Narrow Escape isn't really a card with a powerful effect and a built in cancel, it's a card with 2 powerful effects and your opponent gets to choose how they get the shaft.

EDIT: basically, if you don't understand the strength of card advantage,

You know, that's a great point, hklown. Back in Odyssey era MtG there were a series of Red cards that essentially gave your opponent options of a similar nature that I loved. Things like Browbeat- Draw 3 cards unless your opponent has Browbeat deal 5 damage to them. Since you only start the game with 20 life, that's 1/4 of it gone in an instant or massive card advantage- in AGoT terms: draw 3 cards unless an opponent chooses you to gain 4 power on your House card." Narrow Escape really should be looked at in this sort of light. You can't ever really determine which option your opponent will choose (unless they have no cards in hand and thus no choice) so you have to make the assumption that they will always choose whichever option is least beneficial to you.

So, what should a "balanced" anti-reset look like? If Narrow Escape is too powerful for LCG, what is balanced for LCG? If I just had my board wiped by Stark Siege, Targ burn or Valar, do I just grab my ankles and hope for lube?

It seems to me that the environment is evolving away from resets and heavy control and making rush decks more viable, and control players don't like it.

~Good thing MtG doesn't have a history of bannings and cards that weren't playtested properly. We should definitely model after them.

hklown said:

1) at least it gives me the choice. if there was kneel card that said "have the opponent choose and kneel a character he controls" it would never get run.

2) card advantage can also be measured by board position. in the above examples the board position was much more important then the cards in my hand.

3) narrow escape also gets approached from the worst case perspective. If i have a lot of cards in my hand and I just killed either a good character or a lot of my opponents characters then I'm not feeling bad for myself if I have to discard my hand or let the guy live to keep the hand. obviously there are more then a lot of things going right for me in the game that will be overcame despite narrow escape.

4) to piggyback on kpmccoy. One of the hardest things about control is that if you do start overcoming it on the board its too easy for them to flip a reset (or 3) from the plot deck to just blindly reestablish board control. How come this is an acceptable play style for the forum community at large but something that counters isn't?

Lars said:

I can think of two off hand that I see quite a lot of. Game of Cyvasse and Alannys Greyjoy.

Kennon said:

~Game of Cyvasse and Alannys Greyjoy: Slottable into every deck like Narrow Escape, and just as powerful!

Also, addressing Lars' points:

1) "at least it gives me a choice" doesn't justify the huge power level of the 2 effects. If your opponent just goes around playing cards in his hand whenever he has the legal chance to, maybe- but if he's actively trying to maximize the effects of NE, it's incredibly powerful.

2) Besides the fact that your examples are completely anecdotal, you had discarded 2 *endless* cards for NE! That's not really indicative of an average gameplay situation.*

3) If you have a great field of characters and you give up card advantage, what happens when all of a sudden you have no characters and no cards in hand because your opponent reset?

4) Resets don't "blindly re-establish board control"- at least, not until we see a reset (may we never) that says "Kill all opponent's characters". They *level* the playing field. Most resets also have a fairly high cost or skill ceiling- valar puts you in a crappy spot the turn you play it, bleeds has a huge resource requirement, etc... If anything, Narrow Escape is the braindead card you describe, not the current resets in the environment.

Narrow Escapes effects are just too good, and they really lower the quality of upper level play, ergo the need for a ban. I'd like to see someone refute FATMOUSE's point on that matter, because quite frankly, I don't think you can.

*EDIT: It was pointed out to me that you can't recurse a FB you discard... I AM THE DUMB ONE

kpmccoy21 said:

Honestly, if Narrow Escape were "House Baratheon and Stark only," I'd think it was a great card.

Kennon said:

the power of those cards isn't the choic (and if you want to avoid the kneel choose a kneeling character) its what they do after the kneel. i could maybe see if narrow escape was more like " choose an opponent, that player discards his hand, if he discard less cards then characters that were killed or discarded this phase, return all those characters to play." then i could see it being the type of power card it seems to be described as.

Twn2dn said:

so the problem isn't the card, but the powerlevel that it gains with the top two houses right now to help keep them on top? in that case they need to stop printing strong neutral cards...or better yet just cards for the other 5 houses.

hklown said:

1) ok so a player maximizes a card's effect and its bad thing....we need to ban support of harlaw from melee then....also, if someone maximixes NE every time then kudos to them. more often then if you wait around for ne to be maximized then your going to be foregoing a lot of other cards you could have drawn instead of NE.

2) give me an example that isn't anecdotal....we can either talk about theory which is never substantiated and therefore pointless for ban purposes or we can show examples where NE, while being viewed as an incridible powerful card eiher directly affects or has no outcome on the final outcome of the game. btw those 2 endless cards stopped becoming edless when i discarded them....it could be argued that i discarded more then 2 cards per each forever burning.

