rings said:

I'm not sure how I feel about Erick's point in this. I'm divided on it. I don't think blanking agendas would work - consider an NW deck that uses all three agendas, crushes face with it to get to 15 power, and then plays that dude to blank that player's own agendas. That's a hard problem to solve. I kind of like your 2/2 character, but I feel like it would end up being worthless, unless you plan to ban Venomous Blade. Admittedly, you would still possibly get a lot of use out of it if Martell doesn't become the top build again after the agenda schism.

What about the idea that agendas should temper themselves? I think there's a lot more viability in this claim, and then the cards that get put into the pool do not need to be balanced so hard against every single agenda. Does that make sense?

Rings: I think Erick addressed your question in his post about the "blank agenda".

The problem is cards that hurt agendas only help one decktype (the "blank agenda") but hurt many other decktypes (all agenda decks). The result is less diversity in the decks (and therefore in the cards) being played.

For instance, how many martell decks have you seen that don't play Lost Spearman? Zero, because there's really no incentive not to play it. Which is boring because auto-includes don't make for interesting deck design. But if you printed an agenda that made attachments cost -2 and refuges cost +2 (a simple example), there is now some incentive to play a martell deck without Lost Spearman and with cards you otherwise wouldn't have played. And isn't it more fun to have more choices about which cards you play?

- Corey

baragwin said:

Didn't Kennon say he pulled that out of his champ deck at regionals?

I know that Stukov's deck that won the Italian Nationals did not include Lost Spearmen, I believe the rationale being Dissension is commonplace in Europe at large.

Certainly an interesting and thought provoking post from FSW.

You can definitely count me in the camp of old guard players who are reticent about agendas. They are untouchable cards that change the very rules of the game in some fundamental fashion – and as such are very difficult to balance. Having suffered through years of things like Treaty, Defenders of the North, Wildlings etc and now Maesters – I will always be a little concerned about how these cards are handled and how they affect the metagame.

But I like the argument in theory: a plethora of Agendas, many House specific that elevate the efficiency of characters and locations that may not see play and open up deck building options at both the h competitive and casual level? What’s not to love there? The original post is quite correct in that the environment is very predictable at the moment and with five and a half cycles of Chapter packs – you think you would see a little more variety. If Agendas are the way to introduce that, I champion the effort. I have come to accept that at the moment, all competitive decks will be running an Agenda. This is the naked reality of competing at the moment. You are handicapping yourself if you aren’t. Since I can’t see how that will change, I encourage the addition of more Agendas that will let players see more cards in the draw deck – I’ll just remain nervous about the execution of such an idea, given the seven year history of the Agenda card.

I also do agree with Rings that if this is the road we are heading down – having a 4/3 unique who blanks all agendas is probably a really good idea. If something OP does develop with the new Agendas, an “in environment” accessible fix makes a lot of sense. Yeah – it boosts the “blank” agenda build, but the agenda deck would still have a counter in character control, and it might serve as a decent balancer. Given the all but permanent nature of the Agenda card type - I’d be a little more comfortable with an Agenda flooded environment with such a check.

Stupid boards

I feel the theme underlying this discussion boils down to increasing deck diversity among top tier tournament decks. To me, the core of this problem is very simple: lack of solid in house draw mechanics. The reason Summer is run across all Houses but Lannister is simply that it provides the easiest most reliable draw engine. Even if we had 30 new really interesting, dynamic Agendas in the current environment, if none of them were based on providing a reliable draw engine they still wouldn't see play over Summer simply because draw is so important to every single competitive deck no matter what other themes it is running.

Before any other card type or aspect of gameplay is looked at to increase diversity I feel more in-house consistent draw engines need to be implemented. I know some of the in-house draw mechanics are intended to supplement House subthemes but that makes them less reliable compared to OOH Lanni card. Those cards either require 3 card combos (Xaro's Home) or are conditional on challenges (LIV, Blackfish, Mereen) they are simply never going to see as much big tournament play as primary draw engines because they are less reliable. Blackfish or LIV might make almost every Stark and Greyjoy deck but they are not the primary draw engine. What is really needed imo is for cards (either Agenda or other) that give more reliability to in-house draw mechanics. This isn't a new issue but something that goes back to CCG days when Massing was legal. It was played in almost every single deck I played against simply because it was easy, reliable neutral draw.

I know that historically draw is supposed to be a Lanni advantage but with their income and kneel I don't think Lanni needs exclusive draw advantages to remain top tier. I run Pyromancer's and GTM out of house and use Summer agenda in different Houses simply because of draw. That limits deck building and makes every deck play in relatively similar ways. So why not just make in house cards that can provide pretty much the same efficient draw?

