That is how I remember it to Stags, which was why I surprised by someone saying otherwise.

I was hoping Rings would post on the card. He is always cautious about agendas and I wonder what his take on the card is. I agree it is probably not an auto-include in most Rush decks, because a good flop helps you get deeper into your deck, which is huge in Rush. But most non-Shadow heavy-control decks will be greatly helped by this card. Shadow decks I could see going either way. Seems like an auto include ineverything else.

Honestly, I liked the Eyrie better. Don't get me wrong, I like Dobbler (obviously, he's my travel partner on almost every AGoT trip I make), and I like this card. I even like that it's the first champion created Agenda and it has me excited about all of the deckbuilding possibilities. I'll certainly use it. I just think that the Eyrie was a little bit safer for the game since it could potentially be effected. Besides, I love cards that break game rules and the Eyrie just barely wins there since Agendas start in play before setup anyway. Regardless, I'm confident that this has been well tested (it is coming out substantially later than the other Champion cards from 2009, you may notice) and it's certainly going to be fun.

~Posting a contrary view; I think I know how Lars feels on these forums most of the time.

I don't think a new player would come to a meetup and expect to win right out of the gate, that's not my concern. And there are plenty of deck types available now and appearing at our meetups that I'm not concerned and have never been concerned that we'd have a night of Lanni Uber-kneel played by everyone. When a new player is getting pounded by the likes of the Castellan, that card at least fits into the framework/general play that they know from the Core Set; it's an effect on a card, a strong one, but the game is still following the pattern they recognize. With Shadows (and it's own rule sheet) and now a few agendas that heavily pervert the game play, there's a greater likelihood that a new player is going to be in a game that doesn't feel much like the game they know and I worry that that would be a turn off.

But my level of concern after a day has dissipated some. Heck, I'm already starting think about how I might work this into my current, agenda-less, Stark deck.

LetsGoRed said:

I don't think any of the agendas 'pervert' the game play, its not like there is one that says skip the challenge phase and claim 3 power, it just adds to the way you get to the game play. I think shadows is the same thing (and will be better once there are more ways to go after cards in shadows). If you want to see something that perverted gameplay search youtube for a video of the Call of Cthulu finals were a repeatable combo (both in round and round after round) told the other player he wasn't allowed to play the game.

Yeah Agendas and Shadows aren't in the core set, but agendas have been part of the game for a while and new optional things (liek keywords, crests, etc) are always popping into the game. Some new players don't grasp using a card OOH until they get beat by it. I think it is just part of the learning process, which AGoT already has a steep (if not unending) one.

LetsGoRed said:

But my level of concern after a day has dissipated some. Heck, I'm already starting think about how I might work this into my current, agenda-less, Stark deck.

Fiegned retreat (~as it should be) is now free.....I also think winter and shadows now works a lot better...........especially w/ crown of winter.

Wait is CoC taking inspiration from magic?

Speaking as a fairly new player (having been playing less than a year and starting in the middle of the King's Landing cycle), I can respond to some of LetsGoRed's concerns. I don't see this agenda as messing with the game too much and I don't see it confusing new players, at least not as much as shadows does with all of the special rules involved with shadows. This agenda gives a pretty straightforward boost to gold, influence and initiative, which isn't hard to grasp. It may be difficult for a newcomer to figure out how to deal with this agenda, but that's hardly unusual.

Overall I think this agenda is very cool. I look forward to building a deck around it.

kpmccoy21 said:

Just flew back from Key West (...and boy are my arms tired...).

While I am very wary about Agendas in general (and the Wildling/NW ones have not changed my mind in the least), this one was well developed and tested in my opinion. Maybe it could use one more 'downside' (can't reduce costs maybe...~that way Greg would be forced to not run 20+ locations in a deck...), but that is nitpicking.

People who keep comparing it to the Eyrie have to remember that that +2 gold instead of +3 is really a big difference (33%? 50%? ). It can't be Frozen (remember, when the Eyrie was popular people were Freezing out of house consistently), but there are other drawbacks. Not running another agenda is a big one (Eyrie didn't stop you from running either an Agenda or other locations), especially w/ the Wildling agenda basically giving you the +2 gold (indirectly) many turns. Also, the Eyrie had a wealth of plots to start looking at, and I don't think Blockade was available/legal until late (correct? Or was Raven's Wings enough of a counter that I don't remember?).

If people start seeing Bleeds, they are going to start running the 1 gold = cancel an event card...which right now I think is solid regardless, espeically in Lanni.

