the north agendas provide could make a competive deck. Yet i still don´t know why one should play a nightwatch deck, the currently released charachters seem to be either overcosted with a too special ability or are possibly not worth the drawback of 4 additional power. I mean why should i run say ranger of the watch (and two the north agendas) when a house refugee only costs 0 gold and also has two icons? Why invest 3 gold in Dolorous Edd ( 1 STR charachter) - when there´s only house that could possibly reach the draw cap? Is Septon Cellador´s ability a silver bullet? There are in general not too many cards that support the decision to wear the black. The same is true for the kingsguard.

I've come to a similar understanding. Though, I have hope that the last 2 chapter packs will really fill in the blanks with the nights watch. And if not, there were nights watch cards before and I'm sure there will be after. There will be a solid style or two in there I'm sure. I tried working the nights watch into my stark deck (adding the two Agendas) and it wasn't awful, but it wasn't that hot, either. But, after taking out the agendas and all those icon-less nights watch and just leaving some neat night's watch combos, it makes for a very solid Stark deck.

The Wildlings are another story. After the Wildling Horde card, it was very easy to construct a devistating Wildling deck with just the right amount of gaps to fill with the remaining chapter packs. With the 'Wildling horde' a 9 str, deadly, stealth, and no attachments for 4-5 gold (4 with that 'the north' plot card) along with 'beyond the wall' and a slew of stealthy wildlings(and a couple other tricks), it makes for quite the sweep.

I disagree about Kingsguard though. In my (meager) experience they and the agenda make a solid 10-12 card fill and combo half well with 'knights'. But maybe I'm just showing my unseasoned status here.

had a meta mate take a kingsguard deck to black firday...it gottrounced.

I think wilding provides the best trait based stuff (stand. stealth, icon diversity, orell, cheaper then nights watch) and even that isn't worth +2 power.

Season was about 50% winter works fine, summer...not so much.

Shadows is solid, though a little stronger in one or two houses then others.

the other problem with shadows/kingsguard/night'swatch is that if there is a competetive build, well there is a real simple answer...

Hmm... down here Kingsguard seems to shine as a Melee build.

Lars said:

I've never been to a tournament, and mostly play joust. In a joust, the Wildling Deck smashed even the lanni kneel/draw deck. And it needs 19 to win. It seems to me that, particularly with a military heavy deck, those extra power in a joust aren't that bad. Once you get the momentum it's over. Your oponent cant get a foot in. Do tournaments flow so differently that every power matters so crucially?

anavasoothed said:

Tournament play can definitely "flow" a little differently, but I suspect what Lars is referring to is the the standard time limit on rounds. Getting to 19 if you have (and can maintain) board position isn't necessarily any harder, but given that it could take a couple extra turns to claim the +2 power (if the rounds are very hard fought), your opponent has more time to play Valar or other plots a second time or just to hang on long enough that the match goes to time (and it's a tie).

Lars said:

But I have never seen that "real simple answer" in any competitive deck. Heck, I haven't even seen the Reinforcement events on their own in any deck for a pretty long time. So I'd guess if someone finds a competitive build on any of those things, they're going to have a few months before they start seeing anyone load that silver bullet.

I don't know, Lars. Maybe things are different out on the east coast, but I have neither seen nor heard of MwNK or the Reinforcement events getting enough current play that it would be a reason to not try to build a competitive deck on any of these themes.

Twn2dn said:

Yeah, but the thing to ask yourself if you are running 2 The North Agendas is simply this: How many times do I lose because I have 15-18 power when my opponent reaches 15? How many times does time run out on a round in competition when I have 15-18 power? If the answer to those questions is "not very often," then the effort of gaining that additional power is not the really the issue.

So you think if a competative build comes out using one of these neutral themes or house card people wouldn't slot in MWnK?

Aw man he is killing me w/ Orell who has stealth and wildling mead...I could kill him...but he has a dupe on him...hmm maybe i'll just steal him.

Lars said:

No, I do agree that if a competitive build comes out using one of these neutral themes, people will indeed start looking at MWnK again.

