These threads have been pretty dead since GenCon. Instead of waiting for the Bara Box to spice things up, I've decided to start a couple of topics that will hopefully spark some interesting conversation. Here's the first one for the beginning of your Labor Day weekend:

Venomous Blade, in my opinion, is one of the most unbalanced cards in the game. Perhaps the most unbalanced. It's so unbalanced, that I believe it is in need of an errata.

For 2 gold you get all of this -- A non-uniqe, non-cancelable (saves do not count as cancels), repeatable, virtually no restriction and no additional cost kill effect of an opponent's character with printed 2 STR or lower. It's non-cancellable because the kill effect is passive. The "restriction" is that it's the one Shadow card you play that phase, and you attach it to a character you control that can accept Weapon attachments. The additional "cost" to reusing it is losing any challenge and making sure the character you attach it to doesn't become moribund.

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Let's consider other similar cards.

Flame-Kissed is a non-unique attachment that also costs 2 gold (or 2 influence). However, it's not repeatable (at least not by it's own device and not without having to pay 2 gold/influence again), and is much more restrictive (it can't target No Attachments characters or work against characters with attachments). Flame-Kissed also bears the Condition trait.

Bear Island is a unique 3 cost location. It can kill any character and is repeatable, but has the added restriction that the character be non-Stark and have no attachments. Additionally, every card you control must have the House Stark affiliation. It is also cancelable.

Ser Illyn Payne is a unique, 4 cost, 2 STR Ally. He kills characters with 2 STR or lower, but he must kneel to trigger this repeatable ability. His ability is cancelable.

Field Spikes is a non-unique, 2 cost location. It targets attacking attacking characters with 2 STR or lower by kneeling. The controller of the character then has the option to remove that character from the challenge or let it be killed once the challenge resolves. Field Spikes is cancelable.

Grey Wind a unique, 1 cost attachment. It can only be attached to a House Stark character. It's repeatable kill that can a kill character with 1 STR or lower if it's owner kneels it. His kill effect affects characters with 2 STR or lower if he's attached to Robb Stark. His ability is cancelable.

Qhorin Halfhand is unique, 3 cost, 2 STR character. He has the protection of No Attachments. He does not need to kneel to activate his ability. His ability is a response (and cancelable) however, and requires you to win a military challenge by 4 or more STR. If his ability is triggered, he kills a non-unique, 3 STR or lower character controlled by the losing opponent

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When I look at these cards I see a combination of higher costs, more restrictions/requirements, and/or more vulnerability. I believe Venomous Blades needs at least one of these three things (i.e. s1, can't target characters with attachments, can only go back to the Shadows when you lose a challenge on defense, gets the Condition trait, etc).

The card simply needs to be balanced. I don't mind the strong effect. I actually like strong effects, but strong effects need to be balanced. I fail to see any balance with Venomous Blade. Even a card like The First Snow of Winter had the drawback of killing any 2 STR or lower characters you had. Venomous Blade really doesn't have any drawbacks.

What does everyone else think?

FATMOUSE said:

I agree. Mostly because there are so many cool STR 2 characters and now it's not worth to play them.

ps. Bear Island kills after all challenges - it's important too.

I don't build Martell decks, but I'm pretty sure that doing so boils down to this:

Step 1: Put in 3x Venomous Blades

Step 2: Add another 57+ cards.

Fatmouse and I have talked about VB a little bit and I agree. Venomous Blades can hide like no other repeatable kill (lacking the Condition trait makes it immune to many would-be answers and it'll usually be in Shadows during Marshalling so forget Frozen Solid) and gets to do its damage before your opponent can do a single challenge. That timing aspect is *huge*. It's the same reason why I thought Lannister's kneel effects were so potent and needed to be brought into check. And printed STR rather than STR is a bit of additional nastiness as it makes it practically impossible to do anything to immunize an important 2 STR character against it.

I think S1 would help. Or only being able to target non-uniques?

~Perhaps we need to unban Compelled by the Rock.

I agree about the S1 cost as ban. No more. Cause the thing i hate the most about VEnomus blade is that you can activate it freely in marshall/challenge and in dominance. 2 kills without cost in the round.

In this enviroment unban compelled would be too much in my opinion... would be the strongest card in the enviroment :-) in the hands of probably the most powerful house.

It is an attatchment so it can be targeted by attchement removal. Not only that but the character that it's attached to can be killed as well.

