Penfold said:

I agree with your second scenario. Maybe I'm a crap player(strong possibility), but restricting the furies only diversifies plot decks, and with every new plot the chance of it not geing selected goes up. I don't know how they are broken/overpowred or creates a npe. In my world the restricted cards should all have an equal shot at being selected, and tat is not the case. In what world does fury of the sun EVER get used and if you stuck it in any Martell deck would it break the deck? Hell no. And since plots are a vastly different card type there should be a seperation between plots and regular cards.

Splitting off the plots into a specific restricted list isn't a bad idea in practice, but what the hell else do you put on it? Currently the only other plot on the list is Fear of Winter, so obviously you'd need more for the list, otherwise it just becomes a choice between one of two plots. Retaliation and Loyalty Money Can Buy were given as examples of highly popular plots, but do they deserve to be restricted? You'd have to come up with a long enough list to make it a meaningful choice.

Man there are way too many things to reply to right now. I'll just address the fury plots being restricted for the moment.

Now I understand putting cards on the restricted list if they are too powerful or create very powerful combos or npe's. What I don't agree with is "This plot is used a lot, let's restrict it." First of all, it might actually be OK if they followed through with it. Like "Hey Valar is used in every deck too! Restrict it!", but no. The Fury plots seem to be the only one on the list. Why? OK maybe you can argue that every deck needs a strong reset in the current character heavy environment. Fine, but then that still leaves plots like Loyalty and Retaliation. Now you can't tell me these cards weren't printed with the thought "Meh, I bet only a few people will play these cards." So FFG is actively printing plots that are going to be in at least 80% of plot decks, yet are still preaching a diverse plot deck as a design goal. Touché FFG, Touché.

Second of all, if there is a lack of plot diversity, why not just print better plots? That seems like a nice long term solution to me. Putting the Fury plots on the restricted list because they are in too many plot decks seems like a stop gap measure to me. Now again, I'm all for the Bara Fury keeping its errata as long as it isn't restricted. I'm also against using the restricted list as a proxy ban on a card. If you are going to ban a card, why not ban it? Why keep it on a restricted list when its obvious that no one will use it. If something is on the restricted list, in my mind that is saying "This card is too strong either by itself or in conjuction with another card on this list. Therefore it must be on this list in order to keep the game balanced." How is Fury of the Sun going to unbalance the game if its not on the restricted list? It won't. Which again goes back to the need for a diverse plot deck. FFG either needs to actively try to create a diverse plot deck environment, or get the fury plots of the restricted list.

Staton said:

Even with Errata Bara Fury is one of the top 2 Fury plots. Without errata, it was ridiculously unbalanced and NPE against Targ. I won't even get into specifics of how NPE that card was before errata when I was playing Targ against some of the local Bara decks. Targ's meager Fury plot isn't even a terminal burn effect!. Perma-Steal was just way too good. Temporary steal is still amazing and highly useful.

As Freerider already said, he used the Bara Fury plot even though its Restricted and won CaliCon with that as his restricted card. Even with errata, Bara Fury (and Stark Fury and Fury of Kraken) absolutely belong on the Restricted list IMO. They are not de facto bans at all as people still use those three Furys in their plots. The way I read your argument, you seem to be saying "Fury of the Sun is not a problem card so let's un-Restrict Fury of the Stag".

You can make the argument that Lanni, Targ and Martell Fury don't really belong there because their effects are pretty weak compared to the others. But you can't just conclude that all Fury plots should be unrestricted simply because some of them are weak. 3 Fury plots are most definitely far stronger than the other 3. If they are going to keep Fury plots together then they should all be Restricted. If they want to reconsider on a case by case basis that would be fine too. But un-restricting ALL of them because THREE of them are not uber plots would be a big mistake and give a huge boost to some Houses vs. other Houses. A boost that is not really necessary IMO as Bara and Greyjoy are pretty dominant in the current environment.

Wait. You think that unrestricting some of the Fury plots would create an imbalance in the game? lolz

Staton said:

I think there is no need whatsoever to unrestrict the Bara, Greyjoy and Stark Fury plots.

"lolz" is not a valid argument

You of all people should know that Lolz is the best argument!