But I don't think that MWnK (and the Reinforcement events needed to activate it and the 2-3 gold you'll need in the challenge phase to pull it off) can be slotted into many current decks - especially since the individual pieces do not seem to see much play right now. I think we're talking about a rebuild specifically designed to counter the neutral theme, not a simple card substitution or additional combo for an already competitive deck.

eh its not overly hard, especially not with retreat and regroup. Plus there are a few martell builds that seem to already have the reins in there. Plus someone mentioned Kingsguard being better in melee, well it now got easier to slot in MWnK as well. I went to GenCon melee last year w/ a MwnK stark deck If we hadn't gotten timed out in the second round I would have had a real good shot at a 1st and 2nd in 2 rounds and that was with much less neutrals (though aemon, mance, gilly, and samwell were prevelant and tasty to steal stole all of them in both rounds, sometimes twice oh and prevented one of them from being played...). Now with the likely hood of alliance for things like Seastone chair in bara, neutral shadows characters, and more one shot (not theme dependent) neutrals I might just put something like it back together.

This is the point I was trying to make oh so many moons ago, now if you want to build/rely on a lot of neutrals you have an unneccesary and almost absurd disadvantage solely because you don't have a house affiliation. Playing my MWnK deck once or twice against everyone in our meta has buried cards like Ser Auther Dayne/ Aemon and because I haven't played it recently the newer neutrals are starting to creep up a bit to make me want to steal some more of them.

The neutral house card is even more so disadvantaged....

"I went to GenCon melee last year w/a MwNK stark deck..."

"Playing my MwNK deck once or twice..."

You yourself are reinforcing my point. If someone wants to control neutrals/OOH cards with MWnK, they build a MwNK deck. It's not as simple as swapping out a few cards to add the capability to an existing deck.

So yeah, if neutral Houses make a strong impact, MwNK builds would seem to be an obvious counter that will be explored more avidly than it is now. But we are talking about builds and a near-complete dedication to the strategy here - not a simple, useful tool that has been overlooked because of minimal need and can be added to any deck with a few simple tweaks. Then the overall competitive environment will take over and the people playing MwNK decks will have to make sure they are competitive against both "heavy OOH" and "purist" opponents. People will undoubtedly try and sure, it puts the neutral themes at a disadvantage. I just don't think that, in the overall competitive environment, it is likely to be such a complete disadvantage as to doom the neutral themes to obscurity of extinction.

first it was 2 seperate thoughts. slot in MWnK isn;t that much of a commitment, Since I wanted MWnK i decided to build a deck for melee w/ MWnK, hate to tell you but MwnK slots in and out of that 'deck' (~I guess I should have called it a pile of cards....)

If I wanted to Slot in MWnK to my current Stark deck, it wouldn't be that big of a deal I'd take out the 3x House Umber Berserkers, trade my influence, Fiegned retreat x3, and lethal counter attack x2, put in MwnK x3, gold, retreat and regroup x3 and some combo of the INT and POW Reins....now I've slotted MWnK into my deck (and or pile of cards).

With Lanni now running two Limited Response for their kneeling, do they want to run MwnK and hope that the character steal is better than the kneel/board control? That's a personal choice, and one I will not make for anyone, but those players are free to give their opinion.

I still believe that at some point there will be cards or cards that will return control of stolen cards. A reprint of Keeper of Oaths would not be an auto-include, but it's presence in the card pool would make people think twice.

And, yes, considering the card I am thinking of, MwnK doesn't scare me off from playing a NW deck. I just don't remember the card number, or if we will see it this month or next. But it may definitely be my favorite NW-based card ever.

Hope that works out for you.

Currently, how much gold are you carrying over into the Challenge phase? I'm just curious since you are one of the folks who have said Stark-Shadows-WInter is impractical from a cost/resource management position. Is holding back that 2-3 gold likely to change how you play the rest of the deck?

You just took out 5 direct kill effects (that could kill more than 5 characters) and three guaranteed military challenge wins. The exchange is essentially no more than 5 stolen characters. The kill effects could have controlled any character. The steal effects can only get non-House characters (and locations, granted). Is the tweaked deck still as effective against "purist" decks as the original? And how's the draw on this deck? You don't necessarily need your House Umber Berserkers in play in order to have Feigned Retreat or Lethal Counterattack do their primary job of ruining your opponent's plans.

When someone says "slotting cards into the deck," I think of it as changing a few cards without having a huge impact on the way the deck is played, the resources are managed, etc. Sure, you "only" changed 11-12 cards (20% of a 60-card deck...), but it looks like you have changed the way you are going to have to handle the resources and play the deck significantly. It seems to me that you have changed the way to approach playing this deck, without necessarily making MwNK a reliable control/counter to neutral/OOH use by opponents.

