Kennon said:

Not so much. As twn2dn pbserved - these are adjustments we all made over a year ago and are just routine by now. All decks run a swarm motif with very few mid range chaarcters ro effects. you need to get off a four or five acrd flop - and Fear makes it so. as I said above - used to be, you could get away with a three card drop, given enough defnses in ahdn for a good Marshall and some challenge phase activity.

Fear locks you down adn forces the fast setup. Less thinking, way less choices.

it may fit ring's play style - but it doesn't fit everyone's and it is clearly restriictng options.

For a year now.....

Yeah, I agree with Stag. I'm not saying that Fear can't somehow be used in a way that makes it very interesting. In fact, it might have been a great effect to go on a City or traited plot...it's a normal 2-claim plot, but the effect kicks in if 2 or more city plots are in used pile? As played around here though, it's very common as a round-1 plot.

I may get cut off...waiting on someone and may have to leave at any moment, so let me just say that Fear has all kinds of distorting effects. (I'm going to try to hit on a couple of those, but if my post ends part-way through, I'll come back to it when I have a chance.)

First, EVERY halfway decent player considers how the setup and round 1 will go. So saying that because Fear causes you to rethink your setup is the same as saying Fear is a card that *demands* more thinking is flawed logic; these are two completely different things. Kennon, if what you're saying is true, then Venomous Blades, Flame-Kissed, and Threat are *inherently* more thought-provoking or strategy intensive than other cards. Maybe you think that's true, but I certainly don't. Such cards don't cause me to think more; in fact, they cause me to think less because they are so prevalent, I have to avoid cards that I might otherwise consider. Note here that t here is a slight but important difference between more thought and teching against a particular card. Even if I were to grant that this does somehow make Fear (and those other cards) more interesting/dynamic during deck building, however, it certainly DOES NOT make the gameplay more interesting dynamic, because 70% of the thought has happened before the game already begins.

In other words, if Fear resulted in greater deck building creativity, I would say "wow, deck building is suddenly more important, even if in-game decisions are less strategic, I guess that's worth it!" The truth is though that Fear does the opposite.

Second, are there ways around Fear? Yes, of course there are. Are there effective ways around Fear that keep the rest of your deck competitive? Yes, but many fewer. I don't consider Forgotten Plans or the 4/4/1 among these for every deck, though in the right build (for example, an Intrigue Gambit-reliant build for Forgotten Plans, or the 4/4/1 in the Bara deck, etc.) they can be pretty awesome. So assuming Fear is run out of 70% of tourney-grade non-Bara decks, and only ~20% of decks have solutions that don't reduce overall competitiveness, we're still talking about Fear disrupting more than 50% of games. And before people say "but AGOT cards are supposed to be powerful/disruptive," it's also important to remember *how* exactly Fear in particular disrupts the game...by essentially restricting the ability for players to play the game. Fear isn't like Magic The Gathering's "blue control" decks that counter things; it's much worse, since you don't even have a chance to play cards.

On the point about how Fear "rewards" certain deck types, I just don't agree with that argument. I don't think there are a lot of uber-powerful deck types demolishing everything everything in the environment these days. There's basically Martell and, much less common these days, Lanni. The fact that such a powerful neutral effect exists essentially hurts other tier-2 control builds from appearing (I think), since only those uber competitive lists can beat Fear. In fact, in Martell and Lanni's case, they run Fear extremely effectively on their own. In short, if the problem is the alleged over-abundance of control, then maybe we should take a look at that problem separately, rather than throwing in another "anti" card that distorts the environment.

That's all I have for now (but other arguments come to mind)...will have to follow up later.

I use KotHH out of Stark with Tully using a turn 1 FP works pretty well.
If they fear, its either just a 2 gold claim 2 and with cheap weenies, theres plenty of catch up space.

Kennon said:

That's interesting phrasing... I would assume that "offensively" is playing for the win (to get the power) and defensively is using it to kill an opponent's character. Although, I suppose that counts as offensive when targeting board control.

Ah, you caught me there. I should likely have been speaking in context of the game as a whole. I was using offensively in the manner of harming an individual character, but your more thorough analysis makes infinitely more sense.

Mathias Fricot said:

I don't think the point is that there are no decks that can minimize the impact of first turn FoW. I think the point is that you are forced to play only those deck types that can counter first turn FoW and the other deck types that cannot counter first turn FoW never see play at tournaments in the NY meta.

Completely agree.

The new restricted list I think changes things a little now don't you?

~Yeah, everyone but Bara will run Fear of Winter and Bara will always choose the Fury. 3 cheers for such a fantastic solution.

kpmccoy21 said:

I'll take the Castellans 9 times out of 8 over FoW

but ya, FoW in Bara rush is my biggest fear when I see a 6 card setup with all those weenies

Hmm, I'll take Fury in my Targ KotHH deck without thinking twice. Only because I dont like Val in a burn deck...