You have to lose a challenge to recycle it and if you're losing enough challenges to make this card really unbalanced, the chances are you are losing anyway. In a joust this card isn't that powerful. You'll have limited numbers of targets since many cards are 3+ strength. It is also assuming you have a character that can take attatchments for it to be recycled. In melee someone will be able to discard it or kill the character it's that annoying.

There are not too many decks killed by something that kills off only 2 or less streng characters. It will be very annoying and perhaps slow you down but not many decks are wrecked by it. Against a tully deck or targ burn or most any deck it would nothing more than an annoyance. It may make things more difificult but there are going to be a limited number of targets, you mush have an eligible charcter to attatch it to, and you have be consistantly on the losing end of challenges which inherently a bad strategy.

Powerful? Yes. Unbalanced? Slightly.

Bounder said:

You only have to lose one challenge and they all go back to shadows. And you can lose on offense where the harm is usually none to modest. Heck, it's pretty common to initiate an attack you don't expect to win just to force your opponent to defend, so it's really not painful to have to lose one challenge to recycle these. And we're talking about Martell, who relish losing challenges more than any other house.

As for Attachment control, this card is difficult to get at. Somewhat repeating myself, but lack of Condition trait is big (sorry, Maester Cressen and Maester of Lemonwood). Hiding during Marshalling is big (sorry, Frozen Solid). Not being "played" helps (sorry, Scurvy Cutthroat).

(Regarding Compelled by the Rock, I was only kidding.)

LetsGoRed said:

That's true, more than one would be problematic . I would be for 1g shadow cost on that card after thinking over again.

o_0: Consider that Martell has very FEW good character control options.

Stark/Targ character removal is not as powerful, but they have a lot of options. Martel has Cyvase, Areo Hotah, and this card.

You can save from this card... whereas in Targ it cannot be saved. (Flame-Kissed IMHO is much more abuseable than this card. Given that once Targ gets its flow going, its STR 3 and 4 characters that will die in the challenges phase each turn. ).

Martell is not a dominant house by any means... why not wait until they actually become a threat before kicking them in the balls?

bloodycelt said:

The house that had fully half of the top 8 at gencon isn't a threat? o_0 to you too I think.

You also can't compare it to targ burn because that's something targ decks are built around and it takes significant resources (in gold, influence and cards) for them 'to get their flow going'. Not to mention it can take quite a bit of skill to do properly. Whereas with Blade, as was already said, you stick in 3 copies of it and then use the other 57 cards to build whatever deck you want. It takes a minimal amount of effort, skill and resources to use.

Make it s1 and/or change it to strength rather than printed strength.

Sorry, don't see VB as being Unbalanced. For one, players will forget to trigger respoinses. That can leave this card in play past the Challenge Phase. And the only way to have three of them out during the challenge phase is to bring them out during other phases, in which they are subject to other forms of removal, including Frozen Solid and character death/discard.

Also consider that the character that is killed can be saved. And it only targets characters with printed STR (something an opponent of mind recently forgot about). And that Targ can get rid of that card pretty easily, at the cost of losing a chump character.

VB is good, but it will NOT win games by itself. Martell is a powerful house, being one of two houses that has the abilty to cancel (Greyjoy does it better, when it can). And VB is going to be in most, if not all, Martell decks for the time being. But it is only one tool in their chest, and not even the best tool at that for winning games.

Also VB is useless against Targ, Stark, Greyjoy and Baratheon. (Targ has good attachment control, Greyjoy can just save, Bara doesn't have many characters less than 2 str worth caring about (a flaw... but thats how it is)... and Stark has too many cheap 3+ STR characters to care either).

So... basicly this card hurts lannister and martell, cry me a river.

bloodycelt said:

So by your logic all attachments are useless v targ (because they can just control them!), killing characters in any way is useless v greyjoy (because they can just save!) bara don't ever need weenies to protect their big characters (plus, maester cressan? who's that? ) and all those stark cards with less than 3 strength like guard at riverrun, arya, sansa, old nan and bolton refugee are usless.

Ok.

It's not the most overpowered card ever, but saying it's only good v two decks is pretty laughable tbh. Somehow I doubt every martell player puts 3 copies of it in his deck just to deal with lanni and other martell.

Actually Targ burn screws with GJ saving since uh... they have a single event that can do anything if at all.

As for Bara... 0 cost claim soak and then cards like Royal Entourage, Power of Blood, Loyal Guard, Bodyguard .... VB is chump change.