Hmm, forgot that MwnK also takes locations, since it rarely gets played. Still, nothing that I couldn't work around...

ktom said:

glad to see you care.

ktom said:

when I need 2 gold I have it, If i need three i might have to hold back on one character. Its a lot different from star kshadows winter as I don;t need to spend one gold every turn and keep a card in shadows. The deck runs a lot of dupes, so holding back 2-3 gold dooesn;t generally have any impact.

ktom said:

and added 5 steal effect for a +10 to +12 swing. added more icon diversity and stealth/renown along with discard pile recursion. Draw is what it needs to be in melee (which is a lot less then joust, and why i don't play it in joust). But w/ to be a wolf I can also get around draw issues.

ktom said:

not really, it still likes it when people attack me, I don't get an auto win event (which messed with my resources too btw) but I do get a character w/ higher STR in that challenge who doesn't kill my board when played and I can close a little faster then before (ok it plays a little faster...you got me there).

with things like Randyll, Former Champ, Jack of all trades (seen him a bit more lately for some reason), Varys, Orell, the streets (~yes yes i know, not worth 2 gold), Syrio, and Silent Sisters, there are plenty of non themed but toolboxy neutrals that are popping up in melee more and more.

MwNK look pretty good on paper, but to me they seem like a bad choice in joust, no matter how I look at it.

- 4 gold neutral character, limited response for 2 gold, some reinforcement events (at least 6 I would say) to guarantee you manage to actually trigger the response - all of those put together dictate how you have to play the deck like Ktom mentioned.

- It works vs decks which play OOH cards, but vs other decks with not that many OOH, it doesn't seem very potent. Even if the number of neutral cards in a deck will increase on average, there will always be the very real possibility that you'll encounter a pure or almost pure deck. And in that case, your opponent will have the edge.

haggled this all out before so I'll try to be brief.

Zsa said:

so does adding kneel cards. yes I know that kneel is lot more realiable, but not everything can be kneel. I'm not sure why the adding this for mof control over that form changes your deck play style is such an argument against using MWnK, they still can control its not like I'm using a rush dec kand then adding MWnK (though I have used them in bara before...)

Zsa said:

GJ can be a pure deck, but if you've got war crests in there wouldn't you want Randyl Tarley in there? If you decide not to use him, then your deck is weaker without even triggering MWnK. Same for shadows and syrio or Varys.

Lars said:

I agree with you but I don't see your point, you seem to agree with what I said . The point I was making is that you're committing a lot for the MwNK frat party and you might end up without any female guests to bone.

Yeah Tarly looks good in a GJ deck but are you really going to wait for Tarly to show up to steal him. I don't think it's worth putting more than 2 of them in the deck, but even with 3, there's a good chance Tarly won't see play.

Same with Martell and Lannister, you can make decks that have very few OOH cards and that are still very good decks.

I think Lars is trying to say that if you don't play Tarly against his MwNK or, worse yet, don't put him in the deck in the first place because you're afraid you're going to be facing someone's MwNK, then the card has done its job even if Tarly never switches control during a game.

That, ultimately, is the discussion that has been going on since MwNK was released: Are neutrals and OOH risky (at best) or unplayable (at worst) simply because MwNK exists? Is it a deterrent to "non-purity" cards?

Most people have taken the position that if it is a deterrent, MwNK is not an effective one. People have still freely used neutrals and OOH without giving this card much thought. Lars is pointing out that with the NW, Wildlings and upcoming Neutral House card and Brotherhood, it might be time for people to start thinking about MwNK if they don't want to get caught out in the rain. My position is that its mere existence doesn't seem to be enough because I feel it is more complicated to pull off consistently - and still have a deck that is in a strong position against "purist" decks - than Lars seems to.

That old sorcerer has vanished
And for once has gone away!
Spirits called by him, now banished,
My commands shall soon obey.
Every step and saying
That he used, I know,
And with sprites obeying
My arts I will show.

Flow, flow onward
Stretches many
Spare not any
Water rushing,
Ever streaming fully downward
Toward the pool in current gushing.

