As someone that argued in more than one post that The Laughing Storm should be Restricted...after seeing the other cards FFG put out recently, I too think my Laughing brother should be un-Restricted.

You seem to forget,

Stark, Lanni, Martell, Targ can easily deal with Maesters (I looked at some spoilers on cardgamedb)

Just WTF does Greyjoy do? Or Bara?

And the biggest impact is maesters prevent competitive players from bothering with attachments since tin link and the anti-maester stuff make it non useable. What's the point of milking beric if the opponent has loaded his deck up on attachment removal/character bounce?

FFG then does what? Make attachments stronger? Or make some immune?

Why not just errata the agenda to say PRINTED maester trait only, and be done with it. And provide bars with some kingdom locations to power the zealot, and give Greyjoy a card that just ignores attachments. (They never did care for titles, and things bought with the gold price). There are enough neutral maestros to power the agenda, and it allows for apprentice collar to do some crazy things, but you can't use the agenda to power bob or renly. The only other thing is if apprentice collar IS that broken still... put it on the restricted list.

Now if the lanai attachment and grey are the only major new anti voltron/rush cards, I don't mind so much... as long as eventually bara regains more of the east watch/painted table power moving stuff. Its when you have the one character with a pile of power and attachments that can do all 3 challenges and is immune to everything... and can win all 3 challenges... that things get annoying.

Also bara needs some point and click as does greyjoy (something like shadow play and paying the iron price respectively). We'd like to see some non winter greyjoy decks at some point right?

widowmaker93 said:

maybe there is a strategy behind this: FFG wants to highlight the current cycle, knwoing that it will have to be restricted a little bit after the tourney season (so that another cycle can enter the stage)?

Stasis said:

I'm sorry but this doesn't hold water for me at all. If you are a competitive player and want to play on the competitive scene, you should know there is always an ebb and a flow to these things, and what is powerful and popular one month will be the new garbage the next. All it takes is another CP to come out with a new power card or something similar. Not only that but it's not like Bara Maesters (or even just Maesters period) are the only viable deck archetypes in the scene right now, I can think of several that are very competitive (not to mention really creative builds like Greg's reinforcements build). If you don't like or don't want to play one of the many competitive builds currently viable in the environment (martell/summer, greyjoy/choke, targ/maester/summer/kothh, lanni/shadows/maester/hyperkneel, stark/maesters/SoW/armies, the list goes on), congratulations, you don't want to be a competitive player. I can tell you I played Bara/Maesters along with five other people at GenCon, I lost to John Bruno playing GJ choke and to a Lanni deck.

If you aren't trying to be a competitive player and just like to play for fun, simply ask your friends not to play maester decks because you find it to be a NPE. If your friends keep playing them anyways, find new friends, clearly the ones you have suck. I have a casual friend who told me my maester deck was unfun to play against, I said, "ok," and haven't played him with it since. Problem solved.

Personally, I understand people that are disliking the game cause maester cycle. Cause I started 3 days ago to play Lord of the Rigns Online MMORPG... so I find another hobby hoping the game will be balanced soon.

Gualdo said:

Perhaps I just have not had the experience of playing against these really awful builds then...

Kennon said:

You are correct sir! I've been thinking the same thing. The whole point of the collar is to make someone who isn't a maester a maester, so why would I (conceptually, not game play) put it on a Luwin when he already is one. And since a collar does not equal a chain that would make sense. Though personally I would go a step further and change it from chain to condition, that way every house has a clear way to remove it that doesn't involve playing maesters for _____ link (tin?) or Ill Tidings for attachment removal.

Stasis said:

Well said. You echo my sentiments above.

It'ss got nothing to do with the GenCon winning deck - that happy circumstance just nicely dovetails with my agenda. You state the fatcs with soem calrity: the risk/reward is just not there with the maesters theme and theya re too prevalent. I prefer amore diverse envrionment and a simple fix to Apprentice Collar will solve the problem.

By the way - its hardly Nedly to suppose that important nobles of leading Houses would simply go to Oldtown and begin to train for the chains. teh Nedly argument doens't hold much water with this Ned.

In R&D's defense - if thronondor and others are correct: its actually pretty clever to roll out an OP mechanic early in a block so the theme sees some play at all levels and then draw it back some as it starts to become too prevalent.. That would be pretty well thought out, if it were true and it were implemented correctly.

Stag Lord said:

But they're coded so well!

LaughingTree said:

Oh - and WOW: cool.

fhornmikey said:

This is just fantastic. You're in our meta for not even 48 hrs and you're already scoring huge points. Man am I glad we have you.

I agree that Maesters as a deck type have a few main distinctions...

1) They are easy to build and throw into every house.

