ASoIaFfan said:

I rarely see them played.

Stag Lord said:

And that's the difference: the auto-win events are a "more efficient" way to do something that the House is question largely doesn't need a more efficient way to do. The challenge cancel - particularly since it is not limited to a challenge type - may as well just be "you opponent gets to make one less challenge, of your choice, this phase." That's a huge difference in practical use and outcome. The two really are different animals.

ktom said:

I see BotS as sorta like a one-shot Toll Gate. Granted, Toll Gate can only remove non-uniques from a challenge, but it's still potentially a challenge cancel, and it's reusable. BotS doesn't remove from the challenge, so I'm referring to the challenge cancel aspect. I don't see BotS as "overpowered". At most, unless someone is abusing it via Open Market or some other way, a person is only going to be able to play three of them in a game.

I use "True Power" in my Targ deck, mostly due to the nasty stuff Bara can do if they win a power challenge against me. It's a life-saver. I don't use "Misinformation" for the reason ktom suggests (easy enough to win intrigue with Lanni anyway). I like "True Power" the most when the Bara player reveals their Fury and I absolutely *need* to win that power challenge.

I agree they are different in use and outcome. I asked the question because they share the same cost (no cost). One is a challenge cancel while the other is a challenge win. Both can be extremely useful in a game. I don't see either as overpowered but I agree with those who would rather see challenges won or lost via the interactions of characters and locations in play.

Good discussion. Thanks for sharing the thoughts.

Keep in mind that although BotS is "one-shot", it's not telegraphed (which is a huuuuuge advantage) and does not stand the participating characters. That combined with the aforementioned fact that Toll Gate does not remove uniques from challenges makes BotS a bit better IMO. Also, in comparison to the "auto-win" events, BotS is much more versatile, because it does not have a challenge type restriction.

Great use of True Power though!

Yeah - that is a sweet application of True Power. Very creative, ASoIaFfan. Nice.

I use True Power in my Targ deck in conjunction with Seductive Promise as well as to stimey Baratheon's Fury Plot (which despite Errata is STILL one of the best plot of the cycle I think).

Stag Lord said:

I don't have a problem with powerful cards; in fact, I love them. Kp's brought up that point before, but as I explained then my qualm isn't with power level, but with balance. When a powerful card is unbalanced it becomes "overpowered" and from a design perspective, you either have a game where all the cards are balanced and powerful (when I say powerful I don't mean every card should be TRV powerful; I'm referring to the appropriate power level given its cost) or where all the cards are unbalanced and (thus) overpowered (and thus the game is actually balanced).

Unfortunately, LCG has had the habit of mixing both, which allows for exploitation and creates a less interesting metagame environment (in my opinion). It certainly makes it more predictable and allows for the emergence of dominant deck types to appear. I personally find that to be boring and I think it's very uninviting for newer or more casual players trying to enter the competitive scene.

In general LCG is just different from CCG. It didn't have to be, but FFG decided to mainly market the game to a much more casual player base, and we saw a huge overall drop in power level and resources. Why the latter? I really don't know (I suspect the issue of not expecting the game to become a full-fledged LCG to be part of it), but I think it hurt the game a lot. In the process of trying to increase the power level of the game to what it once was we've generally had an environment where specific Houses/kind of builds are simply better than the rest and where some Houses/kinds of builds are worse than the rest. It's better than it use to be, but there's still quite of bit of work to be done.

Darksbane said:

In short, I think Ned and Shagga or ok with the idea of sitting down at a table, seeing a House card, Agenda, few cards from the flop, etc. and saying to himself, "Ok, I'm going to have to adapt and play this game differently from my last match in order to win." They are unhappy when they sit down and realize they are (most likely) going to lose because they didn't bring the right cards or deck archetype to the table.

Penfold said:

As for True Power and cards like Seductive Promise, Superior Claim, etc. you have to win the challenge by 4 or more STR to trigger their effects, which means you'll never be able to use the two in conjunction with one another (meaning in the same challenge). I'm not sure if that's what you were trying say (or if you were just saying you like Seductive Promise against Bara in addition to True Power), but you mentioned both together, so I thought I'd clarify.

