Listen as we're mostly ok with the FAQ update, but note that there are some serious potential problems in the updated tournament rules. Bonus points to the first person to accuse another of being a witch at the GenCon events this year! Also, Top 10 Recommendations for GenCon.

Ugh. Made me look up flights to Indianapolis. Maybe next year…

Been looking forward to this !

the real question is will their be some kind of drunk event at gencon and will we have a meet up wensday.

Excellent GenCon advice. Especially about not overscheduling. There's always something to do; leave yourself free to be flexible.

I'd add one thing: Avoid the hallway where the anime movies are running 24/7 after about midday Friday. It's a good shortcut when it's hot out, but the kids that don't have rooms tend to crash there. Not having rooms means no showers, which means a level of geek funk that would be considered chemical warfare in another context. (To be fair, they did a pretty good job last year of sweeping them out regularly, but it's not worth the risk.)

Speaking of which, I'm sure no AGOTer needs to be told this, but a lot of geeks do: "Axe Body Spray" =/ "Shower".

Amuk said:

Mother of God.

Bomb said:

It was truly horrendous a couple/three years ago when it was over 100 outside all weekend.

Wow, no commentary on what the heck "head to head" actually means in the Tournament rules? Among other issues we had of course….

And here I thought this would be one of our more divisive podcasts this year.

Divisive? Controversy? Not really…

I don't get much of a chance to play melee (small meta, most of my games are over OCTGN, which tend to be joust), so unfortunately melee rulings don't spark a fierce… well… anything. Having not played in any official tournament, the scoring difference between a draw and a modified loss, or lack thereof, doesn't really warrant a comment from me either, although it seems a little counter-intuitive and poorly worded. I also think your fears over the "collusion" are exaggerated; the way I read this, most TOs won't enforce it on anything other than extremely blatant cases, but the rulings tell us, as players, that the conduct is against the rules. While before I could have justified collusion and said that it makes perfect sense and isn't prohibited (as with last year's final Melee table @ Gencon), now I know that the developer/tournament intent is to avoid it. Sure, my definition of collusion might be different from someone else's, and the rulings are hazy and wishy washy, but we now *know* that the intent is to avoid situation like last year's melee final.

I agree entirely on Thundering Calvary - they've proven they will fix typos, so until they fix this particular one, I agree that the card does nothing.

I think that given the huge resource swing Search and Detain allows, and it's versatility, I don't think this will act as a "soft ban". I suspect it's still competitive with other restricted cards to find a slot in some decks. I suspect that all of Greg's "weren't running a restricted card" decks were running S&D… am I right?

And while I'm also concerned that several cards have needed errata to "work", I'm glad that every case the errata just confirm the cards are supposed to work as one would suppose they would. The same for most typos - in other words, it's unfortunate they aren't printed correctly, but the "burden" for a new player isn't particularly onerous - in most of the cases they don't need to actually worry about these cards at all. As for rulings that still might not be sufficient, I think the answer to the Meera reed question (even if the question includes the erroneous word "response") is clear enough, and a precedent for any similar abilities, should they exist. The question doesn't make the answer less comprehensive or valid.

I'd been meaning to ask this and it kept slipping my mind, is there no Drunken Draft this year? I had to miss it last year due to a terribly sleeping child but this year I was all set to come!

You know, I've heard nothing about there being one this year. Maybe just drunken casual gaming? We could invade a hotel again, bring some drinks and play a variety of games (Thrones included).

Their is a nice little bar outside of center town (~20 cab ride) that Yburi and I went to a few times last year. The owner asked us why their was not more people gaming in his bar…Maybe a good place to hold something this year. Though we would need to figure out transportation. Much nicer to be able to keep ordering drinks / food as we want instead of having to bring are own etc…

Which Bar is that Jon, do you happen to remember the name? I could ferry 4-6 ppl in my Escape (depending on if we're willing to break the law and ghetto ride w/ ppl in the back). I will be sad if there is no drunken draft but drunken gaming sounds just as good!

Kennon said:

You want divisive? Well here goes…

So I still have about half an hour of the episode to go, but I did finish listening to the FAQ and Tourney Rules discussion. When it comes to the Thundering Calvary/Thundering Cavalry issue, I think you guys are dead wrong and that any TO who sides with you on the issue is being overly pedantic.

As a practicing attorney/pedantic jerk, I understand your reasoning on precedent; it can be downright dangerous when a judge makes a small assumption about legislative intent. However, it happens all the time, by design no less. The law is not such a black-letter prospect as most people think. The judiciary is supposed to interpret the legislature's actions and apply them to the "real world." </civics lesson>

