Hello A Game of Thrones Players,
We know everyone is gearing up for regionals, we want to apologize for creating this sudden upset and confusion in the environment. Some painful changes were just released, and we would like to share some insight with you into why these changes were made. We’d like to assure you that, while this decision may seem sudden, we have taken a lot of time and effort to find the best solution and the decision to act on the matter before regionals was not made lightly.
The four changes were:
- Restoring the unique symbol to Khal Drogo’s Tent,
- Adding “House Targaryen only” to Heir to the Iron Throne,
- Limiting Support of Saltcliffe to three times per round, and
- Adding The Laughing Storm to the restricted list.
The change on the tent was an embarrassing oversight, and we should have caught it in proofreading. It is an obvious mistake, and we are correcting it with version 2.3 of the A Game of Thrones FAQ.
The change on Heir to the Iron Throne may not be so obvious. At the time we sent the card to the printer, the non-restricted environment was better able to control this card’s explosive potential: Fear of Winter, Blood of the First Men based Wildling Decks, Castellan of the Rock, and Venomous Blade are all good checks against the faster Baratheon decks, but as we looked at these decks in the new environment, we realized that while we had addressed some metagame concerns, we had created another, one which we felt would create a negative experience for many players during the 2011 regional season.
Recently, a four card combo with Support of Saltcliffe that could discard a player’s deck, clear his hand, and reset his board was brought to our attention. This combo involves running Bran Stark out of House Greyjoy (made easier by the new Alliance agenda), giving him the Ironborn trait with Kraken Tattoo, playing Support of Saltcliffe on him, and completing the combo with the Frostfang Peaks, which discards a card off the opponent’s deck each time you reveal a plot card. The combo, then, allows you to cycle through your plot deck as many times as you would like by using and standing Bran again and again in the plot phase. And each time you use him, you are discarding a card from the opponent’s deck.
The combo becomes even more insidious when plots are carefully chosen: by adding Waste Their Time, you can discard an opponent’s hand (the cards are shuffled back into the deck, and then discarded via the Frostfang Peaks), and by using Marched to the Wall, At the Gates, and City of Secrets in the right order, you can clear your opponent’s board through Marched to the Wall, each time discarding one of your Maester characters, shuffling the Maester back into your deck with City of Secrets, and the next time through the plot deck pulling the Maester back into play with At the Gates. Start the cycle again with Marched to the Wall, and repeat until your opponent has no characters in play, no cards in hand, and no cards remaining in his deck.
We felt that restricting two cards from this combo to break it apart would be too severe an approach, and that placing a straight forward “three times per round” limitation on Support of Saltcliffe’s effect would neutralize this combo and keep the card playable and interesting for Greyjoy players.
The final change was adding The Laughing Storm to the restricted list. This was a case where the primary factor in our decision was breaking apart the combo of Val and The Laughing Storm, as the consistent draw engine was too much for House Baratheon in the new environment. This is a situation where the restricted list is working as intended, allowing us to maintain the printed text of two cards that can still be used in the game, while breaking apart a combination that would be overpowered in the tournament environment.
Just to be clear, this was the responsibility of the design team. Again, we want to apologize for the sudden disruption to the community. We will do everything in our power to tighten our procedures and deliver a game without this kind of turmoil. All future updates to the FAQ and tournament rules will be accompanied by thorough explanations.
With this announcement, you will also find an updated 2011 Tourney Rules document, that lists all legal sets, as well as restricted and banned lists for this upcoming tournament season. We apologize for any confusion caused by linking to last year’s tourney rules document.
We wish you all the best of luck this Regional season and hope to meet many of you at Gencon this year.
Nate French
Damon Stone
Fantasy Flight Games
(As always, the latest versions of all documents referenced above are available for download on the A Game of Thrones support page.)