Until there are more reliable in house draw engines, I think there is always going to be a lack of diversity since all decks are going to be using the same set of most reliable draw engines in tournaments (Pyro, GTM, Summer Agenda, Val, KL). This is going to affect other deck building decisions and gameplay. A lot of different Agendas would be cool but I think draw mechanics need to be re-examined first .

It's not about playstyle. It's all about designing. Some agendas are well designed, e.g. The Siege of Winterfell - it's powerful, so people play it, and it has built in drawback, does not matter what your opponent deck is, drawback is always there. If Kings of summer is a problem, then ban it and print new better designed summer agenda. If Maester's path is a problem, then errata it (at least 1 "maester character only" chain or something).

Also having a 4/3 unique who blanks all agendas is not a good idea - in case of Siege you can ruin whole opponent's deck and it kills an idea of agenda.

Rogue30 said:

I don't think Kings of Summer in itself is a problem. Its only when its taken in context of lack of reliable in-house draw mechanics that it becomes "over-played" across a variety of houses(see my above post). No need to ban it as that would not solve the core issue. If houses had as reliable in-house draw , KoS would not be played in the competitive environment nearly so much.

In response to my earlier statement on the top tier players ranking the agendas one effectiveness in a week, I think my point is valid. This doesn't mean one through thirty. What I was referring to is that the top tier players will look at each agenda and be able to decide if it is going to be competitive or not. I believe that there would be four or five agendas that would be considered the best of the 30 and then we'd just see those Agendas all the time. The reasoning behind this is that you can't really print 30 agendas right now and have them all be relevant with the card pool size. There just aren't enough different themes or houses for 30 agendas to exist and either some of them not be competitive or some of them being redundant.

Also, Rings, rather than having cards that punish people for running agendas, why not print cards that reward you for not running an agenda. Seems to work out fine that way.

LaughingTree: I agree that the biggest problem in the current environment is a lack of consistent draw, and I would argue that agendas are the easiest and best way to fix the problem. Some random examples:

"Each time you play an attachment of cost 1 or greater, draw a card."

"If you just defended a challenge with at least two sand snake characters, draw a card."

"When you win a challenge as the defender and you have a participating House Tully character, draw a card."

"Each time you play an in-house card with printed cost 3 or greater, draw a card."

Any of these could potentially be the basis for an entirely new deck (or, for some of them, multiple new decks). An argument can be made that all of the above text would be better placed on non-agenda cards so that it wasn't guaranteed. But I prefer to have less randomness and fewer games being decided by whoever happens to get their card draw.

Staton: I don't disagree with you that good players will generally find the best decks. But I think there is a big difference between how difficult it was to do so two years ago and how difficult it is to do now. And that difference can be made even larger by introducing new agendas that add further complexity to the environment. I guess my argument is: with the current card pool, design's ability to increase the number of viable decktypes by printing agendas is much greater than their ability to do so by printing non-agendas (because non-agendas just get slotted into already-existing decktypes). Because I think more decktypes results in a better game, I'd rather see them print agendas than non-agendas.

See I don't understand why Agendas are better at making decks more diverse than printing more diverse cards. Sure the Agendas are a short term fix, but just printing better and more diverse cards is the much better solution in the long run.

Because not every card can be Tier 1 efficient. As such, the non efficient cards will see less play - and the better ones will get stuffed into existing builds. This is why 50 cards or so in all Martell decks are the same - as per the OP.

An Agenda, is differnet ebcuase ti is simply chosen and laid down by your House card. No issues with draw, cost or cancel - it simply and relaibly yiedls the desired game condition.

why can't every card be tier 1?

baragwin said:

baragwin said:

Is this the first time you've posted to the boards, Corey? What brought this on? What can we do to keep you here?

This is an excellent illustration of how some themes could be resurrected from binders everywhere. Maybe I'm just biased when it comes to draw. But some of these Agendas look great to me. I'd certainly play them.

It does raise some interesting questions. Such as, would a plethora of new agendas be severely weighted towards any that provided simple draw? And if so, would that make balancing the remainder of them too difficult?

I have a feeling it's all a moot point, anyway, since I doubt design would ever go this direction. And I feel there are those who are against having lots of draw in the environment, no matter how unbalanced the environment is (not that I'm saying it's terribly unbalanced right now - it's not). As evidenced by complaints about Pyromancer's Cache, which I really don't get. Three gold on an attachment that can be hit with 2 kinds of card control seems about right to me, and it's made several non-Lannister and non-Martell decks of mine way more viable by its immediate inclusion. I don't see how that's a bad thing.

Staton said:

Because life isn't fair.

Longclaw - its really kind of too easy with the Cache. Maybe the attachment hate link will help - but really: there sin't enough attachment hate in the environment right now to make it risky. (Though I am kind of fine with it being back. And its an interesting Restricted card).