Also I think the only reason that those Furies SHOULD be on the restricted list is to promote plot deck diversity, which FFG seems to not care about.

I agree with you here Staton - Valar should abolutely be Restricted along with Retaliation and (Loyalty after a little longer) But yeha - I'd scream bloody murder if Fury of teh sun and Fury of teh lion came off the list and the FotSTag stayed on. There is NO wya Martell and Lannister shoudl egt teh 5-7-1 - and Stark, Greyjoy and Baratheon lose thiers. Even without the abilities - the stats on tehse Plots are simply amazing.

Also, I don't necessarily agree that Valar or the other plots you mentioned need to be on the restricted list. In fact I think that no card should be on the restricted list simply due to it being in too many decks. However, if FFG is putting cards on the list and justifying it by saying "It was in too many decks" then they need to stick to that position and put cards like Valar and the like on the list as well.

Yeah - you wnat to be acreful there! God forbid you coem out against teh great gift to the game that is Valar Morghulis.

I'm upfront about ti though. i do believe that certain Plots stifly creativity - because they are "too good". And if the Furys led that lsit - Valar was rigth up there with them.

Just thinking out loud here - imagine we got Winter Storm reprinted. Can you really argue that an environment with Wildfire, Winter Storm, Threat from the North, First Snow (in some form) adn Westeros Bleeds would really NEED Valar? LOL

I like valar. I especially like outwit to go against it too.

Valar should be restricted. its a nice reset, its useful and its powerful so if you want to use it no problem. . .. . but it'll cost you by not being able to use fear or narrow or any of the others

Shenanigans said:

Shenanigans said:

I'm not sure how much it was done to create plot-deck diversity, as the population of plots continues to increase, they'd be seen less frequently. Outside of allowing the "To Be A" events in a scenario where you don't care about the effect from a trait'd plot (and therefore the high stats become more keenly noticeable), what % of decks. Conversely, if they came off the list, would most deck lists that don't feature a trait feature Valar, Retaliation, Loyalty, Fury + 3? Are there any of the Fury's that _don't_ get played because your unlikely to get the effect/rarely face that match up?

I guess I'd like to see a split to a restricted list for plots and one for house decks... and include Valar. (Retaliation & Loyalty are popular, but by no means defining. You could restrict them if you wanted to get rid of _anything_ too ubiquitous, like Gathering Storm was). I'd like to make people run more Wildfire. If I was getting really ambitious, I'd just suggest an errata to make them hit all houses (or maybe all other) to solve that sort of imbalance, because I don't think it is some magical compensation for the varied effects. Though perhaps that might make Stark murder a bit strong. Oh, and I do so wish they'd made the errata for the Bara plot match the wording for Targ... parallelism people, it helps things make sense.

And Mr. Macias, you should know better than most that Bara & Targ would benefit most from the return of Winter Storm.

Really? ~ Why heavens - now that you mention it: I guess that didn't occur to me.

All kidding aside -maybe down the road for a split restricyed list. Right now - 95% of teh palyers out there would just consider their Fury plot Banned and play valr. tehre woudl eb little effect. You would need to add several Plots - and even then: most people would play Valar.

Stag Lord said:

Reposting into a fresh OT thread.

Staton said:

So you are saying that power creep is the means to solving this problem?

I disagree.

Yeah, power creeping the environment while still leaving me with the same stack of rarely used plots isn't exactly sounding like a great deal.

Penfold said:

I'm not saying keep printing better and better plots. I'm saying there are some plots that are bad. Don't print those plots. Only print plots that are good. Plots can have comparable power levels yet do completely different things.

Are you sure those plots are bad plots? There is no chance they are good and balanced plots, just not great auto-includes which require little talent or strategy in their playing or even in their matching to a deck like the others?

The plots might not be bad, not all at least, but are so situational that they just don't see play. Plots like retaliation are not overpowered, they are just universally good no matter what kind of deck you are running. However, if you print cards that have comparable power levels as retaliation, then people will have to actually make choices when considering plots. I don't think it would be power creep to print cards that have about the same power level as retaliation. ~Just as long as we don't print anything OVER 9000!!!!!

Staton said:

Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron?

LoneWanderer said:

always good =/= overpowered.

There are a lot of plots that are WAY better than retaliation, but they are situational.