Announcement from FFG that affects all the current LCG's.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2138

For Warhammer the list is:

The following cards are restricted for
LCG tournament play. A player may
select 1 card from this restricted list for
any given deck, and cannot play with
any other restricted cards in the same
deck. A player may run as many copies
of his chosen restricted card in a deck
as the regular game rules allow.
Warpstone Excavation
Innovation
Mining Tunnels
Wilhelm of the
Osterknacht
Reclaiming the Fallen
Soul Stealer

Helloooooo tournament scene?

I like it. Not much of a competitive player myself, but its certainly seems to tone down some of the problems I see people complaining about all the time. Probably the most game-changing FAQ since v1.0, if not ever.

I think it's a good start in creating avenues of control over power creep as new battle packs are released. This list by the way is available in a newish FAQ on the front page at the momment. There are some updates to the new Battle Pack Cycle.

I like this idea, and I think the list is pretty good.

Soul Stealer is gonna crash and burn because of this though, since it was fragile enough to begin with.

Very Interested to see as the game has become a bit of a *****/counter fest regarding dwarf cards, however no warpstone excavation and innovation in the same deck will affect EVERY deck! I guess they chose this option instead of restricting the quantity of particular cards, this is much cleaner. Anyone familiar with how CCGs usually handle bans and restrictions?

CCG's usual restrict to 1 of a copy of a card and ban cards altogether. Games like Magic have quite the lists that are updated like every month.

Interesting way of restricting cards. Well, if they had restricted them to one copy per deck, people who had bought multiple copies of the early sets might have been rather displeased.

I'm surprised Soul Stealer made the list.

I'm not sure how that fixes the problem with reclaim the fallen, but I suppose it's a start. And soul stealer's a suprise. I'd rather expect slave pens/wight lord there meself (but that's probably because I'm a masochist and stick to mono chaos...).

dwarf take a minor kicking. They can have Innovation OR Warpstone excavation OR reclaim the fallen OR mining tunnels, that's how it makes a difference and time will tell.

I really like this FAQ!

The restricted list is a very intelligent way to handle overpowered cards/combos and avoids extra-banning or other restrictions (this game is not good for a "1x only" type of restriction).

Warpstone + Innovation? Not anymore...It's not about dwarves...It's about ANY deck.

Verena? Needs a bit more playtesting withtout the "auto-includes"...

I don't understand why they put in Soul Stealer, but maybe it's something to do with new stuff comin' out..

I really like it, but they've to take care: it's dangerous, 'cause it can restrict deckbuilding a bit too much if they don't pay attention (Wight Lord in that list is an example of what can destroy almost any Destruction deck nowadays)...

Greetings FFG: great choice!

Useless. Empire it's still in top, Dwarves were the only counteroffensive and now are useless.

Not a great idea, expect a 90% of Empire players.

Don't think so. Even without Reclaiming the Fallen dwarf is still stronger and better playable than most of the other fractions. We didn't play reclaim that much here but dwarf still has so many synergy between good units, support and tactics.

grille said:

And Mining Tunnels? Innovation? Even Warpstone it's used in Dwarves. I'm really curious about a dwarf list that really works in tournament play.

It's encouraging to see such positive responses to this! I'm still new and don't understand the power level of all the cards yet, but I've seen a lot of complaining as of late on the boards so this positive reaction to the restricted list is awesome to see! =)

A great idea, imho. And no, Empire isn't still uber-powerful (if it ever really was in the first place) due to this list. It hurts Empire as well.

My only gripe was the inclusion Soul Stealer but it definitely proves that our DE Control decks were every bit as powerful as any uber-Empire decks were thought to be.

The best thing about this decision is that we finally get some more room for cards in our decks!!! No more 41-card decks, yahoo!!!

@BigV:

I already play Ancestral Tomb, Contested Village, Mining Tunnels, Great Book of Grudges and Grudge Thrower when I play dwarfes. As long as you can manage to drop something with Cannon Crews they still have a good buildup. Since Haunted City I didn't play Warpstones so much but Destruction suffers more since they don't have such speed up cards like Tunnels, Forges of Nuln, Derricksburg Forge etc.