I mentioned on the spoiler that Targ will use this card the best. Basically it is +4 gold most of the time, and that is more worth it.

Ruling request - in Classic can you run both this AND Eyrie? That would be crazy...!

Dobbs - Who are the other people in the picture BTW? Just random or are they real people?

Okay, enough stream of consiousness posts...

If they other two pictures in the card are of actual people, I am unaware. One of them has a similar nose to one of my well known metamates, but that is it. It is probably just a coincidence.

rings said:

yup...but no +3 gold from eyrie per agenda's text

rings said:

how so? I'm fairly new and don't play Targ so what am I missing?

Darksbane said:

Cards with ambush can be payed with influence.

Rogue30 said:

Doubt this will be a huge factor given how few of the cards with Ambush see play. Flame-Kissed (and Dragon Thief to a lesser extent) is about it. So I don't think you can equate the influence to gold for Targ. Targ can end up using a lot of influence and is the House that most has to maintain two resource curves, though, so the card becomes very efficient. Perhaps brutally so. But not efficient to the point where I'd consider it at "+4 gold most of the time."

ktom said:

Most Targ builds use those 6 cards (and try to recur Flame-kissed), so I agree with the MOST of the time assesment, bordering on a high-majority of the time Dragon Thief is many times a card advantage swing so I see it all the time, but meta's are meta's.

I also agree that 2+ influence has been harder to come by IMHO (fairly sub-par cards), so this really helps the 3 influence burn card and both really good ambush cards (I have seen Thief hard-costed most of the time these days).

no mater what other cards targ is running they now get both of these cards (thief and kissed) a turn, plus plot gold and other influence or reducers......

Kennon said:

I think that might be extending his point just a bit too much there Will. You needn't continually add layers of complexity (particularly frustrating for a newer player, given where AGOT already falls on that continuum) to add viable tourney decks. Having a wide variety of competitive builds is about card and deckbuilding balance, not some sort of arms race.

As a player & deckbuilder, I love this card; as a direction for the game, not so much. Creating new deck types that have little clash with the current environment, but rather trump it, or reinforce paper/rock/scissor mentality between archetypes isn't really healthy. As someone else mentioned, it will also be interesting to see when/if past CPs totally sell out and/or if FFG will start rotating to maintain a reasonable entry point. Otherwise you pretty much necessitate power-creep to give newer players a chance.

Maester_LUke said:

~Oh, jeez. Let's not start talking about this yet! But power creep will always been an issue w/o rotation. But we have light-years to go (about twice the current card pool) before really talking about that hopefully.

rings said:

~Don' you have a bank to run?

Maester_LUke said:

Of course, adding any new cards at all is by necessity creating more complexity. If I add one card to the current cardpool what does that do to the total number of decks that can be built? Any of the math guys here want to field that one? It's a bit out of my usual field, but adding one card times every other card that it could be paired with in a deck, and factoring the fact that you could run from 1-3 copies of the card starts to get pretty hairy, even if you restrict it to only decks that are running the card in house. If you allow for builds that run cards out of house then your number gets exceptionally large.

In light of gameplay though, I don't see how this card is any more complex than any other agenda that we have available at the moment. Heck, the Shadows agenda is likely more complicated than this.

But really, that's just fluff. What I don't understand is how this agenda would create or reinforce some sort of rock/paper/scissors field.

I really like the card. I like the fact that it helps control characters better - cards like Too Proud to Bow, Westeros Bleeds, and so on - become a lot stronger, which I'm happy with. I'm wondering if it's enough help against the rush decks, however; if a Bara deck can win on first or second turn, and you happen to not draw your Westeros Bleeds, or they happen to have a canceler for it, then that sucks. It *does* allow control decks to speed up quite a bit though - most the time, they really only have to worry about getting out the Red Keep, and they'll have enough influence to do whatever they want, basically.

I think control will have to be more tempered - it won't go back to the days of the NPE deck, which, despite the fact that I loved that deck, makes me happy.

Incidentally, I think Too Proud to Bow could be huge during GenCon.

WolfgangSenff said:

Maybe you're right, but I don't think so - first: people often have their own neutrals and they don't want to lose them, second: it's dominance phase effect - too late for powerful effect and third: very few decks have enough influence to pay - I mean if you discard 1character, is it worth 1 slot in deck? And if there are 4, 5 characters in play you can't afford it. So do you take 1 precious slot in deck for unreliable effect?

Yeah, you're probably right. It's probably not worth the effort.