FFG just put up a news post, announcing that the Defenders of the North reprints are now on sale. In the spiel on the cycle, they discuss a bit about the agendas:

From beginning to end, the Defenders of the North cycle focuses on the men who travel north to the Wall, where they take the black of the Night’s Watch. New characters, locations, events, and agendas develop the importance of the brothers in black and their vigil at the northern edge of the world. Simultaneously, the Defenders of the North follows the Wildlings of the north as they prepare for war. The cycle’s six The North agendas allow you to build decks for the Night’s Watch, the Wildlings, or both. The North agendas are unlike normal agendas, and you can play as many of them as you wish, though each The North agenda attached to your house increases the number of power you need to win the game by two.

Does this read to anyone else like you can use all six agendas at once? Are they un-errata-ing the agendas, or does whoever wrote this not know what they're talking about?

PS - If anyone has gotten the reprints yet, has anything been done to Blood of the First Men? Has it been modified so it can come off the banned list?

I had been wondering for awhile whether they would omit, errata, or leave-it-alone the Blood of the First Men. I had a feeling they would reprint the packs as they were originally released, the only change being the 3x quantity. This announcement confirms that. The language around using up to six agendas is surprising as the erratas and banning are appended to the FAQ, which is supposed to apply to casual as well as tournament play, right? Either way, in practice, most casual play a some point adopts to the FAQ documents.

Well when they announced the reprints, they said that they would be making adjustments to cards that had been errata'd. So in the King's Landing packs, Alchemist Guild Hall is now printed as having being a Limited Response, unlike before where that was just how it had been errata'd. I expected that The North agendas would have been updated to reflect the erratas that say you can only use all the Wildling agendas or all the Night's Watch agendas but not both, and I was hoping they would tweak Blood of the First Men to make it playable. Now I'm not sure what's happened.

Has anyone gotten the reprints yet? Have the agendas been changed at all?

Just opened the new return of the others chapter pack. Blood of the first men now reads: "reduce the cost of the first unique wildling character... Each round by 1"

Ooooooo! I wonder if that means an errata!

OrangeDragon said:

Sweet! That actually makes Gilly playable....

Hmm, I wonder if the errata'd card will be restricted or not. If it's restricted you obviously can't play it with Val, who isone of the few unique wildlings.

"Blood of the first men is no longer banned. The previous edition is now considered to be errat'd to match the newest reprint. Currently all the agenda's maintain the NW/Wildling errata. It was not printed on the cards to allow us to revert back to all six agendas being useable at some future point. That will depend on the state of the meta and will be something we review each time we prepare for a new FAQ." - Damon

If Gylbert Fartwind is in play, will that turn off the "reduce by 1" portion of Blood of the First Men?

Yes he will.

Staton said:

But aren't Agendas considered "out of play" and unaffected by in-play cards? (other than Mance).

mathlete said:

Fartwind doesn't affect the agenda, he affects a game state, so there should be issue here. He should work effectively against the agenda.

Yeah Farwynd is actually affecting the character's cost, not the Agenda in any way. If Street of Steel was Immune to Character Abilities, you still wouldn't be able to reduce Drogon with it if Farwynd was in play.

Staton said:

Yay, for making a banned card playable again! Dormouse rules!

Well, clearly we're gonna need some Noble Wildlings.

Hopefully this means we'll see a unique Wildling or two in this current chapter cycle. I find the game's lack of Rattleshirt and Ygritte disturbing.

Whenever it is they get around to reprinting the first two cycles, this likely means that they'll redo Compelled by the Rock and Jaqen H'ghar and make them playable.

You can never make Jaqen playable. He will always be broken with those abilities.

Staton said:

Sure you can. Just get rid of the +1 Str wording. Or just limit it to "...gets +1 STR if he has any power on him."

JerusalemJones said:

Vigilant + Intimidate is kinda nuts. Not to mention there seem to be some pretty insane combos with him. Jaqen gets to be Captain of the Iron Fleet?! No more locations! Plus Jaqen claims 3+ power a turn! Yay! Hell I don't even want to think of him having chain attachments.

Maybe the answer from Damon means a new FAQ is on the way soon.

I assume once Lions of the Rock hits will be when the new FAQ arrives. There may be some cards in that set that need erratas (hopefully nothing to restrict, but who knows), any erratas needed for the cards we've gotten so far from the current cycle -- they had better have an FAQ entry laying out exactly how Meera is supposed to work -- plus any clarifications on reprints in King's Landing and Defenders of the North.

I dunno, there's bound to be a way to make Jaqen playable but not over the top. Lowering his printed STR might work, for one.

Unless you take away his vigilant I don't see how.

Take away all the house keywords...even considering his amorphous-dynamic qualities they are none-too-becoming of him.
Just give him several small unique abilities.
For example, you can have his STR pump say something like "for each card affiliation in play Jaqen gains +1 STR".

Or maybe limit the keywords he can have. Make it so he always has your House's keyword, and he has an Any Phase ability that allows him to gain another keyword until the end of the phase, limit once per round or something.

If Jaqen is permanently unplayable, that wouldn't be the end of the world, but Compelled by the Rock should be easy enough to retool.

Those of you who've picked up the DotN reprints, have there been any other changes? It'd be great if Val were adjusted; I'm fine with her staying restricted, but if she was rewritten in such a way to break the combo with The Laughing Storm, it'd be nice to get him off the list.

If you are going to do that though, you are making a new card. The point of the old Jaqen was that he was all houses and had all the houses keywords. You can never make that balanced.

Staton said:

Well, as you've said, the current iteration of Jaqen is unbalanced and unbalancable. Why not just make a new card then? Give us an entirely revamped Jaqen, one that we can actually use. I'd rather have a playable card than a card that will always and forever be banned. No reason to stay faithful to the original design intent; that intent was insane. Keep the every-house affiliation, keep the pretty art, but come up with something other than every House keyword.

How about every non-House keyword? Stealth and Deadly fit him like a glove, and Renown certainly isn't a great stretch; as far as I know, no card has all three.