I always liked Innovation for getting some not so predictable stuff out but I see it mostly as Wytefang says:

"The best thing about this decision is that we finally get some more room for cards in our decks!!! No more 41-card decks, yahoo!!!"

I dont really understand Whilhelm on this list myself. In my experience whenever a unit is banned or restricted and it is not part of a game winning combo its unneeded. Honestly Hemmler is arguably the better empire hero anyway.

I like the concept that they have for how to do a restriction much better than a 1 off restriction as you normally see.

I think people have been a little bit over board recently with calling empire verena decks unbeatable. However, I did think that empire was the best deck before the institution of this list and it is not hurt that much by this list. Dwarves definitely take the biggest hit by far (as do all order decks due to minning tunnels) next would be deck elves though I personally thought soul stealer was fine after they ruled you get stuff back when you destroy it. Seems like empire and orcs probably come out the best (as do high elves and chaos, but they are still a step behind).

Probably be more 1 and 3 cost cards in decks now if you want to play warpstones and maybe pilgramige will make a comeback with innovation on this list.

TL

I applaud this decision. I like the way the restricted list works.
Ironically, I believe the restriction will open up more opportunities for deck building. Some decks were built almost automatically using the most powerful cards available for the faction. Now we have to think outside the box and hopefully come up with new ways to build our decks. Who knows ? Some synergies that were not powerful enough before might work now in this new environment.

Dwarves were powerful before Reclaiming the Fallen, they'll still be powerful without it. They got to pick one out of Mining Tunnels, Warpstone Excavation and Innovation where other Factions have to pick one out of two. No big deal.

I wouldn't have put Wilhelm and Soul Stealer on the list, but for now I'd say let's trust the devs on this. And I'm sure the list isn't set in stone for all eternity.

Meanwhile ... don't know about you guys, but I think things are looking up. We're getting some balancing. We're getting away from 41 + Core 9 decks. We finally have some token-based quests worth using. Destruction, Chaos in particular, is catching up, and getting good cheap supports. And while some might complain about the current cycle forcing people to play developments, I'd say there's an aspect of the game that now finally is important to every faction, not just to one or two.

I Think: Restricted cards--> 1 of each per deck

Gerson said:

If structure breeding creativity was ever considered ironic it ceased to be so thousands of years ago when the first structured poem was written.

Sorry, just a pet peeve.

Vamosamorir said:

The 1 per deck kind of restricting means degenerate combos still exist, just that they can be played less frequently. It increases the power of any kind of card drawing/searching/etc. cards. This new type of restriction is very interesting and it looks like it will work better.

Mallumo said:

I agree with you almost entirely. Good post. Though I'm confused why you think the Dwarves don't suffer with this new list?? They can only use ONE out of all those cards on the list - that's pretty nasty. Other races who rely on less cards suffer far less.

According to BigV (who seems to have a good grip on this), this is the current uber-Empire deck:

3 Innovation
3 Iron Discipline
3 Long Winter
2 Visit the Haunted City
3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Will of the Electors
3 Called Back
3 Derricksburg Forge
3 Hidden Grove
3 Knights Panther
3 Mining Tunnels
3 Pistoliers
3 Shrine to Taal
3 Free Company
3 Rodrik's Raiders
3 Judgement of Verena
3 Wilhelm of the Osterknacht

If you look closely, though, you'll notice that this deck will now (with this new restricted list change) have to pick from only ONE of the bolded cards above (Innovation, Warpstone Excavation, Wilhelm, and Mining Tunnels). I'd call that a pretty heavy impact on this deck type.

And for the record, I'm still just not seeing this as all that tough BUT bear in mind, it took a LOT of convincing and first-hand experience before I really considered the Bolt-thrower decks all that tough, so I could be missing something, certainly.