3) thankfully I had a save on the important character and it wasn't about the characters i had on the board...but about keeping his characters off the board....a future reset might have been a problem...but it would have been one for him too.

4) what game have you played lately that resets level anything....they either keep the winning person winning or buy the loser a turn or two.

Lars said:

Yeah, Valar (and even a well-timed Wildfire Assault) are easily game winning.

Twn2dn said:

QFT - wholly agreed. Tha only problems I have with NE are out of Martell - and quite frankly there are many more egrgeious problems wiht that House than just NE. Its why i don't complain about NE that much - though i do recognize its power with Martell summer. And i agree with Lars - too mny worst case scenarios here. i have been happy to chuck one or two cards to cancel NE. That's a perfect use fo "card advantage" using cards as a resource to fuel an effect. If I jad to discard five or six - yeah: that might suck. playing the Houses I do, it really hasn't been an issue.

And it takes way more skill to play Valar with NE around than it used to.

Stag Lord said:

I'm going to bite, how does it take more skill to tell if your opponent is going to play a free event that they're running 3x of in their deck that there's really no reason for them not to play when you valar?

EDIT: I guess you have to make sure you have at least one card in hand now when you valar, laff laff laff

hklown said:

I can think of situations where NE adds some extra considerations to when you Valar, but for the most part, I wouldn't say it adds an extra element of skill.

If NE doesn't require much skill then Valar requires even less. I don't understand how people can have a problem with NE and not have a problem with Valar.

You DO have to anticipate when to play the event! Of curse if you have character advantage and your oppoennt Valars its an obvious play to NE. I fully concede your best case argument argument is tough to fight against. But in the real world that i live in, there are many times when you are not sure if you will play NE at a given point. Your opponent's hand may be low enough to cancel it, you may be contemplating it after a brutal high claim challenge phase - BUT you may have a reset of your own in hand, you may have lost decent characters but have enough in hand to suck it up, get your opponent to commit and play out your better hand - now protected by NE: There are plenty of examples.

Playing an event and getting the timing right given all the things that can interact with your decision is much trickier than flipping Valar - 7 times out of ten. (I do concede Valar takes soem skill to play - but I still hate it and think its way too easy of a reset).

I really wish the anti NE posters would stop setting up these straw men, extreme examples and use that to argue that NE is a problem. Yes: IF I ahve six acrds in ahnd and I lose five characters to Valar I am bined. Conceded. Yes: IF I ahve ten guys and you have two and you Valar - NE is an obvious counter. But in actual play - its a lot trickier than this.

My ONLY issue with this event was the ability to play it twice in a turn. With that fixed i really think its fine adn encourage all players to be creative and proactive and find ways in the environment to deal with it.

After reading these recent arguments, I am actually becoming more convinced that thsi is just a case of control players caomplaining again that the game is getting more aggressive. After nine years of pretty much control dominance - and i don't have much sympathy for your case.

Darksbane said:

Well said, ser. The crux of my argument, in fact.

Stag Lord said:

Valar Morghulis (Event)

"Any Phase: Kill all characters in play. Any play may discard his or her hand of 1 card to cancel this effect."

I admit, if you run 3X of these, using it is pretty skilless. Even 1x. Just look at the card. It's zero cost and you can kill everyone in play, or you get your opponent to to have no cards in hand. Talk about a win-win! This card is ridiculous! Why isn't it banned?

Wait...hold on...OHHHHHHH....Sorry about that. Apparently I got the card confused, stupid me! Here's what it really looks like:

Valar Morghulis (Plot)

2-0-0

Limit 1 per plot deck

When revealed, kill all characters in play.

So you sacrifice room in your plot deck; meaning you have 1 less marshall and/or challenge friendly plot, to kill all characters in play. The card is really, really good, but it's appropriately balanced. Not to mention, it can (typically) only happen in the plot phase; letting players put out more characters in the Marshalling phase. I would say the same thing about Bleeds. It's very powerful, but appropriately costed and can only be played during Dominance.

In fact, every removal card in this game is appropriately costed and balanced, with the exception of Venomous Blade.

Narrow Escape, an anti-removal card, suggests that it's removal counterparts aren't balanced when in fact they are. If Valar was 2-5-2 and Bleeds read just like Narrow Escape did fine you have a very good argument for Narrow Escape being around, but that's not the case. Even if it were, I would still argue that those cards should be appropriately costed and balanced.

Also, I don't believe there shouldn't be counters to Valar and such; in fact I would love to see counters, but they need to be balanced. Outfox is an awesome counter to Valar and I would have loved to have seen that make a comeback instead of NE. I would also love to see more in-House cancel to be able to cancel effects like Red Vengeance during a military challenge or Westeros Bleeds in Dominance. I also think it would be really cool if Baratheon got more accessibility to the dead pile by being able to play/put into play characters from it like it was able to in CCG.

