in Tales of champions and Beyond the narrow sea, targa have several (many) burn cards and only one Dothraki, Do you believe that designers will must do differents cards and support thematics how bolton, dothrakis, dragon, tully, dayne,….?

orion_kurnous said:

As Damon is now famously quoted as saying, "Perception is reality." There is the perception among the design team about what players want, probably based on theory and psychographic player archetypes. They sure haven't taken a poll. Their perception is our reality.

Anecdotally, I think a lot of players want more support of current themes and trait support, more than new mechanics. It seems to me that some house sub-themes are relegated to "casual" or "Nedly" status because they don't have enough quality cards to flesh it out in a competitive build (think: clansman, dothraki, house dayne). More concerning to me is mechanics that they have started that are practically defunct because they don't design new cards for it (think: bannermen, reinforcements, epic phase).

Overall, though, I think the cardpool is in a good place. I just wish they'd make some cards that would unlock the potential of previous cycles more. If they did that by making 2-3 cards per house per cycle (along with the other stuff they dream up to keep it "fresh"), I'd be happy.

AGoT DC Meta said:

orion_kurnous said:

There's more in the books for Targ and other Houses than what's in the game. Further, some new cards help certain themes in not immediately noticeable ways.

For example, have you played Incinerate out of a Dothraki deck? Its ghastly. Its a strong card but its potency is unmatched out of a Dothraki deck. Hall of Dragons, Dragon Egg, Great Pyramid of Meereen, Manning the City Walls, Magister Illyrio, Pentos. All directly applicable to a Dothraki deck.

YEah, the problem is if it isn't big and flashy it is totally ignored and if it big and flashy people complain it is power creep.

I'd have quit by now. Fickle players would be the death of me.

Of course I have to wonder if anyone has TRIED building a deck based on those other mechanics. Targ Dragons are doing well in Melee. When was the last time someone actually spent time trying to build a competitive Dothraki or Army deck out of Targ?

What about Dayne? Didn't Dobbler have a good Reinforcements deck using MwnK?

Could it be possible that the support cards are there but just lack the oh so visible trait on the card/s that boost them up to competitive strength and therefore they are ignored or simply not seen in that context? Damon said himself that incinerate was meant for Targ traited decks rather than a burn deck, giving aggro serious teeth and spot control for those troublesome blockers… or something along those lines. I know I had a 7 STR army get burned for a single influence about two weeks ago.

Penfold said:

I imagine that designers have to develop tough skin to ignore the fickleness of the meta. Because of that, I would think that the more player backlash happens, the more designers might tend to design in a vacuum.

Penfold said:

To some degree, many competitive players will do at least a cursory analysis of the cards for specific types of builds. Corey tends to be the deck-farmer in DC, and he has already done a lot of analysis of the most competitive builds of each house. That doesn't mean we stop trying new things, though. When I build decks, I try new things, but I have to weigh how many good cards I have to give up in order to make the different deck work; just like a GG build in Martell in which you're running a few sub-par cards (Myrcella, Dagos, and Edric) in order to run GG, you ask yourself if it's worth the trade. Thematic builds, imo, are less competitive because they usually depend on synergy to a higher degree to be most effective, as opposed to a deck full of efficient cards that are not dependent on any other cards having to be in play. So in regards to dothraki, think about all the lackluster cards you have to play to run a dothraki themed deck, and when you do that, you are still very vulnerable to intrigue, so it is going to be top-decking and vulnerable to Valar within a few turns. That's the problem with any aggro-rush deck, so the question is does it do it better than other houses? Bara, Stark, or Martell Maesters probably does it better, so why would a competitive player consider running sub-par cards for a sub-par build? The probably wouldn't. What does a dothraki build gain? A cheap(er) renown army (which is okay), and access to a more efficient Incinerate, which may provide spot control, but how often do you really need to burn a 7 strength army? Not that often; Incinerate doesn't change the viability of dothraki. (Cursory analysis over.) Targ has gotten 1 dothraki in the last two cycles, and it's only for melee, and it's expensive, so the viability of dothraki competitively hasn't changed in the last year, and I don't expect it to until new cards are released. I don't have to constantly reassess it, is my point.

The same I think is true with Dayne.

Dobbler has a lot of interesting builds. He's a magician. I don't think he ever played the MwNK deck in a tournament though, as much as the threat was out there on the boards, although I might be misremembering.

I think one problem in trying to use more thematic or synergistic decks over the standard stuff is the existence of cards that are just too efficient to not use if you intend to have a top-tier deck, as referred to by the poster above. The refugees are the biggest offenders but there are plenty of others such as Meera Reed, Distinguished Boatswain, etc. There is just no way to justify not using these cards from a competitive standpoint, so the options you have when building any competitive deck in terms what you can viably take out become quite limited. When combined with the fact that the efficient auto-includes generally won't have the traits or whatever other synergy that you're looking for in a theme deck, it makes them tough to run and generally not worth it.

I would love to see FFG take steps to change this. Errata to severely undercosted cards like Lost Spearman, or better, restriction/ban, while it may seem extreme, would make deckbuilding more interesting imo. I would also argue that restriction/ban of such cards is not as extreme as it might seem at first. Because seriously, what Martell deck is ever going to *not* use that card? And if you have a situation where a certain card is an auto-include, should it not be considered for the nerfbat (this iirc was the reason things like the fury plots were restricted, when they first arrived there was just no reason not to use them in every deck)?

Another possibly more appealing option would be for them to release more support for the traits and themes so that the reward for building a deck around them actually becomes competitive. The obvious way is simply to release better cards with the given traits, but I'd also be interested to see agendas that support certain themes; for example, a House Tully agenda that gives you +1 str on defense and -1 str while attacking, as a very basic example. Another one would be a raider agenda that turns decking the opponent into your win condition. etc

You might want to consider the alternative, which is to create equally powerful cards. Banning/restricting/etc. has a negative psychological effect. One of the best examples of equivalence would be the choice between No Quarter and Die By the Sword. These two cards are two of the only cards I can think of that literally give you some choice. Do you play a war crest deck with Die By the Sword or a Unique deck with No Quarter? Or do you play both and dilute some of the flavor? Unfortunately, the both choice will probably happen more often than not at this stage, but it's the equivalence of the card effect with the variety of triggers that makes there be a choice.

Now imagine each house had access to 7 types of refugees. 3 monocon strength 3s, 3 duocon strength 2s, and 1 tricon strength 1. People have to make a decision of which to include. Now maybe the assumption that including all of them being a bad idea is wrong, but for a diverse card pool you need more options that are equivalent. Then deck construction is more about personal choice than "find the best cards or you lose".

That probably doesn't sell chapter packs, though… LoL.

Speaking of support for old cards, I'd really like to see Neutral Faction get some love; I think we can all agree that its still not competitive. Same with White Book for that matter - just throw us one or two cards that really boost those Agendas without being OP when played from other builds.

Skowza said:

Completely agree. I don't think the Neutral Faction is even close to as competitive as The White Book is. I mean, what kind of deck would you build today with the Neutral Faction? There are lots of "House X" cards that are so worth having over a 1 gold penalty reduction on multiple characters OOH.