So I was thinking about cards, how they interact and deck building and kind of got this half formed idea that I thought I'd share:

A Token Card - not just playing the top card of your deck face down, but an actual printed card that can go into your deck and you would have to draw it to use it. The game likes tokens (at least historically) so its not really a new concept, just a twist on it.

How I see it working - The token cards would have a one word name (different from the title of card) lets go with a Greyjoy example and say deckhand. They would cost nothing to play, have no STR, Icons, text box, or anything else. For purposes of resets they would be characters, but not killed for claim (no free claim soak) . Then there would be other cards that could say all deckhand cards gain "blah blah". To continue the Greyjoy example there could be a set of locations that say Deckhand cards gain X icon. There could also be events that say each Deckhand card in play recieves X keyword. There could be a Character that says Deckhand Cards gain X Str. X is just being used as a placeholder, not the in game X. These cards would not be limit 3 to a deck, perhaps limit 6 if one feels a limit needs to be imposed, and could be used to fill in a deck, be a theme on its own (like traits).There could also be negatives to token cards (like a lannister location that adds a 1 gold penalty to playing Token Cards) or you can only play one a turn rule or something. Instead of putting somehting like Ancient Mariner or Distinguished boatswaine x3 in a deck I'd put a few token cards in and help flush out the deck a little more.

And I hear you Rings with "I don't want to play unnamed chump so why do I want to play unnammed token card." The thought popped up when I was thinking about Greyjoy and synergy with crews, captains, and ships, then I extended it to villiages, groups, factions etc. So If you wanted to have say the sparrows, in stead of taking up a whole CP or two with 3-5 named sparrows you could have one of the septons be a character, a Token called Peasent and the septon have an ability that does something to Peasents (i.e. they get +1 STR and an icon...) so its like he converted them to his flock. Or in Stark have some named guy (i'm not up on my stark lore right now) that was popular w/ the people or good at money management give Peasents a +1 income bonus. Yes, this is just an extension of what we can do with crests and traits, but I feel it provides a much broader scope for design space as you don't have to worry about putting traits and crests on so many things to have a large scale effect.

Lars said:

What's the difference between this and a 0-cost, 0-STR character with no icons, the traits "Deckhand. Token." and the text "Cannot Be Killed for claim"? Not sure why we need a new card type for something that can be accomplished within the existing framework....

I actually dislike adding a new card type; especially considering how long the current framework has stood up.

Adding a new card type can easily lead to confusion and abuse.

ktom said:

because all that stuff can be blanked, can be searched for with character search, doesn't change the deck building limits, can be burned, can be targeted. or even can be given more benefits via other cards. In short I don;t want it to be an actual character by itself, I want it to only work with effects that describe it by name.

Stormtower said:

confusion, sure. But thats why they print rules and like the shadows (essentially a new card type btw, so its not like FFG is adverse to the idea in general) rules can be inlcuded in cps and avilable online.

Anything in this game can be abused...its why they have play testing. Its arguable that shadows are an abuse right now, but it hasn't stopped them from making them.....

Lars said:

So... what you want is a way to make a kind of modular "weenies unite" deck that is immune to all normal forms of control?

What does the game gain out of changing its current structure to accommodate this mechanic? (Because ultimately, that's what you're talking about; a new mechanic.)

Shadows is not a new card type, it is a crest. Every effect and rule interaction with Shadows in it could have just as easily been Learned (well except for the complete dearth of learned characters).

I'm not sure how this would be a benefit to the game. As ktom points out it can all be achieved in game, and your reasons for not doing so make the cards exceedingly susceptible to power creep. I like the idea of traited cards that boost each other, or a named character that does so... that is after all what we have in effect with the North Agendas. I think you have some interesting ideas but the specific form you are proposing just seems like a lot of work outside of the current system without actually improving the over all game.

ktom said:

modular yes...weenies unite...not any more so then is already there (i.e. direwolves in stark especially with the location that gives them all stealth). It would not be immune to control, you would just have to control the granting effect (and therefore weaker then direwolves in stark, if you blank the stealth location the wolves still have native icons and strength). you balance out the effect granting card (not make them immune, make the location that gives stealth cost more then the direwolf one). Plus, the weenies can;t unite by themselves, they need a leader or rallying point or a fortification to make them work well.