And Stark, the good arya comes back every time. They have weenies like the hound, jorah mormont, shaggydog, knight of the red fork all of whom are cheap 3+ STR characters... thats not to say the bolton weenie and a few str 2 characters will be in the deck. But that killing sansa with VB means nothing since Stark can field a lot of high str characters without bringing the gold curve up... its also why Targ has a huge problem with Stark (Believe me I know what thats like...)

(Thats not to say Martell has a hard time vs. Stark, quite the opposite its just... other cards like Orphan and Cyvasse that cause issues).

I'm just saying that VB is not a problem for these houses since they have answers for it that are in standard builds anyhow.

I could go either way on this. I used to think it was absolutely broken, but now that I've learned to work around it, it's not all that bad. I don't think it would be out of line for them to add a gold cost or at least make it a limited response, but it's not all that broken as it is now, given its current restrictions. It's just a little annoying.

I agree with you Pateras, when you know how to deal with it, it is not that annoying.

Well, it is a very strong card, but it is not the only one. We can do the same post with Broken Solid for exemple. Will we complain against this card too ? And Shaggydog ? Isn't it annoying ? When you are Martell or lannister, Shaggydog says you: "You can't win an intrigue challenge against me, even without an intrigue icon on the table. Sorry guy, intrigue is for the loosers !".

All those cards are some of the strongest actually. But those cards are the game. Those cards make us deckbuild around or against them. There will always be cards to apply for this job, and that's why a card game is interesting. Just stop asking for ban or errata each time a cards is annoying you guys.

PS: Ill tidings is very efficient against Venomous blades...

Here's a different way of asking the VB question. Has it gotten to the point that unless the character is phenomenal or undercosted, I no longer play with characters printed strength 2 or lower? Has VB become so dominant that it becomes a measuring stick for how I evaluate characters? That was the complaint against Bruno's plot, and for me personally, VB is becoming meta defining in the same way. When I'm looking through new chapter packs, when I see a character printed strength 2 or lower the first 2 things I think of are VB and Targ burn attachments to determine if the character is playable, So I don't think VB has done this on its own, but against a third of the houses, most 2 strength characters will probably not see more than 2 rounds. My question is, why not bring back Bruno's plot if the game is metaing against it anyway because of VB and burn?

Because we already have Threat from the North.

Also, First Snow of Winter hits ALL 2 str or less at once, while VB and Flame Kissed(?) can hit one at a time and Flame Kissed needs assistance for recursion.

Neither of these cards has stopped my from playing 2 STR characters, although Threat from the North did get me to take 1 STR characters out of my Greyjoy deck. My Martell deck still runs Myrcella, The Bastard of Godsgrace, House Messengers, etc. and the Greyjoy deck still has Alannys and plenty of chump 2 STR "discard" characters. Most of these cards are 2 gold or less, and worth it. I do not play games with the expectation that my characters will not die, but that ever character is expendable though I at least hope I can get a few turns out of the main characters.

In general, I think there is some misunderstanding going on here. A card being unbalanced does NOT mean the card is also is overpowered, too powerful, etc. I never said VB was too powerful, nor do I think it is. Cards that are too powerful have a tendency of getting banned (i.e. Jaquen). For an example of unbalanced vs. overpowered consider Wintertime Marauders. I think most people will agree that it's a powerful card, but by no means too powerful. Now let's make it 1 cost instead of 3. Is the card too powerful? No, it does the same exact thing as it did before! Is it unbalanced? Without a doubt, 100% yes.

That's how I look at VB. I like the card a lot. I think the effectS (it's not just kill, there's also recursion) of the card are really good and should stick around in the environment, but it's so unbalanced that it's almost disgusting.

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Here are some cards that people have mentioned that I’d like to address:

Flame-Kissed (I addressed this in the OP, but will do so again) can possibly be better than VB once you get a "flow" going, but notice how this implies you're required to commit other cards to make this one stronger (i.e. more burn, attachment removal, recursion). This extra commitment is a form of balancing as it creates more restrictive building. That is, instead of 3x Flame-Kissed, +57 cards, you need 3x Flame-Kissed, ~10 "helpers," and ~+47 cards.

Let's look at FK on it's own. For 2 gold (or 2 influence) it's a 1 shot kill of 2 STR or less character that does not bear any attachments or the No Attachments keyword. Now consider VB. Minus the optional 2 influence cost, it's the same thing as Flame-Kissed, but can target characters whether or not they have attachments. Then it has the ability to recurse itself and kill again for no additional cost (losing a challenge is not a cost, nor is it a difficult condition to create). Even with have LDC, you still have to pay the cost of Flame-Kissed again and have the added requirement of running 2 cost or higher Targaryen characters. And yes, I do realize that printed 2 STR is not the same as 2 STR, but when you compare how the cards work by their OWN (and I strongly emphasize OWN) devices, it's practically the same thing.

