I think the metagame is like a self-correcting marketplace. Everybody runs maesters, and so nobody runs attachments. Then all of a sudden out of the woodwork comes a deck with attachments that you can't deal with, so people start running attachment hate again, like maesters. Martell has really good cards, some are different, and some are just better. There is absolutely no doubt about it, and if you think otherwise your just wrong. Hell, their 1 gold refugee is a beast. and now a 1 gold three strength sand snake with intrigue and power icons with an ability? That isn't and ally or refugee or mercenary? There is no denying that is far to the right on the cost effectiveness scale (where the right is good). Think about how that character alone stacks up against the intrigue icons in Stark. Hell, think about how that stacks up against the military icons in Stark. Sure, you have Hodor (who is an ally and can't attack) and you have Hungry Mob (who is an ally and might kneel on you) or you have Knight of the Red Fork (who might kneel all your other cards or not even stand). So ya, sometimes they just get better cards. Unless there is a lot of Bastard hate in this lannister box (which would be flavourful, given tywins predisposition) your going to have a hard time telling me other houses get the same kind of love as Martell. Like look at their icon removal location that just came out. its boss. How many top notch stark cards have come out in the last two cycles? Well, we have Luwin and Meera. Harrenhal is a pretty good card too except it will die to all the location hate people are packing against Ghaston Grey. Thats what I thought. Don't get me wrong, I love to play Stark and I am not trying to *****. It is just that at the end of the day there are better and more efficient cards in other houses - particularly Martell. So pull your heads out of the sand (haha, get it?) for a second and accept the fact that God (Nate French... and Damon Stone) don't always give with both hands equally.

THIS BEING SAID

At the end of the day your only running 60-65 cards in a deck, so with all these options of good cards they can only fit so many in. And I think thats why we see such balance in terms of tournament results etc. All the other houses might have significantly fewer cost-effective/OP/competitive/whateveryouwanttocallit cards in absolute number, but things don't phase out. So you can still make a competitive deck in another house, it's just going to have less "competitive" options for what cards are worth those deck slots. For clarification: if you have 200 really good cards, you can still only have 60 in a deck. If you have 60 good cards, you can still only have 60 in a deck.

And if people want to complain about Lannister before it is here, remember this: hyper kneel is not coming back. It never left. Just ask Cersei Lannister. seewhatididthere?

@Kennon, I am planning on 3 GG, 3 Myrcella, 3 Edric, 2 RV, 1 Arianne (for actual challenges with RV and Arianne's effect). Use lost oasis, they will hate on GG more and you don't need to really worry about the GJ if your running Summer (with or without agenda) and have at least one Regroup (poisoned knife and the alchemist shop won't hold up against the tin link hate right now). Bounce the nobles to bounce their attachment laden/power heavy/high strength/stealthy characters, and use TRV with Lost Oasis like it was meant to be. Its French Vanilla, but it works. Plus those dupes of Myrcella and Edric you are drawing into can feed those Maesters of the Sun.

Mighty Jim said:

Sorry for the late reply - It's being run by Jim from Patriot Games. Lifted from their website...

Saturday 3rd December

A Game of Thrones LCG Tournament at Patriot Games Sheffield.

Doors open 10am. Start 11.30am.

FREE Entry

Prizes include playmat, counters and badges.

Not sure if they've run any before, it'll be the first I've attended.

Mathias Fricot said:

I agree with this and said as much in my original post (although worded much differently), and I don't feel this makes an iota of difference to how I view the cards Martell keep being blessed with :-)

Mathias Fricot said:

If you mean the Maiden of Poisons, it's s 1 . So 3 gold altogether. That's still pretty good for a 3 str shadows bicon with an great ability (compare her to Warlock of Qarth or Sister of Truth) but not quite Lost Refugee efficiency.

Regarding GG, does it matter how much location control there is? There's even more character control and we have plenty of restricted characters.