And yeah, Fury of the Stag is indeed pretty solid.

FATMOUSE said:

EDIT^^

What's your defintion of "balanced" then? Not a card v card example,: but a simple explanation of your standard? And wouldn't it be subjective?

*shrug* There've been many times that I've gone to play Burning on the Sands to save myself from this challenge or that, and then kicked myself because I couldn't trigger a large variety of Martell effects, from returning Venomous Blade to shadows, to claiming power for Taste for Blood, to standing vengeful characters. It often feels like there is a very real trade off to me.

Stag Lord said:

The means of achieving balance is not so much my standard than it is by going with the already defined standards of the game. Those standards are defined by resources, rules, and existing cards. I don't want to really focus too much on resources and rules, but I think you would agree that if all the values on resource cards were, let's say, doubled or halved, the game would drastically change. The same would happen if the rules were changed (i.e. OOH penalty is reduced to 1, House X only is dropped, no limit on cards in your plot deck, 1x limit of card title in a draw deck, etc.). You can keep just about the entire card pool the same, but just changing some rules or modifying some resources would completely alter the balance of the card pool.

So what do designers do? They design the game around those rules and available resources, and will assign cards costs appropriate to their power level. Good design follows the mantra of the higher the power level, the higher the cost; otherwise, what's the purpose of having a cost system? Now setting the standards for what cost do you assign for a particular power level is somewhat arbitrary. That is, how powerful should a 2 gold location look like? But once you define that standard it's pretty fixed and isn't too difficult to follow*. All you have to do is design/balance new cards relative to the already existing cards. If you don't, you run the risk of 1) the card not seeing play because it is overpriced/unpowered relative to other cards of similar cost or power level 2) the card gets abused and is exploited because it's under-costed/overpowered relative to other cards in its cost range and power level.

1) sadly happens with a lot of cards 2) has happened with only some cards, but the impact is definitely felt. It's not that there is anything intrinsically bad about those cards, but relative to the standards applied to other cards they are too good or not good enough. An example, is Venomous Blade. The card is simply much better than just about all the other 2 cost attachments in the game. If the designers wanted to, they could have said, "Well, this what 2-cost attachments are going to look like from now on," but they didn't. They continued applying the same, regular standards to basically all future attachments, which left the card under-costed and overpowered. Power creep can be used to balance a card pool, but in this instance it wasn't. Instead the designers created and put it on a restricted list, which does help balance it. I don't know if it completely balances it, but it definitely helps. I know some people have mentioned that TLS should be on the restricted list, but it's possible TLS might just be paving the way for stronger 3 cost (and ultimately 4, 5 cost) characters. If we start seeing more characters designed to the standards of TLS he'll become more balanced as the card pool grows.

TL;DR Basically balance comes down to keeping the power level and costs of cards consistent and relative to one another. You can have a game with TONS of uber powerful cards, and a game where most of the cards are really weak. The game with uber powerful cards can be balanced, while the game with really weak cards can be unbalanced. It simply comes down to creating a system of standards for balance/power level within the game. That creation process may be arbitrary and subjective, but once they are set, there is an objective way (don't confuse objective with "one") of following it. As long as the same system of standards is applied to every card, you will have a balanced game. Most card games have rotation when they wish to apply a new system of standards. LCG doesn't have rotation and has a slower system of introducing cards, which is why something does have to be done when problems arise. Hopefully the new restricted list and spot ban/errata will suffice.

*Believe it or not, the 0 cost cards of the game actually have the greatest influence on setting the standard for the power level of all the higher cost cards in the game; especially the more limited the resource pool is. It's why I personally think the Refugees were/are ultimately bad for the game. They were created because the resource curve was so low (it dropped big time from CCG), but I believe the designers would have been better off creating a higher resource curve and avoid basing character design on a bunch of free-cost, nobody, weenies. A higher resource curve provides more flexibility in design and balance than 0-cost weenie characters.

Back to the original question, I would now say after it has been on the restricted list for a while and still causing a problem.