I look at FK and see a powerful card, but with added restrictions and requirements to make it balanced. When I look at VB I see a powerful card that is independently much more versatile, yet virtually has no added restrictions or requirements.

Frozen Solid is a Condtion attachment. It can't target locations or attachments with "No attachments." It can't target limited cards. It costs 1 gold, and can only be used once. It can't be played on setup. You can only play it during your marshalling. It's a powerful card, but it is balanced. Its cost is low, but its use is limited/restricted (what it can affect and when it can affect it) and its vulnerability is high.

Shaggydog must be attached to a House Stark character. It is unique. It requires you to run direwolves (No Attachments, Mil icon only cards) to be truly effective. It only targets attacking characters. It requires a direwolf to kneel. It's non-setup. The cost is low and is vulnerability is arguably low as well, but Shaggydog is not by any means a stand alone card. To be truly effective it demands a lot of other parts, which limits your deck build. It's because of this requirement that Shaggydog is balanced.

The First Snow of Winter does kill ALL 2 STR characters, but ALL is the decisive term. It adds the drawback of killing your 2 STR or lower characters as well. This drawback is what helps balance the card.

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As for specific comments:

kpmccoy21 said:

To be honest, there really isn’t much of a reason to not bring it back if the game is being meta’d in that direction (which I think it is). It may need some tweaking (lose cannot be saved?) if it were reintroduced, but it seems appropriate given the pattern of game design we’ve seen to this point. Do I want to see it (or a variant) back in the game? Not sure. Would I be surprised if it came back? I don’t so.

bloodycelt said:

Did you mean to say very few GOOD character control options? Are you equating character removal with just character control? Either way Martell has a lot of character control cards. In addition to the ones you name there's Orphan of Greenblood, The Prince's Wrath, Blood for Blood, Lost Oasis (indirectly), Ser Arys Oakheart, He Calls it Thinking (cancels saves), Broken Spear, Someone Always Tells, To Be A Viper, etc. Some of these cards may not see much play, but none of these are good? If you're suggesting that Martell's control isn't very cohesive (unlike Lannister), that's certainly arguable. Nevertheless, that doesn't make it's control nonexistent.

bloodycelt said:

See my previous comments on FK.

bloodycelt said:

Martell has actually done pretty well in the tournament scene. I don’t believe a card, especially one that is unbalanced and/or over powered (I’m NOT saying VB is over powered), should serve as a crutch or propellant for a specific House, build, etc to only be removed later on (this excludes card cycling) because the build has “reached” a certain point. I find that to be rather poor game design.

JerusalemJones said:

I fail to see how this has anything to do with the balance of VB or any card for that matter (although I will agree that it does happen). If everyone in my town thought the color red and blue were the same, that doesn't make them the same color. Effectively (to a degree) it does, but not actually. A player’s misuse of a card may effectively "balance" an unbalanced card, but it doesn't actually balance the card. I expect my opponents to play optimally at all times. If they don't, I consider myself lucky. Maybe you're luckier than I am

JerusalemJones said:

I think a bit too much credit is being given to saves. Most 2 STR characters don't have dupes. Also, saves aren't infinite (GJ’s included). One save now, means one less critical save later. Neither are they invulnerable (i.e. location control, cancels).

JerusalemJones said:

See my discussion on FK....Targ is only one House. “Easy” attachment removal also assumes a specific, limited build, just as a GJ “save” deck also calls for a specific, limited build. Lannister can kneel any character pretty easily, but that doesn’t mean we should simply disregard an unbalanced character (i.e. 0-cost 3 STR vanilla tricon) simply because it can knelt. Just because Targ can “easily” control VB (I agree that it certainly has the potential to), doesn’t make VB balanced.

bloodycelt said:

I’ve already commented on Targ and GJ. Bara runs plenty of weenies. Sure, you can make a Bara build without them, but just about every successful Bara build I’ve seen has at least ~30% of it’s character cards at 2 STR or less. Same goes for Stark. Decks overwhelmingly run ~30 to ~50 percent of it’s character cards at 2 STR or less. If you don’t believe me, go look at some decks.

JerusalemJones said:

I don't think any card wins games by itself, but I think a card can certainly make a difference in a game. VB probably has a bigger impact on the metagame than it does the game itself. Many players will try to avoid printed 2 STR or lower cards because of cards like VB, which is maybe why, "it will not win games by itself." Consider how much of an impact VB has on the metagame, realize how easy it is to use the card, and how there is virtually no limitation or drawback. Doing this makes it much easier to see that the card is unbalanced.