Kennon said:

Yes, if you load up on nobles GG becomes more viable. But each extra noble other than the viper and arianne, you are sacrificing a slot that a better character could use. Now this cost can be mitigated if you had other Noble Crest tech. And that would be a noble crest deck. Compare that to Lanni Shadows where the cost to put cards in to react with AGH are Tyrion, Varys, Qyburn,Syrio, Venomous Blade if you were using the agenda. You also get that location to stand shadows cards... so I would be curious if a Martell Noble Crest deck could be more functional and cohesive than a Lanni Hyper Shadows Kneel Kai!!! deck is.

As for the mention of Brothel with the addition of other kneel tech. That's just based on the assumption that every Lanni deck has other kneel beyond the brothel. You could just run a deck with Brothel being the only kneel card in it, unlike Ghaston Grey which requires you to put noble crests in the deck, and to hope your only choice is not a power-laden viper.

I suppose after this rambling I should come to a clear point: Ghaston Grey is similar to Alchemist Guild Hall and Bear Island (+/- strength here) in that it is a powerful card, but it requires you to build a deck around it. While cards like the Brothel do not require a specific deck. Restricted cards like the tls,castellian, venomous blade, burning on the sands, val were all powerful cards that could go in any deck type. And all the above cards were powerful on their own and did not require any other card combination to work effectively.

ASoIaFfan said:

In case anyone's wondering, the fifth I was talking about is Martell at the Spanish Nationals. Stark hasn't won anything major that I can remember, but they came in second at Black Friday, third or fourth at Stahleck and second, I believe, at the Spanish Nationals, so it's not like they're out of contention or anything. I think it's probably Bara that's furthest from being a top dog right now, since their premium build, the Maester Robert build, has been nerfed into oblivion. I'd be surprised to see them win anything major in the near future. Then again, a Bara Knights deck won the Swiss Nationals not long ago, so what do I know.

imrahil327 said:

Like Ghaston Grey beeing played OOH with multi house Myrcella as fuel for it in addition to all the kneel effects?

Haha, yuck. But maybe...

CAn we go easy on the "Haelth of the metagame" meme that ahs been running up thread? A lot of us feel that teh agem sin't actually healthy at all - sure we have seen soem different Houses win different events, but many of those House wins (GenCon, Black Friday and Days at least) were Maester's Path decks. There is a strong perception that its either Maester decks or Greyjoy choke (maybe with Martell summer thrown in0 rigth now.

But is an agenda taht seems to eb everywhere really a good thing?

And I am really tired of the anit banning sentiment. I think our expectations need to adjust - given an ever expanding card pool banning adn restrictiona re going to have to be more vigorously applied going forward or imbalance is inevitable. Or else we need to rotate.

Or make worse cards.

The longer I play this game the more I consider rotation and if it's good. People who are 'serious' players are going to buy virtually every new chapter pack or house expansion regardless - which means rotation will not affect them as much.

Casual players don't care about rotation. They will make their own rules on card legality and generally will only buy the chapter packs that add to their enjoyment. A true casual player could buy the core set and have fun with it for many months. This is a much different demographic than the "serious" or "competitive" player that will buy everything because having a playset of everything makes him more suited to be competitive.

The real issue I see with rotation is that cards don't come out in the quantities that seem to be needed to make it feasible. I guess you could make the rotation much slower to compensate for this, however. Right now many houses are very shallow in certain gold slots for non-unique characters, as one example, and rotation would severely hurt the choices they have.

Rotation would certainly open up variety, which is a good thing, because there are so many must-have cards that are just auto-include. The other issue with rotation is that some themes are reliant on older cards. Seasons are a good example. There is an easy fix for this, though. Magic has the reprint set that is legal with the current sets. You don't need a reprint set in this game, all you need is a list of old cards that are still legal in blocks that are rotated out. This list would be stuff like Carrion Bird, Time for Ravens, etc.

We are seeing power creep whether people will acknowledge it or not. When new stuff comes out it is usually more powerful than old stuff. Maesters are better than Wildlings and Brotherhood, period. Wildlings were more powerful than older things when they came out. I suppose the Targaryen expansion box wasn't power creep, it actually had a lot of mediocre to bad cards, but that's only one example. The Lannister box appears like it's going to introduce a lot of power creep. So much so that I see Lannister replacing Maesters as the omnipresent deck when it comes out.

