Ratatoskr said:

What is the issue with his response, exactly? Is it that Griff neither saves the attachment, thus attempting to send it to an out-of-play area (your hand) while it is still/already moribund, nor does his effect qualify as a replacement effect?

Good FAQ overall. Releasing it earlier would have been preferable, but I definitely prefer late to not at all.

Killer of the Wounded: I find it interesting that KotW gets a limit of 3 per round, while shadow Bob gets 3 per phase.

Threat from the East: Back to the first "ruling." Good change, it way less offensive now. Still goes great with the Laughing Storm, but not as crippling.

Sorrowful Man/Sheild Island Dromon: Glad they went with individual errata rather than a blanket ruling. Sorrowful Man is going to be scary.

Griff: Glad he got changed. His purpose was not to be repeatable claim soak.

Free Man: Finally a Wildling!

TMP: Restriction was the very least they could have done, and I'm glad. It would have been too meta shifting to change anything this soon before gencon.

S&D: Basically a soft ban on this. Clearly this was put on the restricted list due to over saturation, not it's power level. I don't see it being play much over any other restricted card. I would have been okay with leaving it alone.

Saturnine said:

Exactly. It lacks the word "instead" at the end.

FFG are out of house Targ haters.

Griff didn't need a nerf AND limited to Targ only. I had some great Griff/Pentos OOH decks that just got ruined completely. With the errata they would not have been OP or NPE.

Shame.

Crevic said:

Meta shifting changes before a big tournament a GREAT thing for the environment. Much greater chance of interesting diversified decks instead of the same stale deck builds everyone already knows.

At least making TMP restricted means Martell Maester is not the obvious choice for power gamers.

With TMP restricted, most out of TARG houses are nerfed while the change affects TARG very little. It's rearlly a bad idea.

And though the sorrowful man is expected, it is too strong now.

Crevic said:

Not sure I would say good FAQ overall though it does have some strong points. TftE is now worded like it should be, and when new players read the printed card and "guess" at how it works, odds are they will be right now.

The change to KotW is expected and welcomed, though it is odd it is per round instead of per phase like Shadows-Bob.

In regards to SM and Dromon, the fact that they made a statement that they indented to "fix" the abuse of being able to choose a option that you couldn't resolve successfully but then only made an errata change to those 2 cards but not an FAQ update to the "choose" mechanic has left me very confused. The statement indicates that other cards like Penny should work with an implied "must" within the choice options but they only made an errata to the 2 cards in their example. Very strange indeed.

Castle Battlements: shame on them for needing to errata a card they JUST PRINTED, but I'm glad they fixed it.

Griff: he is still repeatable claim soak isn't he? And I still hold to the fact that his Response does work as intended because it is simply changing the destination of a moribund card's state, it is not an effect that is making it leave play. Granted it doesn't include the usual "instead of" but where in the FAQ does it say that is ncessary? anyways, that's really for another threat and has been beaten to death anyways - and since they ignored it for this FAQ, who's to say what to do with it now? To me this is simply the same mentality that comes from how the "choose" effects were determined to take effect. No where in the rules, that I recall, did it say you could choose an option that you couldnt' resolve successfully, simply because only the choice needed to be successfull. I honestly think that just got perpetuated and finally they have issued the errata to a few cards to "fix" this.

TMP: I honestly don't see this as being effective. It's not like any TMP deck was some great combo deck with any other restricted card. The agenda is still very strong and I think an errata would have been a better approach to this knee-jerk reaction to just restrict it and do nothing else to temper it's power.

S&D: If this is on the list simply because it is so popular, why isn't Valar on the list? ANd don't tell me it's because resets have been part of the game since the beginning, because I would wager so has some form of control or bounce. That's all S&D does. This is a silly idea to restrict it.

KhalBrogo said:

Essentially, by not giving the same errata - or gods forbid, a general errata - to Penny, the are saying she is NOT one of the cards "meant to be entirely negative for your opponent."

There is no reason to extend the specific errata described to all cards that were similarly worded. By choosing to leave both template formats ("Choose A or B. Do what you choose." vs. "Choose and do A or B.") viable, instead of saying that both are always the same, FFG is leaving themselves the option to give opponents the out when they want to. And apparently they want to for Penny and Theon. They don't all have to be the same.

Overall great FAQ. The one thing that I really like about it is that FFG took the time to post a very thoughtful and somewhat detailed explanation of why they have made the changes that they made. In the past that wasn't always the case. On the actual changes, I think the one errata that I find potentially a little bit concerning is the change to sorrowful man, which may be a bit too strong now. That's not to say that it's overpowered or restriction-worthy, but it's probably going to have an impact on the metagame as it potentially counters Manning the City Walls and will be great in the mirror match.

