The maesters are a bit out of control right now. 1) I like errataing the agenda to say printed Maester. I've played with the Laughing Storm and his power level is pretty silly, keep him restricted. 2) The Prince's Plan should be left alone until after Days of Fire and Ice, then, possibly banned. The errata would be difficult with wording and restricting it won't hit that many cards.that you want besides Burning on the Sands.

What makes Plans so maddening is that the other houses don't have access to that in-house power level. The only other house that has an expenditure of more then 3 influence is Greyjoy with the Drowned Prophet. And that ability is wicked good, however, it can only be triggered three times per game provided you pull all three of them. We need to see some "big" in house out put to match what Martel has. Or introduce more discard pile hate, doesn't have to be good, just available.

Counterpoints: 1) If this happens, martell gets another weapon in it's arsenal. Other houses can run it, however, Martel has the best, if not most numerous maesters. 2) This won't be necessary if we get accessible location control for everybody. Notice I said accessible, not neutral auto-include 2 cost solution.

clu said:

As we saw at the Drunk Draft, only Complord is truly out of control.

Kennon said:

:-)

Don´t know what actually happened, but i almost spilled my drink over the screen imagining the situation. Great comment.

Its not baout just what won GenCon - teh maester stuff is just too prevaelnt and too easy to pull off. Its not balanced, and the risk-reward calculus is way off. Twn2dn is more combo friendly than I am - I say just flat errate the Collar to say "printed maester only" - but I could live with it if it only worked off the Agenda, as he suggests.

And of course TLS should come off the list. My feelings on that issue are pretty well known. But its past time.

I think we would have seen more joffrey maester decks if we would have had the goldlink, since with its addition the joffrey standing would be alot more reliable. We'll have to see how these maesters play, but I agree that the problem lies with the collar and the agenda as it makes it easy to start piling up attachments on one power character. Also not all houses have attachment control to fight against these, lannister doesn't have anything as the only one solution is still banned. Greyjoy has scurvy cuthroat, but it needs the attachment to be played which it doesn't as the agenda puts it in play. Stark has few solutions, baratheon has zealous collector which is not all that reliable and targ has alot of ways to deal with em. From neutral you have initiate of the citadel and ill tidings which needs you to run maesters if you want it to work reliably as there are still too few learned characters.

The thing where I'm not sure is if you go anti-master way can your deck deal with summer martell like decks aswell?

Princes plan should get the deadbound keyword to stop it from reccuring other copies of itself.

Have to build few decks with compelled by the rock to see if it could be unbanned. Also test how effective the val + laughing storm combo would be these days.

Well, that's the thing. Every deck of mine is running Meerenese Brothel out of house to combat Maesters. (Or in house if I'm lucky enough).

This could all very well be resolved in the next set of chapter packs with a few more attachment removal methods in each house... I think that banning/restricting/errata-ing is the really heavy handed option. I think sometimes it's better to let the play environment sort itself out, OR to change the environment through more subtle means through the addition of more cards.

Stag Lord said:

As Stag notes though, I am combo friendly, in large part because combo is by far my favorite deck type. For the past three years, since we went from CCG to LCG, I haven't been able to make true combo decks that were competitive. There were a few fun builds, but nothing really tier-1. Instead I had to play control. I've been waiting a long time for something like the maester chains that allow for a lot of fun, creative builds. And I think neutering the maesters as a whole just to reduce the power level would significantly reduce the variety in deckbuilding. (As it stands now, pretty much every house can take advantage of maesters in a very unique way. So unlike other agendas that tended to help only 1-2 houses, this is the first mechanic that opens up a lot of deckbuilding in a long time.)

On a related note, I started to get carried away with a rebuttal about why we need more combo in the environment. But rather than post that here, I thought I would post my thoughts on CardGameDB instead and link to it here .

Let me know what you think!

Twn2dn said:

Amen to that.

all hail the c-c-c-c-combo

To those asking that the Apprentice Collar be changed to printed Maester, could I ask for a moment how it makes sense that you have to be a Maester before you can become a Maester? From a Nedly and logical standpoint, I don't really like that solution.

Kennon said:

Maybe they just need to errata the agenda to say you can only move chains from there to printed maesters. Or remove the "chain" trait from apprentice collar.

I think if anything needs to be done that removing the Chain trait from the collar itself is the simplest for balance purposes, and probably increases the accuracy of the card. Who gets to call their little Apprentice Collar an actual chain?

I am worried about this. This game is beginning to stack up errata more so than any game I'm familiar with. Over the last year alone, they've pulled an M:TG with making cards and then immediately saying 'nvm, our bad'. I understand the purpose, but it is unfortunate training new players, as I have been, and every other card I have to say, 'well that really just means until end of round.' or, 'you can't put that in your deck.' etc. It makes for a frustrating experience for both parties.

I have some solutions for this. One possibiility is to get a larger play-testing group. Play test longer. Weed this stuff out early on, guys. For reals.

Another solution is for the players to stop expecting every little card with a new edge to be banned/errated. There might actually be a grander scale of balance coming as it does. (To be fair, because this is an active environment, FFG should consider this as well and help the chapter packs be self balancing as they are released)

The worst case scenario, in my opinion, would be a huge pamphlet of 'ooops' comments on how cards should be. That's a major turn-off for new players and it's a pain for people who are trying to birth competitive decks just to have them FAQed by the developers a month into working them out.