In 80-90% of decks, Fury will be replaced by Either Song of Summer or Take them by Surprise, and in 6 months from now people will be griping because they see those plots in every deck, yada, yada, yada. Hell, I see Take in alot of Plot decks now along with the Fury plot. It will just get more prevalent. Maybe they will get their place on the Restricted List next to the Fury's in a year or so.

kpmccoy21 said:

This will not be the case for me. I think Taken will only replace it if I am using KotHH or running multiple copies of Bay of Ice. I'm not willing to take the chance of losing my hand.

As for Song of Summer, it is obviously a great plot stat-wise. But in all four of my decks where I have removed Fury so far, I have not replaced it with Song of Summer in any of them.

can't wait to "take them by surprise" to get to be a common choice, I love to play Ahed of the Tides in every gj deck

Dobbler said:

In how many of those decks were you running Fury for the gold?

kpmccoy21 said:

I almost NEVER run a plot solely for the Gold. Most people who know my deck building style well know that I often build my plot deck before my draw deck. In cases like those, the entirety of the plot (Gold, Initiative, Claim, ability, trait) are all factored into the inclusion.

Dobbler, somehow, I still think that if you subbed out the Furies in each of those decks and replaced none of them with Song of Summer or Take Them by Surprise, then your deck actually should have been running whatever plot you changed to in the first place .

I obviously agree with Dobbler on the Fury replacements. It wasn't that Fury had high gold, or even high gold + initiative. It was that it had both and situationally amazing text (not only in the response, but also in the trait). So if you play Stark and run To Be a Wolf, you're definitely not going to replace Fury with one of the two plots you named. Similarly, if you ran it in Targ for the To Be a Dragon, you'll likely now play something else.

On the other hand, I agree that Song of Summer and Take Them by Surprise become *MUCH* more attractive now. Given that the latter has such a huge potential disadvantage now, it will actually be interesting to see if people run it. The more people who do, the worse it becomes for each player (or at least the higher the risk).

If I had to guess, I'd say that now ~15% (led by disproportionately more Bara) will continue to run Fury, 25% will run Song, ~10% will run Take them by Surprise, and the other 50% or so will experiment with random other plots, including that 5th or 6th city plot, a Power Struggle/Military Battle, and many more tool-boxing plots.

Yea, I just won't use Take Them outside of GJ any more... played against too many KotHH decks, GJ w/ Ahead of the Tide, and one of the guys here has been running this awful initiative deck with Cersei's Wheelhouse recently. (Sorry Mickey, but I hate that stupid Wheelhouse! I'm tired of going last in melee!)

Dobbler said:

Yeah, and if most people deck built and played like you, you wouldn't be the only 2 time World Joust Champion. You are obviously not the 80-90% I was talking about. `But you already knew that.

Twn2dn said:

Outside of those 2 Houses, who really needed the traited plot? The other "to be a X" events rarely see play. The majority of people chose it as the optimal high gold plot. Plot traits and who it opposed were merely gravy. ~And you really weren't in the 80-90% I was talking about either, mister "I-make-the-cut-of-every-large-east-coas- tournament-the-last-2-years"

kpmccoy21 said:

Going forward, if someone chooses the Fury plot for the occasional response effect, it will be a sign of skill...since they will have factored in the statistical advantage of Fury over other cards. If this is the only real consequence of putting the Fury plots on the list, and 90% of players just swap Fury out for Song of Summer, I'll be more than satisfied.

Twn2dn said:

really? why would stark, bara, or greyjoy take the furies out of their deck right now? it doesn't solve the (somewhat mystical) coin flip problem of stark v gj and it doesn't stop bara from having a weapon (no i wont call it an edge when the two houses it hits are control houses) against 2 house? heck through martells fury in if they don't want val (which they don't need to draw gobs of cards).

Furys are less important in Stark than the other cards on the list, and it can be compensated for more easily since its ability is only usable in 1/3 of the games you play.

Siege/Epic out of Stark will turn 1 FoW, turn 2 Rule By Decree, turn 3 Blockade you, and with a low gold curve and lots of epic events its happening consistently. Its hard to play catchup against that. The Fury nets you 5 gold, but you don't particularly need the gold in that deck, you do need the FoW.

Swap in Oxcross or (if you use Heir) Siege of Riverrun and you need the Military Battle that will let your To Be A Wolf go off and you can still use Val to pump out characters, Cache to draw, or Narrow Escape to keep your chars alive.

Basically, whatever stark deck you are running you have two options: (1) Take out Fury, or (2) Take out the other restricted card. The detriment to not using Fury is compensated much easier than the detriment of not having Val/Cache for card advantage, or Narrow Escape to keep your swarms alive. Yes, losing either one hurts you, but the patch in your hull (yay GJ) from losing Fury is better than the one for the other restricted cards. Sure, the occasional deck might still use it (like Bara rush for the character steal) but by and far I think the Furys are getting swapped out.

Yeah, I agree with Mathias when it comes to Stark and GJ. Val is also pretty attractive for both houses, more so than Fury, I think.

Lars, I'm inclined to agree with you that Bara may continue to pick Fury for the stats (winning initiative with no risks/downside is great) and possibly also the marginal effect against Martell/Targ. Since fewer decks will run Fury, Bara's Fury plot will likely increase in strength.