2) Each house has many different directions you can go with the Maester build and they are all unique and fun to play(notice, I did not say play against)

3) They make certain houses more competitive than they would be without them(Targ in particular right now)

4) Yes, there is very little risk for the reward. But I guess you could say the risk is that you will play too many chains on the agenda and not be able to move them all off and ergo will lose the game. So there is some risk as this situation could theoretically happen against 4 of the 6 Houses that have control(kill bounce, burn, discard)

5) They give some competition to the rampant Martell/KoS builds out there. Without the Maesters what is going to put up a real fight against Martell right now? Not a **** thing and that is not how it should be. Sure, other decks are competitive...but to what extent? Exactly.

I for one am glad we have Maesters as without them it would have been a very stale Martell filled Gencon(even more so than it was, bleh!) That would not have been a fun Gencon to experience. If there is a problem with Maesters(which I don't think there is, and they should be left alone) then it would be the wording of the agenda. If it were to be made PRINTED maesters you move the chains to then that would be the only acceptable change that I would accept. I do not see Apprentice collar as the offender. I happen to love it and it gives each house a reason to play characters that they would not otherwise play. Targ has a good reason to play either of the non-Core Set Khal Drogos. Would anyone think about using the DotN version or the Targ box version if it weren't for maesters? I wouldn't. Martell can play Maester of War, a very cool card, which would never see play otherwise. Stark has a few builds that I like, one combo involving Icy Catapult and The Hound from PotSun and Grey Wind on Robb is especially nasty. Would anyone play the Hound otherwise? Eww, no. Bara has standing Bob for Maesters which is a fantastic character, but I would still rather use double renown Bob in a basic rush build. The list goes on for each house, but you get the point.

I say leave them alone for now, but in 4-6 months if Maesters are winning EVERY tournament and 75% of the field is running some sort of Maester build, then sure make some sort of change. But let's see what Tales of Champions has to offer before we beg for errata or restriction. I think we jump the gun too much as players with this new restricted list. Every time there is a new, fun, competitive build out there it's like we just can't stand it and have to have it go away. Let's don't turn this game Into M:TG. Please?

widowmaker93 said:

You wanna talk infuriating to play against, let's talk about Kismet + Chronotog + Statis combo!

No, that's not that bad. You want to have a bad game. Let's talk Tolarian Academy combo from the Urza's Saga sets. If you played against it you basically did not even get a turn to play your first land card. Just Stupid.

They nerfed Academy pretty quickly. Apples to oranges - but I'm just saying. I was there - it got fixed fast.

Despite the restriction, banning, and errata we've seen there is one card that the meta has successfully learned to deal with that some were calling to be "fixed." That card is Berric. When I first started playing it seemed like everyone on the boards thought he was too powerful. Guess what, you saw a lot of character bounce and blanking at Gen Con and those who brought brotherhood decks had a very hard time. This is a good thing. As fewer people play brotherhood, we'll see less of those tools being placed into decks and it will eventually reach some sort of equilibrium where it can be competitive again but won't be as powerful as it was at first.

To those who say they only play against maesters now, that's because it's the current cycle. During the brotherhood cycle I'm sure you played against a lot of decks built around Berric. We're gamers. We like the new shiny. We like to work out how to get the best deck with the newest cards. Maesters won't be as popular when the next cycle comes.

The one argument I could see for making changes is the risk/reward curve making it auto-include if you're not running any other agenda. Here's my idea. Instead of requiring printed maester or removing chain trait from apprentice collar (both hurting ability to make combo decks) remove what has been pointed out as a big problem for a few with maesters and get rid of the +1 Str apprentice collar gives for chains. FFG could also make it a condition as has been mentioned and easier for all houses to remove. Before doing anything, I would like to wait and see if maesters still is what everyone plays at least half way through the next cycle. Give players time to deal with maesters like we did with Berric before making changes.

Stag Lord said:

Yes they did, because it was ruining the game and noone could beat it.

I don't see the same thing happening with Maesters. Are they ruining the game? NO. Are they unbeatable? NO. Are they easy to play? Yes. Do they make any houses or deck builds unplayable? NO. I don't see the problem.

@fhornmikey : I never mentioned Bara Maester decks, I also never said Maester decks were the only decks capable of winning. Maybe you didn't read my post?

I did play a "competitive build" at GenCon. I put a lot of work into a Siege deck that was hyper aggro (42 characters, 6 locations) and did well all things considered. I've been playing the game for a few months now and have maybe 40 games total under my belt. I was 3-3 but two of the games literally came down to one decision. I could have gone 5-1 if those went my way. I was just demolished by Greg, though, and gave him huge props there and on these forums because his deck was so original.

The new shiny is irrelevant.. If the new cards are better than the old cards then people are forced to play them if they want to win consistently. Maesters are not a case of people playing with new stuff just because it's new. They're so prevalent because they're so powerful. If they were worse than the older cards you'd see them as a curiosity in "non-competitive decks".

