I would like to open a discussion on whether or not people believe Joust to be a Rock Paper Scissors game. Is it possible to build a perfect deck? Or will it always be the case that every house/build has an Achilles heel, and if you happen to be facing that deck type, you might as well quit.

I have a buddy that plays exclusively melee for this exact reason.

Rock, Paper, Scissors is something of an oversimplification, but the sentiment behind it is true to some extent. There is no such thing as a perfect deck as you can always find cards which will specifically work well again a certain type of deck construction and ensure that you include them in your own deck design. However, this can make your own deck weaker or stronger to certain builds.

GoT is a peculiarity amongst this type of game as it has more readily available search than any other game I've played. The mechanics around how the searches work is also plays a major factor, especially the plot card search effects. For this reason, as well as the relatively high draw numbers compared to similar games, it's much easier (and often more beneficial, so that you have more options available to you) to have singles and doubles of cards throughout your deck, with only the most crucial cards seeing three copies. This is in stark contrast to a game like MTG where decks are generally made with the maximum number (4, in MTG) of each vital card and perhaps doubles of the cards you want in there, but don't want to risk filling your hand with. This lends a much more strategic approach to how you play GoT than other similar games. It's more about the decisions you make than the cards you draw at random, although the random element can never be completely eliminated.

What I will say is that when I first began playing the game, some joust decks did seem to consistently wipe the floor with other decks to such a one sided degree that I thought the search/draw mechanics were working against the game in Joust and that it must always have been designed with Melee in mind. The latter may in fact be true, but over time I found that the issue I had with Joust was more to do with the skewed mindset I had of how decks should be constructed, and a lack of cards to pool from. Those issues have now been resolved, and I've had tons of Joust games against loads of different decks / houses that are hard to call either way.

That would imply that if i am playing paper and someone like Dan, Erick, or Gualdo are playing rock i will win. this is sadly not the case. certain decks match up well against others, and certain decks really destroy others but it all comes down to the driver

I don't see it that way at all. Sure, certain factions have certain weaknesses. However, said weaknesses can be circumvented or even exploited to the players benefit.

To me, AGoT is a lot like L5R. Certain factions couldn't compare to each other. Crab was far stronger than Scorpion in sheer force, but Scorpion could best Crab (and usually did) politically. Crane and Scorpion were near equals in the political game, but Scorpion couldn't match Cranes strong duelists and Crane couldn't match Scorpions ninja.

From what I've seen, AGoT is like every other card game in that to win requires a combination of skill, luck, experience, and card availability.

BenStark said:

L5R?

dh098017 said:

Legend of the 5 Rings, a quite excellent CCG that started in the era of M:tG revised. It was innovative in the fact that the champion of each yearly tournament was canonical and worked into the story of the next expansion set.

I don't think I have ever sat in front of a certain house and said 'I lose'. Now a combo of person/deck/house? Yeah, I could see that - but many times I think I have a good match-up and lose or the other way around.

dh098017 said:

To expand a little more on what DIEMYDARLING said, L5R (Legend of the Five Rings) is to Asia what AGoT is to Europe.

It revolves around 9 Clans within the empire of Rokugan, and their political/military manueverings. Each clan has it's specific strengths and weaknesses and they are more clearly defined than the Houses of AGoT. If you can play AGoT, you can play L5R and vice versa.

The pro's to the game is that they do let the player base help decide the outcomes of certain story lines and have champions design cards. The con's are the standard problems that come with CCGs, set rotations make cards outdated and no longer playable. Randomized boosters and decks make card hunting a necessity. Essentially, it's a money sink.

I once played John Bruno at Gencon SoCal, and hit him with 3 4 claim challenges on the first turn. He then proceeded to win 15-0.

I would say no.

Rave said:

....ah.....I remember those days, back when I was a good player.....Good Times, Good Times!

I do believe some DECKS match up better against some other decks. It's up to the player to overcome those perceived mismatches.

dh098017 said:

I'll just reiterate what others have said. Yes, every house/build does have an achilles heel, as it should. Yes, some matchups are better than others. Some are quite bad, and if you have such a one, and your opponent is a good player who really knows his deck, and who knows your build, and who grins wolfishly at you after you sat down, and says "Let's rock", yeah, then it's time to be like "Oh, boy". But "might as well quit"? Certainly not.

Tell your buddy you respect his decision to play only melee, but he's wrong.

Although I'll admit, if the cardpool available to the players is limited, this issue might come up.

Along those same lines, from what I can tell, the weaknesses of the various Houses are not as obvious as they are in other games like L5R.

I am interested in the following:

Name what appears to be a dominating tactic that is hard to overcome while you are against it without making your deck revolve around controlling it.

One example I hear about is being against a Maester deck.