rings said:

Uniques dying is a cool aspect of the game (and the books), but I think the debate has been pretty good about the pros and cons of having a plethora of kill, specifically its impact on running duplicates of uniques.

I agree. Highlander would be a very cool official format to roll out this tournament season, especially now that the card pool is probably big enough to support it. Maybe we'll try it as a side event at DC regionals.

Danigral said:

It could be that part of the problem is that there hasn't been enough focus on character survivability this cycle. From a thematic standpoint, some characters have managed to survive either through wits, luck or mercy. The new Theon is a good example of that. Still this could be spread to other houses.

Bara has gotten some decent focus on recursion but that's about it. There's been more than a few times where I wish I had some targeted removal in a game to maintain parity but for every action there should be some ability to counteract that. There are some pretty strong effects that can be generated by a unique characters but survivability doesn't seem to be one of them. Maybe there should be cards that allow you to generate abilities based on how well duplicated the character is.

I'd really like to see a reprint of Put to the Question ... it's an event slot, but it let's you hold on to a key dude (and it's limited to uniques) for another round, perhaps until you've got out Power of Blood.

I didn't see it mentioned before, but the introduction of Immunity in Valyrian Block was the result of too-much perceived removal. And Winter has Come in... Winter block as unsaveable blanket kill pretty much eliminated the running of dupes. I need to play some more, but I kinda like where the game is at. RPS is always going to be the case, and it can be frustrating when design goes that way, because the metagame becomes a guessing contest come tournament time. Repeatable effects are strong, and irritating when they become to easy (GG), but I don't think that would be so bad if Martell didn't have an easy cancel for saves or cancels. Unless we just want to make all save effects work on kill, discard _and_ return to hand.

Luke, I do think if someone took the time, one could build a deck around Bear Island that would make GG look like Sansa.

Sure bounce is annoying when you have renown and attachments on the character, but GG is a PIA when the martell player has a better gold flow and draw than you... but guess what? If a player has that advantage... they're winning already. If the Martell player can't afford to spend the gold to keep putting down a noble crest to use GG, the card is just sitting there.

Also... Milk of the Poppy is still the most efficient character removal there is.

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Mathias Fricot said:

And plus win on the defense you have routing the charge, then you can kneel Eddard to play "guilty"

Professor Nomos said:

~All 4 at once! Forget about GG, let's ban that crap!