Other than timing, which should have been a little earlier to give people more time to adjust, this was well done in my opinion.

Restricting TMP:

…greatly reduces Martell Maesters (since they likely ran 1 significant restricted card, if not 2 now that search and detain is on the list). Even if they saw little play outside the USA, they certainly see a lot of play here, and do very well even with weaker pilots. With all the inhouse tricks and maesters it should still be a viable deck, just not as cheesy So, over all good for the meta.

…probably doesn't effect Stark maesters. Maybe bumps a fear of winter, fury or search and detain but IMHO the house benefits most from the deck's natural attachment control, attachment recurrsion and card draw. Still, a little less control and/or gold curve may reduce their impact. Again, reasonable.

…never seen/played against Lanni Maesters. Don't know what it gives their house so no comment?

…changes but probably doesn't reduce the power of Bara Maesters. Honestly, threat from the east (which totally deserves the errata) was the big news here. With less incentive to run pre-plot actions, Bara gains up to 3 event slots to rework. Will they fill those slots with rush support, target kill, something else? Not sure but the loss of Val (debatable if she was even needed in the first place) fury (plenty of high gold plots out there) s&d (they are bitchy enough without that extra control) or narrow escape (wasn't as effective in an optimized plot rotation deck) will only change them a little. Still, over all they are less powerful due to threat and maybe we will see aome more variety from them? so also good for the meta (this is the flavor I play )

…targ maesters remain concerning. They just don't rely on restricted tech to do the deathy/killy frustration thing they do. The restriction is something but only time will tell if it is enough to rein them in. Good in the long run. However, until FFG figures out what to restrict in Targ that won't totally nerf their house in the process, possibly not good enough for the meta.

…GJ maesters also remains a concern. No fear of winter is probably a good thing but, like targ, they don't rely on restricted tech and none of the individual parts are really reasonable to restrict. More concerning is Shield Island Dromon's errata. GJ probably didn't need an even more powerful effect to support choke. Perhaps most concerning? Choke is amongst the least interesting deck type to play against (debatably more annoying than burn)

RobotMartini said:

I would say that thanks to the new rules about modified win and the maester agenda that GJ maesters are hit pretty hard. They have the weakest in-house maesters so they are highly flammable and weak to venomous blade. Its very dangerous in GJ maesters to get into situation where your maesters are killed and with the new ruling you cannot even get a win anymore if you even have a single chain on your agenda.

There has been an update to the newest FAQ which clarifies a couple of issues that were in need of addressing but were left of the FAQ that was uploaded to the webserver. IF you have downloaded FAQ 3.3 please delete it and re-download the FAQ. The file name is the same, but the lead page will mark it as 3.3.1.

If you just perused the FAQ and not downloaded it, please familiarize yourself with the new FAQ.

Sorry for the mistake and I hope to see you all at GenCon.

Damon Stone

Looks like Core Set Jhogo and Snakeskin Veil are back in business!

Shenanigans said:

~Whew. Thank the gods. I've been wanting to play core Jhogo over the draw Jhogo, but that stupid trait didn't synergize! And now we'll see a ton of Sand Snakes with attachments, since Tin Link is banned…oh, wait…

So…

1. TLS + Threat East still is one sided draw, unless the other player gets pre-plot draw going on (um…Val and…um…?). I guess it breaks the once-in-10 games you are down to one card brokenness and cleans it up.

2. The two main Maester decks, Martell and Targ, are barely affected. I guess they lose either Bannermen or Narrow Escape? *shrug*

3. Griff is only a Targ card - and he isn't reusable claim soak unless your opponent has MORE attachments than you, correct? So if you play an opponent with no attachments, he is just okay - certainly not worth losing KoTHH IMHO.

Am I on the right track with Griff?

You are on the right track with Griff. The essence of the errata makes it harder for him to be killed for claim then bounce back into play standing.

These threads are so annoying. There's embedded encoding in them that seems to mess up about 1/4 of the time I try to post…grrr.

@Rings:

Yes, this is right. Actually, I didn't think Griff was a great choice before the errata, but he is much worse now. The environment is full of so much blanking (meera + nightmares) and bounce (martell), and there is still a bit of kneel going on. So the trade off of no agenda + Griff, who you may not draw into until mid-game, seemed pretty bad to me both in theory and as I played around with him a bit. All that said, those are metagame considerations, and the possibility of Griff becoming NPE at some point was probably real, so I'm not unhappy with the decision.

