kpmccoy21 said:
The conversation about power creep was interesting, but somewhat ironic. Alec's Lannister kneel deck that won GenCon last year was not based on power creep, but rather the overpowered cards Lannister has had since the beginning of LCG. And Will stated that he stopped playing Lannister shadow kneel because he was bored, not because the environment had evolved to make the deck obselete. Lannister hasn't gotten a "power card" since Alchemist's Guild Hall and has since seen it errata'ed. No one I know has moved Lannister out of the top 2 in Joust rankings. I would argue that instead of "power creep", we are seeing other Houses get the level of card synergy Lannister has always enjoyed in LCG. So now that theoretically there are 4 competetive houses/builds in the environment there must be power creep so we need to look for rotation and/or selective bannings. ~Maybe someday Targ and Greyjoy will see power creep too so they can become competetive in Joust.
I also find it interesting that we are worried about the NPE factor of a first turn win, but completely ignore the NPE factor of playing out a game for 20 minutes that was decided by plot 3, but the heavy control deck need another 4-6 plots to get to 15 power. ~Nothing is near as fun as playing 5 plots, knowing you can't win, but also knowing your opponent can't win any faster.
The only formats that will matter in the competetive environment is whatever formats FFG includes in the overall World Championships at GenCon. Everything else will be ignored by the community.
On things like Lanni, I partially agree. While the basic are pretty much the same (mainly Castellean, to a lesser extent some others), that deck still can put in Clansmen or any 'new shiny good-on-its-own character' to get stronger. Hyper-kneel (like income and draw) are very good themes, and are hard to improve and beat. But the point stands that either they keep getting better, or people will stop buying chapter packs just to get cards they won't use.
I totally agree on formats. Nothing has been popular except what goes into points for the Championship. And to be honest, if Multi didn't give points, it would be very sparcely placed as well. MOST players (not all) are playing this game competatively to play 1v1 Joust and want the 'standard' rules, whatever they are. Looking at games like MTG where there are various formats, usually the ones that have rotation are the most popular (no one REALLY likes to play type 1 - classic in aGoT - or 1.5 - classic restricted - that much in Magic, at least when I owned a gaming store).