I'm not complaining about NE simply because "THIS STUPID WHY STUPID EXIST" (even though it is a stupid card ). I'm complaining because there are much better ways (read what I wrote above) for the designers to achieve the same impact on the metagame they are trying to achieve with Narrow Escape. That and because the card is literally broken and has way more utility than most people have ever imagined.

Darksbane said:

People may have a problem with NE because:

Valar is needed to avoid 50+ characters on table and is part of the game

Valar is needed to avoid/equal "lucky setup win"

Valar has "built in" negative side already

Saves and cards like Retreat often become worse option than NE

Draw houses has advantage (they can better draw NE and they can hold NE longer)

Another card against military claim (Uneasy Truce, Lineage and Legacy, soon Muster the Realm!, Burning on the sand)

You can have 3 x NE and only 1 Valar (see military claim)

If you don't cancel, character advantage can become ridiculous e.g. out from Stark

If you have no cards you can't cancel NE

Losing your hand to cancel often means game over - either way you lose = NPE

NE is free, powerful and versatile

NE as autoinclude = boring

NE is first and only so powerful neutral event in the game

I may be wrong, it's just some thoughts about NE. The main reason: I think NE rewards more not a better player, but more lucky player (doesn't matter if you play control or aggro or whatever). I know it's a card game and it's luck dependend, but NE makes huge difference if you draw it.

FATMOUSE said:

"Sacrificing" room in a Plot deck to kill everything in play is no sacrifice at all. Given the very structure of the game there is no need to run a Plot deck consissting solely of gold producing "positive" Plots - you are much better off playing Plots that control your opponent and relying on your draw deck to furtehr your own strategy. So i reject that Valar is "balanced" becuase there are better Plot options that you give up to run 1 2-0-0. Tehre is no better or more popular Plot in the game. period. If it were banned tomorrow, the outcry would be tremendous - it is the ultimate crutch and I am covninced that msot of this NE hate is becuase ti gimps this Plot.

Nontheless - i will address your main argument in ragards to the balance of NE. Its really not fair to compare a Plot and an even in that the controlling player always can decide when to flip the plot - making it much more reliable than anything in your draw deck. Period. Given how dominant this Plot is, how its is run in such a high percentage of all decks - I truly feel NE serves as an adequate counter and creates a more interesting metagame.

You can only play it once per phase now. Its got a built in counter - which (again) is situational as to its effectiveness - but at least is there. (One or tow carsd is well worth the cacnel if you need to get your reset through).

some of us think its balanced - some of us don't. at the very least, i think its clear that there is not consensus on this card. I am tired of arguing this - their are issues in the metagme, but NE isn't a big one. More event cacnel is desirable not just becuase of this card, but if it scales NE backl a little and people stop complaining about it - that will be all to the good at this point. I can't argue the point any longer. i'm a fan of the card and it suits my playstyle and taste.

YMMV.

Stag Lord said:

Now, Hklown, Fatmouse, and I may actually disagree here, so I don't want to speak for them. I think NE has a fantastic effect that has a great built-in cancel. The problem is that it is available to *every* house as a 3x neutral event. So rather than filling holes and giving aggro builds more options, this card has become a near auto-include that more often widens the disparity between aggro and control (at least in my opinion).

Good control builds have more than one way to control a player's board. Valar is very strong, but over reliance on a plot-based effect is always a bad idea, and even more because of Valar's downside (low-gold and no claim make it hard to setup or "come back"). In contrast, pseudo-aggro and combo builds often rely heavily on very few forms of control. In the games I've seen, it's much more common that Narrow Escape actually plays to the control-player's advantage...a late Valar that might help the aggro player obtain the last couple of power to win now just sets that player further behind. Adding more cancel to the environment might help, but I doubt it's going to make a big difference when one of my deck's strengths is making sure you have no hand.

@Stag: You're right to assume that I'm acting out of self interest. Martell is more popular these days, and I find this card incredibly annoying in a house that already has card advantage and tons of tricks. (I agree that Burning should go too, but that's a separate issue. In any case, Martell would be just fine without either.) All this coming from a Martell player has got to count for something

My shots weren't really aimed at you twn2dn. We agree more than we disagree - our main contention is whtehr or not its neutral status is a problem - i don't think it is - but if they made it Baratheon and Stark only (like you suggested up thread a ways) i woudln't complain.

And I agree - its ugly out of Martell,, but a lot is ugly out of that house at the moment. when I say cancel, i am thinking of things like QoT and location based cancel - much mroe so than Paper Shield.