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To balance VB it needs one or more of the following:

• less breadth (i.e. can’t target characters with attachments, etc.)
• less autonomy (i.e. must attach to Martell character only, etc.)
• higher cost (i.e. s1, kneel 1 influence, pay 1 gold, etc.)
• more drawback (i.e. Limited Response, etc.)
• more vulnerability (i.e. Condition, cancelable kill, etc.)
• less effects (i.e. no recursion, etc.)

Removing effects should be considered last, if at all. The effects really aren’t the problem. In my opinion, higher cost would probably suffice. Perhaps less autonomy as well. If going for the cost route, s1 should be considered. If that's too harsh, perhaps you should have to pay 1 gold (or kneel 1 influence?) to return it to the Shadows after having lost a challenge.

you do realize that this card had basically existed before, right?

stolen crossbow, anyone?

martell attachment

cost 2

non-unique

weapon.

Challenges: kneel attached character to choose an attacking character. if that character is str 2 or lower, kill it. otherwise remove it from the challenge.

The Nick-ler said:

Again...I'm discussing BALANCE! Stolen Crossbow is nowhere near as close to being the same as VB (in regard to balance). It cancelable (VB's kill isn't). It only works during Challenges. It has a much higher cost as you must kneel the attachment and the attached character. It only targets attacking characters so the attacker can anticipate/control it's effect. It's more vulnerable to attachment control as it is always in play. Stolen Crossbow is by far much more balanced than VB.

I'm OK with it. Its cheap and repeatable small character control. I'd rather have this around than seeing decks built with 20+ small character swarms (a direction we were kind of heading in for a while). I hope this stays in the environment as printed.

FATMOUSE said:

Here's my thing. It may be unbalanced, but it is not overpowered. So all this discussion is not passing my "so what?" test.

There are drawbacks and limitations to the card. You have to play Martell or the Shadow Agenda. With the Shadow Agenda, it becomes "s1" and Martell is not tearing up the scene in a charge headed by VB. So, if the facts are that the card itself is unbalanced but not over-powered...so what?

As Stag mentioned, it gives people pause when loading their decks with 2STR characters. Is that really a bad thing? It's no worse than Threat from the North for 1 STR characters...or House Targaryen with all their burn (a Targ deck can pretty much kill a 2-STR character at will far more readily that Martell with VB can). And even there, people can (and do) plan for it in their "if I face a Martell deck, I'll need something that..." considerations. That's what makes the game a "living" card game. You have to constantly think about how you're going to play situations that might arise. And that means there have to be cards that make situations arise. VB leverages the metagame, but ultimately, that's probably a good thing!

FFG has long shown a willingness to not mess with "unbalanced" cards until it can be shown that they unbalance the environment or metagame as a whole. Everything that has been said about VB has yet to convince me that it is a wide-spread, unbalancing force on the game as a whole, so again...so what? Why are we calling for errata - whether to balance or to nerf - something that, while annoying in individual games, doesn't really change much in the environment?

I am on both sides here - I really think it is overpowered as printed and it was the ONLY reason I played Martell at Worlds this year.

Unlike some posters here, I think it is good against all houses - repeatable kill is just good...vs. Targ, Bara...whoever. Even if Targ zaps it, it usually got 1 or two uses, plus gave someone on your side of the board some protection (by having an attachment, which USED to protect vs. burn) and Targ not zapping your Bodyguard or whatever.

Also, it is one of those cards that is an NPE for newer players. I recently tried to get an older player back in the game, and this card almost single-handedly ruined my cause. It is pretty silly at times (especially the printed strength thing...although I see both sides of that argument to be sure).

That all being said:

1. As I said, I played Worlds Martell (Wildlings) based solely on this card. But you know what? I wish I would have played Lanni based solely one one card (Golden Tooth Mines). I guess the moral is that every house has some overpowered cards.

2. It was less useful than I thought. I run plot control as well, and usually didn't get a ton of uses out of Blade. But, it was still useful.

In hindsight, it probably should have had a 1 cost to bring out so people are not using it a ton in the same turn, or pre-plot, or any of that jank. But, overall - I think very few games were won/lost based on this card, and that means something I assume. Plus, I know I wouldn't play it at all with a one cost to bring out...unluckily there are a lot of shadow cards like that.

Besides... Val is much more game breaking than this card. (And I dont think she should be banned either).