With the errata, I think Griff is virtually unplayable at the competitive level as he currently stands… unless you were just to throw him in as an efficient 3-STR tricon (though a second or third copy of Young Griff would be better). I understand that recurring Flame-Kissed and other attachments is potentially very deadly. But early game, players are unlikely to have more than 1-2 extra influence to fuel the effect. Most of the time, Griff will recur 1-2 attachments per round. That's essentially the same as the maesters + bronze link, except that you don't have all of the other great effects from the Lead Link, Valyrian Steel, etc. (In other words, he's a distant second choice to maesters, and likely summer and knights.) Late game doesn't really matter…if Targ can hold on until late game, they've probably already got their recurssion going and/or enough burn to hold down the opponent. So Griff is just a "win by more" effect at that point.

The one possibility where Griff might be worthwhile is if there were some kind of powerful combo that could justify running him. I have played around with the idea of Pentos + Griff + attachments, as well as trying to use Griff with Bones of a Child to mitigate claim. These were all too card intensive, and are particularly uncompetitive in an environment where response cancels are common. The new Dragon Egg attachment might open up some combos, but that won't be legal for GenCon so we won't know until the fall.

Pre-erratum, Griff was a gamebreaker when he hit the table (our local Targaryen players were the first to say so and we readily agreed). He was not just an infinitely reusable military claim soak, he was also a Deadly soak and he can return with either To Be a Dragon (if he is killed while blank) or Ambush from the Plains (if he is discarded). Given "remove from the game" no longer exists as an effect (it exists as a cost), that made him completely invincible. I'm not sure how playable he is now (I don't play Targaryen), but an erratum was needed (aside from his agenda side, he's still a 3-cost 3-STR tricon Lord Knight with a Noble crest… a good character even in a deck with an agenda).

I haven't seen anyone bring this up yet, but this FAQ is actually very good when compared with other games that do similar design changes. While AGoT has quite a ways to go when compared with Magic the Gatherings ability to be consistent, this FAQ is on par with some of the top video game companies. League of Legends, Starcraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft all will generally see similar updates to the game in their regular patch process. These updates will tend towards the less is more attitude. The goal being to make a minimal change, see how it affects the environemnt, and then determine if the change was enough or needed more. Erring on that side does indeed shift the environment, but tends to rock the boat far less than say restricting both Tin Link and The Maester's Path in one FAQ. Between now and the next FAQ they have given themselves leeway to see if in fact Tin Link will need restricting or this was just the right change to equalize the strength of Maesters. I feel the same way about most of the changes, the odd ones out being Search and Detain and Sorrowful Man/Shield Island Dromons. Even those changes see precedent in other games, though. When gameplay is introduced that was never intended in the first place, other games will outright disable it in much the same way as Search and Detain was restricted. The same is true of fixing gameplay where the implementation failed to successfully reflect the intent of the design.

Now as for the timing, I think it's a little odd and seriously disagree with it. The rules for most sports are changed FAR in advance of significant events being played. The NFL sees it's rules change long before the pre-season even begins. This means that the players, coaches, and teams all have months to account for the changes. It's not like you buy tickets to go see an NFL game and then two weeks out a touchdown is worth 5 points instead of 6. It's not like you buy tickets to Wimbledon and 2 weeks out you find out that the scoring will be No-Ad Deuces. I would argue that every deck in the field is affected in some way by these changes. The whole meta just took a significant shift that means someone who prepared diligently for months may just have had their diligence invalidated by the change. Is this a game where short-term adaptability is to be praised or in which diligence, experience, and dedicated, precise gameplay are to be praised? They may not necessarily be mutually exclusive, but a change like this certainly favors adaptability over diligence.

mdc273 said:

The players of the game are coaches and managers of a team while the cards in this game are like players in that make up the team/deck. Sorrowful Man was on the DL and has now fully recovered and is ready for playing time. The managers only have a couple weeks to prepare for this turn around.

The restricted list is like a starting pitcher. You can only have one per game. It looks like Search and Detain and TMP were pulled out of the bullpen and put into the pitching rotation.

I guess I don't view the FAQ update as much of rules changes. I view it more like a manager being told that a player is being traded or is hitting the DL. Or perhaps an additional restriction with their player availability. There are plenty of players ready to play and you still need to fill out a lineup card.

Also, if you were 'preparing diligently' for a month building your gencon deck and subsequently had it invalidated by the FAQ then that is on you, since the general consensus was that SOMETHING was changing. If you chose to ignore that eventuality and build your gencon deck in a vacuum, that's your problem, not FFGs.

dcdennis said:

You are my favorite sir.

dcdennis said:

I know we don't always agree. But we agree on this.