Now, I get that applying legal reasoning to a game is not a perfect parallel, subject to the very valid "IT'S JUST A GAME" criticism, but we work with what we have. I think where your use of this reasoning falls short is the leap from "clear typo" to "card not working the way I want it to" (a concept I borrow from ktom.) You guys discuss how in the FAQ announcement Damon and Nate mentioned that certain cards were working as intended, and certain cards were not. They fixed the out on Sorrowful Man and Shield Islands Dromon, but left the out on Penny. You seem to take this "other cards are working as intended" to a greater degree than I think was meant, concluding that if they haven't fixed a card, it must be working exactly as they intended. With cards like Penny, which I think falls into the "card not working the way I want it to" category, I think this reasoning is perfectly valid, especially as it has the choice wording that was specifically changed in Sorrowful Man and Shield Islands Dromon. With cards like Thundering Cavalry/Calvary, I think using this same reasoning is overreaching. When a card is clearly a typo (like Free Man, Core Set Jhogo, Cotter Pyke, Thundering Cavalry) then I find it a bit asinine to rule strictly with that wording. To me, this is a mere scrivener's error, the kind of error that is so plain on its face that it's no big deal for a judge/TO to rule on it. While there is no official direction on the intent until the legislature (Damon and Nate) give some, when there is literally no other reasonable explanation for an error, then ruling with the typo wording strikes me as unwieldy and wrong. Not to get overly preachy, but "the letter kills, but the spirit gives life." Ruling with the typo is with the letter of the card, but is clearly against the spirit (intention).

With a card like Penny or (previously) Sorrowful Man, while lots of people might want it to work differently, there are a number of reasonable explanations for why it might be worded that way, the most obvious being "they intended to give an out." Where this argument gets sticky for me is with cards like Castle Battlements. The original wording made it literally useless (except as Intrigue bait I guess) and so I could argue pretty convincingly that they clearly meant it to read "other" (as the FAQ now tells us) but it's not as clear cut as a typo.

By the way, the cavalry/Calvary mistake is one of the most irritating errors in the English language, so it upsets me to defend that…thanks guys.

As far as collusion, I share your concerns to a point, although I don't think it's going to be as much of a free for all as you conjecture. I think ktom will set a good precedent at GenCon. I would, at some point, like to see them at least give some definitions to scouting, collusion, etc. so there's some firmer guidance for TO's, especially those not as skilled and experienced as ktom..

-Istaril said:

I think they went out of their way here to try and drum up controversy. Either that or Will and Brett have poor reading comprehension. The FAQ article specifically stated that some cards have effects that are meant to do X or Y or Z in regards to strategy and design space and goes on to talk about a specific effect. To extrapolate this to apply to every instance of anything ever in the game is just ludicrous and please don't anyone use the logical fallacy of slippery slope.

I can't believe you guys spent almost ten minutes on that. I get you want to be "topical" and "edgy" but this is creating a mountain out of hole in the ground.

I've very nearly unsubscribed from 2 Guys 1 Throne because of their constant bemoaning about imaginary problems, "This is a good card which is clearly better than this bad card… POWER CREEP!" and I'm almost certainly going to end up doing so after GenCon if they do anymore of this nonsense. I depend on you guys for relevant discussions concerning strategy, metagame, card spoilage, etc. I even find your off-topic banter that is fun and funny on topics like Archer and Sherlock, and general geekdom entertaining. I don't need nor want useless ranting about mistakes like Calvary verses Cavalry that were not addressed and therefor it must have been explicitly intended.

This is different for me than your rant on collusion. I think it is generally an utterly ridiculous argument that will almost certainly not have any impact. Your entire argument is based on the slippery slope which should have been a clue that you are debating from an emotional point rather than one more evenly considered. But it is your personal opinions about whether you like a thing or not which is different than trying to state what FFG has or has not said (when they clearly have not).

Tighten up ship guys. You are funny and knowledgable. You don't need to go down this path. It is your podcast of course so feel free to do what you want… but if I start fast forwarding every time this happens I'm almost certainly going to unsubscribe and just resort to watching geek and sundry during my free time at work.

Penfold said:

Sounds like Dobbler needs to make a return to the show…I would've smacked some heads on this issue

~ How did I get dragged into this, Shenanigans…?

Shenanigans said:

Shenanigans said:

From a TO's point of view, a lot of this comes down to whether or not it passes the "dude, really?" test. You're going to call a judge over and make an argument that Thundering "Calvary" doesn't do anything because its text box says Thundering "Cavalry"? Dude, really?

Just because FFG has not formally corrected all of the "dude, really?" fails, doesn't mean that the TO is powerless to rule otherwise.

The trouble is that one dude's "dude really" isn't necessarily another's. While we can probably all agree that "calvary" should be "cavalry", there are murkier topics that for one person could just as easily be one of those moments. In this FAQ alone, Griff's chargenda effect, Castle Battlements or Before the Black Wall were all "clearly" not working as intended, and maybe those were obvious (but not as obvious as a typo). There's a gradation. Sorrowful man pre-erratum was assumed by many to work the way it does post-erratum - does that count as a "dude, really?"? I'm sure for some people it did…

I just think that the ruling "Well, if it's obvious then you shouldn't need an FAQ ruling about it" relies too much on the subjectiveness of "obvious". The easiest and most consistent place to draw a line is to say "The cards work exactly as written on the card/FAQ/rules".


Note, that doesn't mean that the current: "If it passes the TO's common sense test is a bad measuring stick either. All I'm saying is that while I wouldn't question someone playing Calvary or call the TO, I also wouldn't expect it to work when playing an opponent, and would feel that a TO upholding the "it doesn't work as written" would be well within his (admittedly unlimited) rights.