I'm a very competitive person and always have been. I didn't spend $700 attending GenCon and buy around $1,000 of cards in the last few months because I'm a casual player. However, being competitive doesn't mean I want to see the same cards splashed into every single deck I play for a month straight. Nor does it mean I'm going to play decks I don't enjoy to play.

I need to find new friends? I was playing people from all over the world on Octgn. They weren't from my real-life pool of friends. It was whoever I found online to play that day. Thanks for telling me my friends suck.

I think you did a lot of assuming and it makes you look like an ass.

@bloodycelt : I fully agree. Tin Link is the best attachment control card in the game. It's cheap, easy to get out, repeatable every single turn, and completely negates attachments unless you're playing against a Maester deck. It's such a dominant card that people have stopped putting attachments in their decks because of it. When I make a deck now I basically run through the list of chains and try to build around them, because they're that prevalent and powerful.

I think everyone needs to remember one thing. Maesters took 3 of the top 4 spots at GenCon and only 3 chapter packs were legal. Imagine what it would've looked like with the rest of the cycle legal. There are only around 2 house-specific cards in each chapter pack of this cycle.

@Stasis

You definitely didn't read my post or if you did you read a lot of "hostile intent" into it. The internet is very serious business. I believe what I said was, "IF you don't enjoy playing those decks AND you tell your friends as much AND they keep playing them, THEN they suck." There's just a few conditions in that statement. I believe my point was, as with every card game, the new cards are always the most prevalent, and usually the most powerful, however as the card pool grows, new methods of dealing with the old arise and the new cards become the new shiny. Several of the solutions you posited were what I would consider very drastic, my point was that although maesters are strong, they are not unbeatable, and moreover do not need to be nerfed into the ground to the point where they reach irrelevance (Hi Wildlings, I'm looking @ you).

Stasis said:

As far as erratas to the agenda vs. collar, I think an errata to "printed maester" is much harsher and more significant than a simple change to the collar's trait (or else an errata to the agenda that says they have to be a maester, so that you have to actually play the collar main-deck before you can attach from the agenda). All the fun combos mentioned above, including Khal Drogo and Robert, rely on pulling chains from the agenda directly onto the character. I think the goal to any changes, if in fact there are changes that are needed, should be to slow the maesters down but not cripple them altogether.

widowmaker93 said:

Which is why I said "apples to oranges". We differ - I have a problem with the metagame getting stale. Maesters are too good as a theme - R&D erred a littel too far one way - like they did with Wildlings (As many people were pointing out in FEBRUARY). i've seen enough of teh cycle to know this is only going to get worse as more chain tech comes out. Why not fix it now adn save soem months of boring play?

Its not like dialling back the Collar is going to make Maesters unplayable - its just going to balance thinsg a little on teh competitive level.

fhornmikey said:

Didn't the original poster complain about turing it into MTG and THEN complain about playtesting in the same post. That was funny. MTG has a HUGE budget and tons of time for testing, and still gets things wrong. aGoT has volunteers with a limited time. Mistakes are going to be made. That is the nature of CCG's (TCG/LCG's). Name a game with considerably less, and I would be impressed more by the anti-erratta/restrictions folks. FYI L5R (another game with more players and $$) just erratta/banned the best two cards in their World Champ deck (including the 'agenda' used).

Personally I think if you can't find some broken combos or even infinate combos with either the chains (after all the packs are released) or Prince's Plan's...well, you really are not trying.

Something probably should be done at that point. *shrug*

I think the restricted list is good as is, unless Plans is being put on it (although it should also not hit itself, I would rather have erratta than restricted AND erratta). Storm is still pretty dumb, just because he isn't #1 on people's restricted list when Martell is crazy-popular doesn't mean unrestricted card draw each turn is a good thing.

rings said:

Ah, so you say that our playtesters really didn't try?

rings said:

I completely agree, your chocies are - never push the limits and create a long line of bland cards that do very similar things at the exact same power level (what no one would try to accomplish)

or

create a dynamic game that requires occasional tweaks via ban/errata/restrict. (what everyone goes for)

or

create card specific magic bullets (I played swccg which used this option. Just awful)

One of the great things about AGOT seems to be you don't have the gradual playing of resources where you get to the 4th turn and finally get to play your big dude. However, that means all cards need to be tested as being able to be flopped/played first turn. There is also a lot less dedicated removal in AGOT then other games...which means not only will a card likely be flopped it will also stick around a long time.

There is less spot removal, maybe, but every deck has a free wrath of god as well. It's not really that there isn't spot removal it just usually situational, usable only in dominance phase, or has an influence cost or something. Other than Targ burn, that is.

I don't think characters stick around more than other games at all. Unless you have save effects (citadel of oldtown, aemon, wendamyr, davos, etc.) It's pretty rare to go 4 turns without a Valar.