Well, as GenCon approaches, I am expecting that we will see a new FAQ in time for GenCon. What do you think, if anything, needs addressed?

Will Free Men and Castle Battlements be fixed?

Does every deck you see run Search and Detain? Should it go on the Restricted list for the same reason Fear of Winter and the Fury plots did?

Is the Maester's Path still in need of some errata?

Is Ghaston Grey still too strong? Should it be fixed more?

Will Jaqen H'gar, Faceless Man and Penny be cleaned up so they are much better, more playable cards?

Should the Martell House card go on the Banned List?

Any thoughts?

Ignore this post, nothing interesting.

Well, there's definitely going to be an FAQ, if only to clarify typos that have yet to be clarified. Other than that, I don't care what I see, as long as I see it sooner rather than later. I'd like to know what I'm dealing with ASAP.

What I'd like to see:

The Maester's Path restricted

Tin Link banned or restricted

The Laughing Storm errata'd to Challenges phase only

Compelled by the Rock unbanned

mathlete said:

well from what i can see we need an faq about how to use gencon registration website. holy cow this is confusing for a first timer. i have been able to deduce that i seem to have to buy a badge first for a specific day or days, then add events on top of said badge that correspond to said badge's associated days? does that sound about right?

wowzers, the agot rules are easier to figure out than this.

dcdennis said:

Yep. You have to have a convention badge to buy event tickets. Once you have it, you can buy tickets for events held on the days your badge covers.

As for the topic, I do hope they fix the "choose" issue. And put TLS back on the Restricted List. I expect TMP will get some sort of attention and that the main result will be a lot more threads complaining about it.

Alando said:

I can get behind a lot of Alando's wishlist.

Errata to TLS with "During the challenges phase, TLS gains…"

Restricted Maester's Path or errata with neutral faction only.

Fixes to Free Man and Castle Battlements.

Tin Link and/or Valyrian Steel Link restricted.

Preemptive errata to Griff making him House Targaryen only, or so that he can actually die.

TLS needs to say non plot effects. So that you still can use Val and you are protected from stuff like Confession, but you can't do the retarded TFtE combo. and you can still get hit by Rule by Decree.

Amuk said:

On Mathlete's questions, I mostly like how things are with the metagame right now. I could easily be convinced that TLS needs some looking at, but I don't think he's game-breaking. Same with Illyrio…I don't see Targ or Bara winning all the regionals these days. At events where they win, it seems to me the overall player composition works to their advantage (for example, in my experience Targ maester matches up well against Lanni, so if there are a lot of Lanni decks, Targ burn may perform better). And besides, it's OK by me if they win a few tourneys here and there…it's been a long time since they were "top 3" houses.

I used to support restricting the Tin Link, and I still lean in that direction, though less fervently now than before. I received a thorough beating by Widow's Wail at a recent NYC game night because I didn't include any attachment control in my deck. For players who accurately judge the metagame, the existence of Tin Link is a good thing: "Do I run attachments knowing some opponents won't have the answers, or are there going to be enough Tin Links in the environment to render these worthless?" This is a big part of competitive play strategy.

Search and Detain does feel like a near auto-include in a lot of deck types these days, but unlike the Fury plots, it still feels somewhat balanced. I frequently find that it hits me when I don't want it to (Retaliation or against an opponent running KotHH agenda), whereas the Fury plots have no downside AND some are much more powerful than others.

I'd like to propose an addition to the FAQ ideas above: FFG should take a look at how maesters are being played more generally, and consider neutering specific cards that have overly disruptive effects on the metagame. Specifically, I'm thinking of the Conclave, which in my opinion could (maybe even *should*) be restricted. The biggest concerns are with rush builds that play conclaves in House Martell, who can consistently play them for 3 or less gold. Martell can also take advantage of the Conclave's high STR with Game of Cyvasse, and Martell's weenies are afforded significant extra protection due to the learned crest on the Conclave + Outwit. In short, these characters are just WAY too efficient in a Martell maester deck, but I honestly wonder whether they are working as intended, even in other houses.

The rush potential of Martell maesters, in particular, troubles me. Unlike Bara, the martell build has rush, control (with events + chains), and draw. This feels a bit unbalanced and ultimately renders many other builds uncompetitive. Basically, any deck too slow to deal with the potential for 2 conclaves + Cyvasse on round 1 cannot be tier-1, and the sustained rush ability of a maester deck with a variety of chains is also concerning. A restriction to the Conclave would at least lower the power level to some extent, most likely by eliminating Venomous Blade from the deck so that Martell rush builds no longer have access to the most efficient character removal effect in the game.

Staton said:

Either of those options are fine with me. I also don't touch Bara very often.

I hope they fix misspellings, castle battlements, and choose cards.

I think restricting tin and valyrian steel links while leaving the agenda alone will be enough to balance maesters. They are still very strong, but we have also seen a few more builds in regionals that can do well against them.

Twn2dn said:

I wonder if, in the murky depths of FFG's design process, they have considered house-specific restricted lists. So that for example, Conclave and VB could be on the house Martell restricted list, but not on other's.

I imagine it would be very difficult to balance out (a whole lot more difficult than with a single list). And… do you want to see a deck running Narrow Escape and Venomous Blade (that'd be a Shadows deck, ofc, because VB is Martell only)? Or a deck running Conclave and Fear of Winter?

Khudzlin said:

Who knows… At least there would be more flexibility. If a card later proves problematic for any other particular house it could be added. The additional cost of VB in a shadows deck removes a little of its efficiency. I think it's better than having an effective soft ban on certain restricted cards like Fury of the Sun and others.

Twn2dn said:

What about an errata making the Conclave unique? That's a smaller step that would, I think, alleviate a large chunk of the problem.

Amuk said:

problem is there is no precedent for making a character like that unique thematically. it would be like making a unique 'braavosi vendor'. too generic to be unique.

@dcdennis What about King Robb's Host, King Joffrey's Guard and all the other unique armies? To me The Conclave makes sense as a unique since it's supposed to be the big gathering of maesters. And of course it would slow down martell maester rush to make it unique

Sorry if I missed someone else talking about it, but whats wrong with Penny? Seems like a good card.

Fieras said:

She is a good card, but she falls in the same category as Sorrowful Man and Shield Islands Dromond. Your opponent can choose to discard a card instead of kneeling a character even if they have no cards in hand or has The Laughing Storm standing.

Fieras said:

As is, if you have no cards in hand, you are not forced into kneeling the character (because you can choose to discard cards - then have the effect fizzle). It's the same thing as Sorrowful Man - having no gold in your gold pool does not force you into killing the character. There's nothing actually wrong with that, it just isn't how people want it to work.

Cwethan said:

I actually feel like it should have been unique to begin with. I think in the books, there is only one conclave. It is The Conclave, not a bunch of Conclaves of maesters floating around.

ktom said:

Thats how I thought it worked. I still think its a good card.

Fieras said:

I agree with you, and I don't think it needs changing.

AGoT DC Meta said:

That's where I'm coming from.