The Team Covenant guys have posted an absolutely amazing interview with Damon Stone conducted at GenCon. Incredible!

http://teamcovenant.com/blog/2012/08/18/gencon-2012-agots-damon-stone/

Is it just my machine or is the background audio louder than the interview? I really want to hear this but had to turn it off because I literally couldn't hear the questions or answers.

It becomes listenable again after a few minutes.

Yeah, the audio is broken for one minute, between around 0:45 and 1:46 or so.The rest of the interview is fine, at least on my machine.

Lots of interesting stuff. Among the most interesting: ACoA *will* eventually be reprinted, and when it is, Compelled by the Rock will be errata'd.

Ah! You beat me to that Ratatoskr.

Yes, Damon Stone confirms FFG's plans to reprint the A Clash of Arms cycle and apply some sort of errata on the banned Compelled by the Rock card.
You can watch this around the 8:52 segment.

Ok, that interview was pure awesome. Good job from the Team Covenant guys, and big applause to Damon!

Having taught rookies quite a bit lately (building up a new meta), I've also seen that 'Oh, but I wanna also make this guy attack' comment arise very often… and I can really see how it makes sense to give players a way to do something that they would intuitively want to do.

Also, I loved Damon's thoughts on the juxtaposition of 'percieved' and 'real' house/build ratings. Oh, and good to hear about CoA, an errata'd version of Compelled by the Rock sounds fun (now an errata'd Jhaqen on the other hand, will be even more awesome).

Really nice interview! Damon is awesome

can someone post the entire text of the interview?

db123456 said:

It's a 34 min video interview, so I doubt it.

Big props to the Team Covenant guys - their GenCon coverage has been excellent.

It's nice to hear that Damon is so attuned to the meta perceptions, listening to the podcasts, etc.

I wish they'd asked him about the recent spout of cards with wonky or erratic wording, and if he considers that a fluke or if his teamwill be working harder to minimize the occurence of such issues in the future.

Also would have been nice to hear what his current favorite deck is, i.e. what kind of amazing tech he is using that the meta at large has not yet discovered

"Because that decks are becoming more efficient doesn't necessarily mean that they are becoming more powerful." Damon Stone in interview. Hmm…I thought that's one of the criteria for a powerful deck.^___^

I think what he means is "Just because the decks are becoming more efficient doesn't mean the cards are more powerful" - at least in context of the later discussion in which he says that in many cases, decks are better not because the individual cards in them have creeped in power, but because the card pool is big enough that you can fill your deck with cards that fit it (eg Rush, Control, Choke, etc). We're still using a great many of the old cards (the Melee winner used 8 cards from Tale of Champions and Beyond the Narrow Sea combined), but now the deck archetypes are fully fleshed out.

Not only did mike (melee winner) only use 8 cards from tale of Champions and Beyond the Narrow Sea combined two of them where just for fun and the deck would run the same only using six cards.

I can see what he means regarding the metagame being different than the actual game. We've all read the posts from new players about this faction or card card ebeing overpowered, and look and laugh and explain why it isn't… and from our perspective knowing the card pool and strategies the way we do we are correct, but in THAT players environment it is precisely that. I guess it makes sense that the designer of the card pool would have a very different perspective about what cards work together and what builds are possible using cards we have completelydismissed or overlooked.

That isn't to say that he "knows better" than us, he was very specific about no one plays wrong, just that there are unexplored options that might change the way we perceive things. I'm sure there are things we discover that are unintended thatchange his perceptions as well, but in the end he has access to everything we say on line and in podcasts, as well as all reported tournament data, in addition to his creating cards that specifically and intentionally interact with other cards or enable or retard synergies and strategies across the entire card pool. That would almost certainly give him a very different perspective on what is possible within the game.

Time to start looking at some of those cards I put aside as not being practical. They may not work in existing decks, but that doesn't mean they don't work well in a deck I'm not currently playing, possibly even a deck type I wrote off. Hmm… I kind of want to sit down and pick his brain for a few hours rather than the ten minutes I got at a bar.