I don't even care about power creep as a concept personally. This game is not fun if new cards stop coming out. Being forced to buy new cards is not a negative thing in a collectible card game, it's one of the core reasons that makes the game fun. A static card game is a dead card game, period. As long as the power creep is evenly distributed across all houses it's a moot issue to me.

Stag Lord said:

The Martell deck that won the Spanish National ran TMP, too. So yes, four of the five decks that won the last five "big" tourneys (GenCon, Days, Black Friday, Stahleck, Spanish National) ran the Agenda, and I totally get how it grates with people. Hell, I don't like it much either. But that doesn't wholly contradict what I said about the health of the metagame, because all these decks were fundamentally different from each other. Dan's deck from Black Friday was a genuine Targ deck, with some Maetser support. The Martell deck that won the Spanish National was a genuine Martell Summer deck with some Maester support. If I'm not mistaken, the Lanni deck that won Days was a genuine Lanni Kneel deck with only a pinch of Maesters. In Stahleck, there was no Maester deck in the Top 8 at all (and not a whole lot in the Top 16 or even the Top 32, I think). OK, the deck that won GenCon (and the Austrian National, BTW) was a gimmicky deck that exploited an imbalanced combo, which was subsequently nerfed to hell. Compare that to the situation last year, when it was all about a bunch of Wildling decks that all looked the same, felt the same and played the same. Or before, when it was all about Lanni Kneel, from what I hear (not that I've been around back then, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

Look, if you dislike how usable the Maester Agenda is, and how easy it is to incorporate it into all kinds of different deck types, then I'm right with you. But I don't think it can be denied that the metagame is pretty **** diverse right now. And it's not "some different Houses winning different events", it's five different Houses, all with very distinct deck types, winning the last five events of note in the World. And the sixth, Stark, again with a very distinct deck type, being pretty **** close in at least three of these events. When has that ever happened before in the LCG era?

Stag Lord said:

Fair enough. Eventually, more bannings and Restrictions will be necessary. Possibly, GG will need to be restricted. Or maybe Myrcella will need to lose her Noble crest. But let's be serious here: Of the five decks that won those five events, exactly one ran GG. In Stahleck, there was no GG in the Top 8. How many were in the top 4 at Black Friday? It was either one or none, and if it was one, it went out in the Semis (I don't know who Dan beat in the semis). At Days, it was two Martell decks in top 8 (I assume both ran GG, although I don't know), one in top 4, none in the finals. That doesn't sound all that broken or dominant to me.

If there's a problem card, ban it, or restrict it, or errata it, whatever's necessary. I'm all for it. But please, only do it after the card has really become a problem. TLS should have taught us that much. Breaking out the banhammer for GG just now is uncalled for, and I think the numbers back that up.

Stasis said:

Honestly some of that creep we're seeing is the designers being a little more sensible with card design.

First version of Daenerys was passable but utilized a gold theme that sort of hooked into a few other core set Targ cards. It wasn't really useful or thematic though. The two subsequent versions are much more useful and representative. Sure its power creep but a necessary improvement.

I'm sure everyone has their pet peeve characters and other cards that could use a serious improvement in game power (I'm looking at you Strong Belwas).

@Ratatoski: Well - we have a fundamental disagreement here. Its the smae argument that has been going sicne genCon at least: Teh maester agenda is too prevaelnt in the game and defines the overall staregic picture WAY too much. we can split hairs about hwat is and isn't a maester deck - but it is painfully evident that simply running teh agemnda (As I alluded to in my Agenda thread a couple fo weeks back) is an absolute no brainer for amny decks. The maetser tech smooths out and makes efficient almost any build and the overall game has become very mcuh about hwo best to deal with this tech.

And this has been the case for months. And months.

Any time a theme has a risk-reward formula that is as out of balance as this is causes an unhealthy metagame. I knwo people are staying away form competitive events becuase of this, i know several peopel who are holding their noses as they play competitively adn are waiitng for Bastard to come out and hoepfully other solutions to rpesent themselves. I cocnede there are a couple of seasonal builds that can match up well with maesters - but all in all I find it very ahrd to say the overall game is halethy becuase we ahev seen a House spread of winners, and not conicdnetally most of which run TMP. Thsi agenda was poorly designed and executed and the game really won't be healthy for a while.