Twn2dn said:

I think the skill only enters play when you are maximizing the card's utility (using it for anything other than anti-Valar, anti-MIL claim, anti-character removal), but I think most people here haven't thought of or seen that kind of utility in action. I know Dobbler has, which is why he thinks it's too good and needs ban/errata. I also think because of that utility it is waaaay too good and actually does more for control than aggro, widening the gap between the two as you mention. To put it more simply: NE lets aggro climb up one-rung up the ladder, but let's control climb two-rungs (maybe even three).

But that's the danger of having powerful, neutral cards. Cards like BotS are really stupid and shouldn't exist, but imagine how dumb it would be if it wasn't House Martel only. That's kind of how I see NE.

I don't think it fits Stark too well; although I can see the argument for NE being part of aggro Houses. I really like Stark search and would rather see that mechanic see continued support for them. I do think something similar to NE could be really good for Bara though. In CCG, Bara had easier and more access to it's dead pile and this created psuedo-card advantage that made up for a lack of draw. I don't see why this can't be done again in LCG.

As for Bara, I don't know how I'd feel NE as-is. I'd definitely object to it much less than it being neutral, but I think it might still have too much utility being zero-cost, and having it's internal cancel being an opponent discarding his or her entire hand (just doesn't feel very "Bara" if you ask me). I'd probably feel much better about "discard your hand...(cannot be canceled)" or something like that; I'd really have to think about it and then see it in action a few times.

In general, I'm all for characters coming back from dead and discard piles, I just don't like everyone being able to do it; I think it's ultimately bad for the game, in the same way if every House had equal access to GJ saves, Targ burn, Martell revenge, Stark defense, etc.

Geez, I'm busy with work for a few weeks and you guys go and start fun arguments without me... would need to read through all the arguments in more detail to comment on this further, but quickly skimming through made me notice that there's another option of an errata that no-one seemed to be talking about:

Just change the 'Limit 1 per phase' to either 'Limit 1 per game' or 'Limit 1 per deck'. Either option will curb down it's overall effect on the environment, without removing it entirely and make it less of an issue. Besides, the card has already been errata'd a few times, so once more shouldn't hurt.

The Martell/Summer build that really breaks NE hasn't made it to our meta yet. What about that build makes NE broken and in need of banning? Is it the Open Market? Is it something else?

I understand the using of Narrow Escape as Hand Advantage, but that still doesn't break the card to me. What other ways besides returning standing characters for challenges/dominance do you and Greg see that requires NE to be banned or errataed?

As to Auto-includes and House specific themes. Would I like to see House specific themes developed? ABSOLUTELY! Do I want every power neutral banned til it happens? NO! IF it combos bad with Open Market, ban the market. How many decks were running Open Market consistently in the last 3 years since it has been released? ~Will and Greg's Recurring Army deck hasn't dominated the environment enough to ban NE.

Where is your line on power cards? Venomous blade, Val, and Narrow Escape are bad- PotS Red Viper, Shadows Varys, Arys Oakheart aren't. Varys and Arys consistently discard 3 gold characters making it 3 gold for a 3 strength bicon with a keyword and character removal. Thatt's a 6 gold swing for 3 gold! Seems undercosted to me. The Viper is unique in his Immunity and Power grab combination. Imagine Beric conditionally not kneeling for 1 gold more. Bad for the game? What about Blackfish? 2 really good abilities(power grab and hand advantage) for the same price as Core Set Stannis. Really? Or are overpowered cards ok as long as they have a House affiliation? It all seems rather arbitrary where you draw your lines.

I appreciate your desire for house identity and house diversity, but that is a personal vision, not necessarily an AGOT CCG or LCG vision. As long as the game has been around, there have been strong neutral cards(often events) that defined the environment. Looks like NE is seeing it's time in the sun.

My favorite use of Narrow Escape right now is using an Orphan of the Greenblood, Dornish Paramour and House Dayne Skirmisher by discarding/killing them, then playing NE to bring them back to play and doing it all over again, if not this turn, then next. Where Open Market factors is the ability to get NE from the discard pile and do it all over again next turn. Pyre of the False God's does the same thing. Heck, I probably need a rules clarification to see how it interacts with Loyal Guards and Bara Bannerman that were not in play as characters, but were in play in other ways as attachments and duplicates.

I've talked to Will about the recurring Army deck, and as fun as it is, the fact that it is dependent on a singular event (See Who is Stronger) means it will likely not be a top tier deck. That deck wasn't intended to abuse NE as much as it was intended to abuse SWiS.

My biggest problem with the card is that I feel like nearly every deck should run 3x of it. The only ones that shouldn't are heavy CBK decks or heavy saves decks, and I could probably make an argument that heavy saves decks still should.