What I envision as the gain is that you can have one set of tokens (i.e. peasents) fullfill a lot of different design space that it would take 3 or 4 different traits/crests/houses per CP (like wildling/night's watch) to get into the environment. If you make a peasent token you can spread out the Peasant effect granting cards to every house with only 1 card per house and maybe 1 neutral and they can pop up at different times after the token is out. You can make Tokens that are slightly stronger in house like deckhand where one house might have 2 or 3 effect granting cards but then one or two other houses might have 1 effect granting card (like deckhands could be mostly Greyjoy but Baratheon also has one guy, a seaworth maybe, who also makes use of deckhands).

The other thing I envision is that your chaff can be a bit more themetic. Instead of using house Umber Recurter to lower the cost of King Robb you could have Peasants working in the field to give you more gold thus making it easier for King Robb to afford his Kingly robes. Instead of putting in ancient mariner x3 and 2x distisguished boatswine in a greyjoy deck because you need 5 more cards you could throw in 5 tokens.

dormouse said:

I'm sure the same could be said about shadows. I mean why not just make Shadows Varys 3 gold and his passive be come into play, not out of shadows? Why make Alchemsit Guild Hall a shadows card and not just a location version of Castellan of the Rock? it adds to the design space and the deck building space.

Lars said:

The difference, and what Shadows for the game, is two-fold. Take Varys for example: by having him the way he is instead of as a 3-cost character with the passive triggering off of being played, you make it possible not to pay all 3 at the same time. So Shadows creates a different way to manage resources, including the resources of cards in your hand. Additionally, the timing of his effect is broadened by coming out of Shadows. Who goes first in Marshaling is less critical with Shadows-Varys because he can get your Ally at the beginning of Challenges. So there is a difference in the way Varys is played based on the Shadows mechanic.

Your ideas aren't bad and creating a mechanic for "power-base tokens" could be interesting. I just think it would be better as a mechanic within the current structure than something completely novel.

So isn't your comparison to Shadows an argument for doing this mechanic with characters with a new trait/crest? The new rules about putting stuff into Shadows were necessary because of the new game action of playing a card into Shadows and bringing it out. The Shadows crest was mostly added for design space.

Well shadows increases the strategic and tactical planning available to a player both in game and in deck building, as well as causing an added bit of known unknown stress for the opponent. I'm not seeing that with token card type. I mean, sure the idea is cool, but I don't see anything other that being added to the game by the type. It seems less complicated to use existing card types to create the benefits you are looking for. I still don't get why these couldn't be neutral traited characters with the appropriate text. "All exes gain this icon and this keyword. This card cannot be blanked or used for military claim." etc. etc.

It just seems too Rube Goldbergian in the end. More complexity than is necessary to get the same overall effect into the game.

Shadows is the opposite of this, all the cards with the Shadows crest would require a fair bit of text to get the costing, when they can be played face down, when they can be put face up, explaining that while face down they are not in play, and this is in addition to whatever else game text they have.

ktom said:

I'm just leary of them being characters becausre i don't want them to have any value outside of the card granting effects. I don't even want them to be able to be searched for via character seach effects.

I like everything but the new card type. Why wouldn't you want them to be able to be searched for?

I want something else to search for them if it all. or take to be a wolf. I don;t want character to be roadened in that. I want to be able to say token (as what they can't search for) if theyh have a token granting effect out.

Part of it is that I want them to also be a deck thinning device so I don;t want them to have a double benefit of beating the 3x per card title rule and being able to also be searched for (like blockade runner was)