And to be fair: I do see your point that each House has a tournament level strategy that works now, given the size of the card pool. Baratheon can rush, Stark can kill and rush, Targ can burn etc. and the results of the recent tournaments bear this out.

What troubles me is that these strategies are enhanced because of this ubiquitous neutral agenda. The Houses aren’t balanced organically - they are balanced because of TMP. This doesn’t feel healthy to me.

Well, as with everybody, my views are shaped by my experiences. Being a fairly new player, I attended my first really big tourney a couple of weeks ago at Stahleck, and of course that had a huge impact on the way I look at things.

What I saw there was an exceedingly healthy metagame. A nice spread of houses and builds. The old hands I talked to told me it was much, much better than the year before, when it had been Wildlings or bust. There was no real dominance by any one house or build or Agenda, not Maesters, not Martell, not Stark Siege (the most common build by far). There were plenty of Maester decks, but somehow, they didn't do much. I don't have exact stats for Top 32 or Top 16 yet, but I'd guess they were underrepresented already in Top 32. As I said, by the quarterfinals, they were all gone.

Also in the knockout stages, there was a nice spread. In Top 16, there were all houses and all kinds of builds represented. I played against a very innovative char-lite Targ KotHH deck in Top 16 (no trace of Maesters). My friend Markus from Austria took an ultra-fast, very cool Bara treaty GJ Rush deck to Top 16, which i think you'd like very much. Even in Top 8 there were four different houses with four different builds.

I guess what I'm saying is this: I understand your arguments, I know where you're coming from, but I just haven't experienced it.

~If there's anything that unbalances the metagame here in Europe, it's how good the Spanish guys are.

Stag Lord said:

I don't think I agree here either. Let's imagine for a moment the Agenda was banned. How would that affect the power balance between the houses?

- Bara wouldn't be hurt at all. At least here in Europe, nobody plays Bara Maesters anymore. There was none at Stahleck.

- GJ runs Maesters well, no doubt. But consider this: Of 13 GJ decks at Stahleck, six ran TMP, but the three that made Top 8 all didn't. I contend that GJ would be a top House right now even with TMP out of the environment.

- Stark. There were a number of Stark Maester decks at Stahleck (six, to be exact). I don't know if any made the cut, but the top Stark decks I saw in the later rounds of Swiss and in the knockout rounds were all either SoW (most of 'em) or No Agenda. Stark would pretty much keep their place in the order of things if TMP was gone.

- Lanni. Same as Stark. There were a few TMP decks, but the ones that made it far were CoS/Hyperkneel without Maesters. My guess would be that the Lanni Kneel decks that did so well at Days would have done well too if TMP was banned. As someone said upthread (maybe it was even you), Lanni Hyperkneel never went away. They're a top dog, they'd be without TMP, and even if you don't agree now, LotR will likely remove all doubt.

- Martell would still be an elite House if there was no TMP in the environment, I think we can all agree on that. That was the point of this thread, wasn't it?

- That leaves Targ. I will concede that Targ might be knocked off tier 1 status without TMP. Or it might not, I really don't know. Interestingly enough, there was only one Targ TMP deck at Stahleck. One out of 120. Whatever that means.

So I contend that the current power balance between the houses would not be affected much at all by a ban of TMP, with the possible exception of Targ being nerfed somewhat. In any case I think it's much less bad than you said above.

I get what your saying Stag, that it isn't a real balance because they are running TMP. So really its TMP>everything else. But if we consider perfect balance impossible, is it better than nothing? Would we rather have all six houses doing good using the agenda (okay, not Stark) or would we rather have one or two dominant houses and the other four sub-par without TMP? Thats all I have left to say on the matter.

So how about core set Robb? best card ever or what.

I'm not worried about TMP at all. It's prevalent, sure, but it's the flavor of the month (or 6 months, with the LCG release schedule). The answer to that is newer cards, and like clockwork (practically, barring printing/shipping snafus), new cards are trickling in. I don't equate running the agenda with one link and running the agenda with 4-10. One link doesn't make it a "Maester deck," in my mind, but if you want to feel that's kind of cheap that it's even possible, fine. But that doesn't contribute negatively to the "health" of the environment.

