Rogue Cypher said:

The part where he said you shouldn't try to play Lannister like Baratheon anyway.

Rave said:

I'm not saying that Lannister has nothing but vanilla characters. What I'm saying is that they have a lot more vanilla characters than other houses. Baratheon Knights have some vanilla characters, but not nearly as many as Lannister. Like how many gold producing weenies do they have? or the clansmen that don't really do anything. Sure tyrion's enforcer doesn't kneel to attack or defend, but still pretty vanilla.

Now as for you reset and I only have a few cards in hand. The fact that you are probably only getting two or three power a turn means that I am going to have quite a few turns to get back into the game. The game isn't just completely over because you have more cards in hand. You still have the upper hand sure, but its not guaranteed that you are going to win. Especially since you are going to take awhile to win.

This poll is about perception. Perception is different than objective statistics. I'd like to see a comparison of the poll results with something like taking all Regionals + GenCon + big European(national) tournaments of the past 6 months. Take Top 8 finishes. Divide that by number of players who entered the tourney playing the House and then possibly give a tiny statistical boost to the House that won the tournament. You could take some common agendas like Maesters and then do this for Maester decks irrespective of House. This would give a number that would comparatively reflect how well the Houses each perform in aggregate.

That would be a good start to comparing how competitive the Houses actually are at the highest tournament level rather than just the perception (which could be very different from reality).

My prediction for tallying up the actually statistically most dominant Houses would be Bara, Greyjoy and Martell above the other three Houses. Then come Stark and Lanni not too far behind and last place really belongs to Targ. The only competitive Targ builds of the entire LCG era have been Maesters and Wildlings which is telling because those were more like Maester/Wildling decks run out of Targ rather than a "Targ Build". And Targ (as the other Thread suggests) most definitely has the worst character base of any House (especially Uniques). Hopefully when FFG gets around to incorporating Dance With Dragons that will change.

LaughingTree said:

Thats a good start, but it doesnt really tell you how good each house is. There are some players like rings and rave who will always skew the power rankings in favor or lannister and/or martell because they always play those houses.

I am not sure there is really a way to do it without running a league or some sort of event where each person builds a deck for each house and plays it.

Staton said:

You get me another ChiCon and I'll play the f*** out of Lannister.

Also, this is a vanilla character.

The game in general barely has any of those these days.

*edit* Strictly speaking, if we're using this terminology, that card is French Vanilla. I don't actually recall any true vanilla characters in the game right now.

Kennon said:

Not sure what you mean. Is this supposed to link to the back of a card?

Staton said:

You know he was stating that in general right? And not directed at you in the form of a "You're stupid to play like that, play like this." way?

Staton said:

It IS kind of boring to have 3 different character slots just produce gold, but it lets them comfortably splash more effects into their location base than other houses, which is worth noting. Plus, gold is one of their themes, they should always be on top gold-wise.

Clansmen do plenty. Tyrion's Enforcers lets you go all in for military (which is pretty much what all the claim effects are for I think) if you go first and then have them available to block, and it also lets them attack out of the gate after being played off of a Mountain Camp. C'mon, that's not vanilla. That's what clansmen do. The mechanic is unique, if not a little un-reliable, but that's also very "clansmen" I think.

Tournament viable? Not really, but we've only really had 1 expansion that added anything to the theme (except Black Ears in the last one). If you were talking tournament viability instead of which characters are vanilla, this would be a different debate.

Post-reset, the game isn't completely over, but card advantage means a lot. What are you using to draw after the reset? Chances are, you'll be drawing off the deck. I'm not trying to create a silver bullet scenario, But Lannister has the best card draw in the game, so this isn't an uncommon situation.

Fieras said:

*sigh* Ok, how about I try linking it like this?

Rogue Cypher said:

Tyrion + Schemes of the Scholar. In Clansmen.

You laugh now, but come December we'll all be wondering why it was ever allowed to see print.

LoneWanderer said:

Indeed a quite absurd combo... even though I suspect that from December we'll all be worried by other, more deadly Lannister comboes... such as those already possible in a Lannister Maesters intrigue-centered decks... powered up by the new agenda.

Still, considering how you can raise the claim on the challenges by discarding cards due to other clansman mechanics... dunno which deck archetype will be come scarier! ^^