As for the changes being implemented already, I hope FFG plans to reprint these correctly in the years to come.

I think that Mathlete needs to be put on the restricted list.

Staton said:

+3

Staton said:

Where has your sorry butt been? I show up at Gencon after three years and you're not there? What's up with that? No one won a Regional, couldn't go to Gencon and passed it down to you?

Kennon said:

Is that +3 for years? I was already "restricted" for three years? Maybe I should be on the "Banned" list or at least errated.

Does this happen every year? My god how can you people stand it.

Can't we please just give it a little while before we start asking for erratas? Is one good showing at Gencon all it takes? Is this how we're going to respond to new weapons that appear on the battlefield?

For Christ's sakes, one of the pleasures of this game is to come up with new decks that people aren't preparing for. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of things that can completely hose whatever deck you are concerned about. (I'm not saying I know what those things are as I get my a** kicked on a regular basis by all sorts of decks. Somehow, though, it never occurs to me to have those decks taken away from my opponent....)

Are the same decks going to win next year? I doubt it. Although I am pretty sure whatever wins will elicit crys for erratas, restrictions, etc.

Message to Fantasy Flight: Don't bother with the Lanni box. People will just b*tch about it. The cards will either be too lame, or they will need immediate alteration because something from the box was used to make a nasty deck that will be all the rage for about 3 months. Oh, and the people who play those decks will have outrageous moral deficiencies about which we will be all a-twitter.

JackT said:

Simmer down, Jack. No one here is really whining (I think), and yet I appreciate your usual bombast. There seems to be some divisions about how the meta should play out. Should it be completely balanced in every house? Should it evolve with upticks in the strength of certain houses at any given point? It seems that the overall feeling is that there should always be as close to perfect balance among all houses, including neutral techs that mesh into those houses, which of course is absurd. It's not possible for FFG to manage such a monster. Nor is it possible for playtesters to plan for every conceivable strategem that these cards could be utilized for. However, we as a community can try hard to achieve that balance so that it remains fun and challenging for all houses and all player types. FFG tries (too) hard to please its fanbase retroactively, instead of proactively considering how cards will affect the overall meta, which resulted in some snafus like restricting The Laughing Storm after it was spoiled, and errata'ing Heir to the Iron Throne to House Targ only after it was spoiled, after some loud outcry on the boards. Sometimes I feel that FFG has put itself in a situation where they gave us an inch and we are taking a mile. They opened the doors for us to feel that our collective whining will affect some change, when perhaps they should have taken a harder stance and saw how things played out. But alas, the doors have been opened.

Danigral said:

It's been a long day.

Some ideas I've had about Maesters:

1. Make the player pay the gold cost of the chain to move it to the character after winning a challenge. I guess this wouldn't even hurt them with Gold Chain, a chain that also totally negates Greyjoy Choke as well.

2. Make the agenda only trigger on winning challenges defensively (seems to thematically work with maesters, as they are support types in the books).

3. Ban Apprentice Collar.

4. Make Maester's Path require Maester printed on the character.

I hate Maesters. I stopped playing GoT LCG for over a month before GenCon because every deck I played on Octgn was a Maester deck. It's too easy to pull off, the downside is not even a downside, and they gave the thematic abilities of every house to the chains.

There isn't a lot of attachment hate in the game. You can say Targ can control it, but think about what kind of deck you'd need to make to really stop them. You'd need a deck so pidgeon-holed against attachments that it would be very sub-par against any non-Maester deck. I guess that isn't a big issue since 3 of the top 4 decks at GenCon was running the agenda, I believe.

I also feel like save effect characters are a little too good right now as well, but that's another debate.

It all depends on the meta.
You see an upswing in maesters, it will be followed by an upswing in attachment control.
You see an upswing in attachment control, you see a downswing in people using attachments, causing those same attachment control cards to become less efficient, and less used, which will repeat the cycle.

Its also called equilibrium. If it ever gets to the point where every player at a regional is running one of four near-identical builds, fine, there will be an issue. Until then, lets just relax. It is not like there are monthly or fortnightly pro tour events, so what you see is a completely different showing of decks at subsequent big events. Its like going fresh into the unknown each time. And something will come out on top, and what does is usually something novel because people can't prepare for you going rogue. Now, with the advent of net-decking, that will probably lessen and we will see a bunch of similar decks, but that doesn't stop you from running something people have not prepared for. Like Bara allied to Martell using Direct Assault to steal their Lost Oasis or Ghaston Greys.

You know what else deals with Maesters? winning military challenges. Playing Stark. Everybody on the bus? Good Great Grand Wonderful.

JackT said:

I feel ya.

I'm with you though, let's wait a little while before "we" push FFG to make the changes, not that I think they actually read these threads and then rush back to their offices saying, "Oh my God, they're MAD this time! What can we do to appease them?!" Too much of an outcry and they may actually listen to us, which would be a shame.

Except for Prince's Plans, that card is crazy.

JackT said:

Yes, yes it does. Two years ago it was Lannister and the hyper kneel running wild. Everyone screamed foul. Last year it was Wildlings,.People cried that they were too powerful. This year, it's Maesters and Martell Summer to an extent(which I think is the real offender here. NOT maesters). Some people will just not be happy unless they are stirring the pot and causing some ruckus.

JackT said:

This seems pretty par for the course.