Neither do I feel the need to plan for my opponent running a heavily themed Maester deck after the Robert deck was nerfed. They devalue attachments, yes. Other than that, how do they change the environment? For the most part, their effects are just solid game mechanics - draw, icon manipulation, STR boosts, income, etc. Nothing that isn't a regular part of the game, honestly. The exceptions to this are things like discard, but that hasn't really made an impact yet. The "normal" chains can make their decks run more efficiently and consistently, but I'm having a hard time seeing why you would have to build around the possibility that your opponent might be running TMP.

I truly believe that as more cards come out, you'll see less and less of it. It won't disappear completely, but other decktypes will arise that don't want to run At the Gates + X number of Maesters. I think you're seeing that a little bit now with the most recent tournaments.

Ghaston Grey is another matter. At its cheapest this past year, it cost 3 gold to trigger it. While it is a hugely powerful effect, 3 gold is nothing to sneeze at. Now, with a 2 gold character when Myrcella comes out, Ghaston's Grey's power level jumps significantly. I am still trying to wrap my brain around how this could be a good thing.

I wonder about GG though, it's prevelance was du, I believe, mostly to the Maester and the voltron builds it encouraged. When your opponent has multiple targets, with useful attachments paired up with cheap characters, and powerful characters with no attachments choosing targets is a little more difficult, and while you are bouncing back the biggest threat (as you see it) you are putting yourself 3 (soon to be 2) gold behind at a minimum of advancing your own board position.

Don't get me wrong, the location is awesome, it is super useful, but the usefullness is dulled against certain decktypes. I think we may see more decks that can survive an early GG, GJ Choke is certainly an obvious candidate, since it doesn't really depend on expensive characters to make it work, and destroying GG becomes pretty easy out of that House. My GJ choke deck runs three cards at cost 4 or higher, Victarian, Balon, and Euron, which means the Martell player is almost always at a point of parity when it comes to what it is putting back in my hand, and I always have more gold and reducers than he does, which means in the long run, each bounce actually hurts him more than it hurts me. Rock to Scissors.

And while Martell control suped up with GG can beat many other decks, so can GJ Choke so it isn't like it is just an "anti-deck" unable to hold its own against the field. GJ choke does have its own weaker match-ups, which says to me that the environment is pretty darn balanced, which brings me to my next point...

Balanced != Healthy

TMP is popping up all over the place in obviously non-maester decks. This is not healthy to me... but the game still shows all sorts of strong signs of balance. I suspect we'll have another two months tops of Maesters all over the place and Tales of Champions will be in full swing, we'll have Lions of the Rock out, and people will be heavily exploring and exploiting the new cards and the decks they enable.

Well a nedly nerf would be to set the Maester's, Wilding, and Night's Watch agendas all to Neutral House only. None of those factions are supposed to be taking sides.

bloodycelt said:

+1 to this, even though its never gonna happen.

bloodycelt said:

+2 to this even though i think its pretty clear from the books that the Maesters have been taking sides for a while

Kennon said:

ding! we have a winner. i should have explained more clearly i guess. though i enjoy it when you're in my head will. the "cost" to "effect" ratio is unmatched.

Penfold said:

See, this misconception with GG keeps cropping up. If putting yourself 2-3 gold behind as a cost of advancing your board position is the only disadvantage you can think of, then it's no disadvantage at all! Please explain how returning Robert Baratheon (KotS) to your opponents hand by bouncing Edric Dayne puts you 3 gold behind?

I'm sorry if that sounds intentionally rude, it's not meant to be, I'm just trying to hammer home a point that keeps recurring when people talk about Ghaston Grey like it has a significant drawback to consider.

Because you are not advancing your board position. You could potentially be advancing the quality of your board presence, but even that is not as easy to judge.

Advancing your board position would be you clearly getting an advantage over your opponent. Both of you removing a character from the board is not an advancement. If you are targeting someone with attachments then you may gain card advantage that way, but if the character you bounced to trigger it is equitable to the character + attachment I lost then it is a neutral action.