Come, old broomstick, you are needed,
Take these rags and wrap them round you!
Long my orders you have heeded,
By my wishes now I've bound you.
Have two legs and stand,
And a head for you.
Run, and in your hand
Hold a bucket too.

Flow, flow onward
Stretches many,
Spare not any
Water rushing,
Ever streaming fully downward
Toward the pool in current gushing.

See him, toward the shore he's racing
There, he's at the stream already,
Back like lightning he is chasing,
Pouring water fast and steady.
Once again he hastens!
How the water spills,
How the water basins
Brimming full he fills!

Stop now, hear me!
Ample measure
Of your treasure
We have gotten!
Ah, I see it, dear me, dear me.
Master's word I have forgotten!

Ah, the word with which the master
Makes the broom a broom once more!
Ah, he runs and fetches faster!
Be a broomstick as before!
Ever new the torrents
That by him are fed,
Ah, a hundred currents
Pour upon my head!

No, no longer
Can I please him,
I will seize him!
That is spiteful!
My misgivings grow the stronger.
What a mien, his eyes how frightful!

Brood of hell, you're not a mortal!
Shall the entire house go under?
Over threshold over portal
Streams of water rush and thunder.
Broom accurst and mean,
Who will have his will,
Stick that you have been,
Once again stand still!

Can I never, Broom, appease you?
I will seize you,
Hold and whack you,
And your ancient wood
I'll sever,
With a whetted axe I'll crack you.

He returns, more water dragging!
Now I'll throw myself upon you!
Soon, 0 goblin, you'll be sagging.
Crash! The sharp axe has undone you.
What a good blow, truly!
There, he's split, I see.
Hope now rises newly,
And my breathing's free.

Woe betide me!
Both halves scurry
In a hurry,
Rise like towers
There beside me.
Help me, help, eternal powers!

Off they run, till wet and wetter
Hall and steps immersed are Iying.
What a flood that naught can fetter!
Lord and master, hear me crying! -
Ah, he comes excited.
Sir, my need is sore.
Spirits that I've cited
My commands ignore.

"To the lonely
Corner, broom!
Hear your doom.
As a spirit
When he wills, your master only
Calls you, then 'tis time to hear it."

=> I feel a little bit like this sorcerer´s apprentice who started that Mwnk discussion again. Personally i don´t care if Mwnk would be a or the silver bullet. My intention was just to collect some thoughts about what people think about the implementation of themes in the LCG. ANd from what i read so far there are also other players who think that especially kingsguard and nightwatch is beyond it´s possibilities which is a pity. Having some more synergies for the traits and some more unique characters with unique abilites would help their themes. The discussion about silver bullets against popular deck types is secondary and subsidiary in my opinion. Only popular strategies and themes have real silver bullets. If you are looking for those cards you couldalso argue that fallen crow (i guess that was the name of the nightwatch/willing traitor) will soon become the über- card once nighwatch/willing decks get popular.

I really wish Wildlings and Nightwatch were playable archetypes. It seems to me that the NW were designed to only interact with the new The North agendas, and 6 power is alot to overcome for undercosted tricons. Martell or Baratheon might have the rush capacity to overcome it, but the benefit just isn't worth it in those houses. Both of those houses have the icon diversity built in.

I was really hoping the Wildling The North agendas were going to provide stealth, deadly, and renown(maybe just for uniques). At least the wildlings tend to be undercosted monocons, but without the return of specialized challenges or some similar benefit for being a monocon, they are just somewhat flavorful neutrals.

Maybe if NW had another mechanic, like Shadowhate or Seasontech. They seem really underwhelming in comparison to Shadows or the Seasons. But maybe the Stark boxset or the last 2 CPs will have the answers.

Kennon said:

As one of the players who really jumped forward with the Kingsguard trait, I really have to say they appear underrated.

The reason I built them as a Martel melee deck instead of joust is because of the costs of the cards. Many of the Kingsguard are so expensive that you could only play 2 a turn on most occasions, but they work together so well. The other reason I built it for melee instead of joust in for the political aspect. In joust if you cannot get setup with your resources, it just goes downhill. In melee, usually the person who jumps out to the lead gets hammered. This gives you TONS of time to setup resources to come out a few turns later and start crushing.

I haven't had the chance to really mess with the Night's Watch and Wildings, but I can speak for the Kingsguard when I say that they could be a serious deck to compete with.