Penfold said:

I just wanted to chime in here and say that I think they bring up some valid points on power creep. I think this set has seen a pretty big power creep. It's actually something that I've been somewhat worried about.

-Istaril said:

1. If the card, as written, works - that's how you play it, whether you think it works "as intended" or not.
2. But if the card, as written, doesn't work at all - you can start down the subjective, "obvious" route, particularly when one solution is far and away more likely than any other solution. (ie, It's a safe assumption no card text is placed on a card with the intention to do nothing.)

Test it out. (Pre-errata) Sorrowful Man and Before the Black Walls are examples of #1. There is a practical effect to their abilities, even though they don't seem intuitive or completely "right" as written. But (pre-errata) Griff/Response, Castle Battlements, and (no errata) Thundering "Calvary" are examples of #2. The don't do anything, in a practical sense, as written. There is no situation in which they will ever have a legal effect as written. And in terms of making sense of them, it is far and away more probable that Griff should work as a replacement effect (instead of not at all), Battlements should grant immunity to other cards (instead of canceling itself out), and the "Calvary" should be self-referential (instead of waiting for FFG to print another card with the correct "Cavalry" spelling) than any other possibility.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that #2 doesn't need errata at some point. I'm just saying you shouldn't be expected to turn off your brain and use the card as a coaster until there is one.

And back to the Sorrowful man issue, there is a longstanding ruling that when a card says "choose" you can choose an option that you cannot fulfill such as the already mentioned Theon and choosing to kneel an already knelt character for Cyvasse. The card works. The fact that there's an argument that the effect may have been intended differently is only a case for bad design, not that the card needs to be changed from an existing template that works to what the player wants it to do.

As ktom suggested, FFG is not akin to updating the FAQ until there is more public outcry. I can honestly say that I never even noticed these spelling issues with Thundering Cavalry or Jhogo(Core) until someone said something about it on the forums last week. I'm also not looking for something broken about the cards in this game so that I cannot enjoy them because of a spelling and grammatical error. If it kills you(not you, but a player in general) to play a card that doesn't have the correct spelling and grammar but is of popular belief and interpretation to be spelled in such a way that makes sense in the game, then that is very unfortunate. Human error exists and is possible in a lot of things we do.

After reading the books, there is no mention of "onborn.", "Dohraki", or "Wilding" nor is there any other mentioning of these "traits" elsewhere in the game. After playing this game and knowing all the cards, there is no such card as "Thundering Cavalry", only "Thundering Calvary". I can easily deduce that based on existing cards in the game, knowledge from reading the books, and general common sense that these types of issues are simple spelling errors and should be treated like the prevalence of existing correct spellings.

If you are teaching a math class and each kid takes a math test out of a book where you have predetermined the answers on an answer sheet. On your answer sheet, 1+1 = 3. Each child gets 1+1 = 2. As a math teacher, you know that is the correct answer, but your answer sheet has 1 + 1 = 3. Are you going to mark that answer as wrong for each kid even though you know the information is posted on the answer sheet incorrectly? Do you really need to call the book company to get them to set that answer straight and wait for a new copy of the answer sheet?

This is what TO's/Game Masters/Democracy among your group are for if you are suffering from over-pedantry and can't stand the idea that there is a misspelling on a card and it conflicts with certain card synergy or combos. You can apply a perfectionist fallacy all you want in this game, but disrupting the use of a card over such minute detail just boggles my mind.

Staton said:

~Does this mean you're going to bring that totally OP raider deck using the new warship?

Glad to see some discussion, guys. In a hurry, so I'll be back at a later point, to post further, but one of the more salient points to things overall is, as brought up by others, that "the squeaky wheel gets the oil." Calvary may have been missed because it hasn't received enough press in the months leading up to this FAQ, and thus was missed. By the time the next FAQ comes out, I don't think that anyone could make that argument any more. One way or the other, we'll have done our job.

Of course, that isn't to say that I really believe that a TO wouldn't rule it as "Cavalry" and other such interpretations as they come up, but that doesn't mean, however, that we should just let these things slide. We have to bring them up so that they are addressed in the official manner by FAQ entries and errata. , Why would we acknowledge the FAQ at all If we, as a community, don't expect and to some extent, demand such updates from the company making the game? We could convene a Player's Council or the like as many dead games have done in order to institute and codify such things as an entirely community based effort. No need for FFG to do anything but print cards, in that case.

Lol, and for the record, manufacturing controversy is an ages old, tried and true journalistic strategy.

HoyaLawya said:

heh. I generally don't see cards as being over powered. The cards that need to be restricted are, in my mind, just too efficient. The Maesters Path is just too darn efficient, but in and of itself, the power level, even with having the chains on there, is relatively moderate. I think that some cards are on the restricted list due to a combination of cards creating a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and that together they are overpowered, but for the most part, cards tend to just be a bit too efficient. Old Jaqen was a clear example of an over powered card. Now I'm not saying we are at that power level, but I do feel like we are a lot closer to that power level than we were a year ago. I think it is something we definitely need to watch and be mindful of.