Longclaw: I generally try to keep my crazy ideas to myself. =)

You're right about the difficulty of balancing agendas that provide card draw with those that don't. But I think there is potential for both to be useful (the current environment supports this notion, with both the summer agenda and non-draw agendas being played regularly).

Another thought on the subject of balance: it isn't necessarily a good thing for playtesters to be able to easily balance cards. The more difficult it is for them to balance cards, the more difficult it will be for players to figure out how best to use those cards. Sure, cards will need to be banned or errataed occasionally, but that's already the case now. And in return, we get a bunch of fun new toys to try to turn into competitive decks.

You are also certainly right about it being a moot point, given that design isn't like to introduce a 30-agenda chapter pack any time soon. But even an increase from the 1-2 agendas/block we get now to 5-6 agendas would be a huge improvement, and I don't think that is out of the question.

Rogue30 said:

What, this is a bad idea? With all the control out there in pretty much every house? Somehow my Siege opponent decided to not play any other icons and only wants to do one challenge...and now is mad since he didn't?

~Dammit, I wanted to build an unbalanced one-trick deck and your unique 4 cost character is ruining that!!!

~Someone destroyed/stole/blanked my Golden Tooth Mines, they ruined my whole deck idea and killed the idea of having draw! Dammit!!!

Not sure why agendas should be so favored, considering the lack of effort in putting them into play. People are trying to seriously tell me that a free beginning in play card should be untouchable, yet cards I pay in both income and draw for should be removed with the greatest of ease? Um...okay!

I vote yes to 30 agendas (although like Stag said, probably 5 of them will be Tier one, that is reality). I vote yes to cards that hurt running agendas ('negative' cards) so you can't 100% rely on them. And I vote yes for cards that reward you for not running them or for your opponent running one ('positive' cards) to help meta. Shouldn't have to choose in my mind if we are going to have them.

Staton said:

Quote for truth.

Really an agenda is just a card as well. It's not a magic bullet cure-all. And the unique features that it does have compared to other cards (starts in play, generally immune- as Rings has been pointing out) are actually more likely to cause agendas to have the opposite impact on variety.

Kennon: Could you please elaborate on your point? In what way do you think agendas discourage deck diversity? Even the year of the wildlings had more diversity than the year of lannister because, as I said above, there was no concensus about which house was best to play them out of.

Take the most recent set as an example: would you say we have less diversity in competitive decks because of the availability of the maester agenda? To me, it seems like that agenda has opened up 5+ new competitive decks across virtually every house. How many non-agenda cards can you say that about?

rings said:

Because agenda is not just a card as well. There is a sense in it that agenda cards cannot be canceled. The idea behind agenda card is to get something and loose something instead and change the basic concept of the game. If you think about summer agenda as the same card as Golden tooth mines, then I understand your point, but if you think about Night's watch guys suddenly loosing all icons, then it's stupid. People would stop using such agenda at all, if that is what you want then ok.

Kennon said:

I think agendas have the potential to do it quicker and provides the ability to turn normally lower power cards which have already been printed into cards which you'd actually put in your deck. That would be the advantage of going with them as the solution to the problem. Although it would be best to do both IMO.

I am a huge fan of agendas so I think having many more of them with a variety of abilities would be fun.

I vote no for this simple reason. Chapter pack space is precious, there are only so many cards that can be printed in each chapter pack. If FFG decides to print 30 agendas, and then silver bullet cards to combat those agendas, and then more cards to support those agendas, then how much space is left for all of the non agenda themed stuff?

I don't really see what is wrong with the direction the environment is going now when it comes to agendas. For the amount of cards we currently have legal there are quite a few agendas to choose from, obviously some better than others. My only criticism is that I don't like agendas that are house only, like Heir to the Iron Throne. It takes away from the number of possible decks that could be built.

Admittedly, I've never been a fan of agendas. As Rings always points out - they are extremely hard to balance, and I really don't like how they generally cannot be targeted/don't interact with other cards the same way. And while I like the idea of enabling House X or trait theme decks more - that can just as easily be done with unique loacations & other cards if designed properly - the agenda really shouldn't be necessary. I honestly fail to see how agendas make the game better or more enjoyable overall - they feel more to me like FFG adding a new card type/mechanic just for the sake of change itself (although really, influence pay gold effects are kind of like that to - did these really improve the game beyond kneeling a character? - I would argue no).

However, if we're going to have them, I definitely agree with the statement below:

finitesquarewell said:

I was utterly shocked to see At the Gates - basically a reprint of Here to Serve - which created a lot of discussion on the very point of in house vs out of house years ago.

But this seems to be one of FFG's sacred cows (along with Draw - anti draw or effects targeting out of house characters are always costed far higher than draw cards or cards allowing you to play cards from out of house).