Bomb said:

I love your last line here. It is in fact the whole point of a customizable game, haha.

As for strengths and weaknesses, I'm talking generic. If strength boosting is the solution, you put in strength boosting. If more char removal is the solution, you put in more char removal. If trigger cancels are the solution, you put in more trigger cancels. A definite reason to restrict a card is the fact that there is no generic counter that is applicable in all situations. For example, if there was an "I win" card and the only way to beat it was to play "You lose", but "You lose" was useless if the opponent didn't have "I win", that would be an example of a hard counter that can not be used generically. I doubt we've reached a point where it can be determined there is no generic counter play to the deck that can not be applied successfully against all of the other deck archetypes.

Put me in the camp of "Long Lances needs close looking at, but Street Waif is OK as is."

If someone is able to use Street Waif's effect 6 times in a row, it requires significant setup. At a minimum, it's a 2-3 card combo on marshalling (depending whether you are outright playing Long Lances vs. using influence) and then a 3-4-card combo every phase after (Street Waif, Long Lances, ambush card + influence if not Khal Drogo). And the owner of the cards doesn't get to pick the card that is returned to hand. The gold/influence investment is 5+ on characters alone, and both Street Waif and Long Lances have negative traits.

I'm not saying using Street Waif repeatedly isn't strong, but rather that if there is a problem, it has (a lot) more to do with Long Lances. In fact, the vast majority of the time, standing a maester with several chains is MUCH better any phase, while standing a high-STR character of any kind is often better during challenges than standing Street Waif. I would hate to reach a point where cards like Street Waif are avoided in the design phase.

All that said, I think Long Lances is potentially overpowered. I'm not ready to push for restriction quite yet, but I suspect that in the end it will probably be needed.

Separately, I think both Long Lances and Street Waif are good examples of why it's probably better to put powerful effects (and card advantage effects in particular) on unique cards rather than non-unique cards.

Twn2dn said:

I think its worth mentioning that Targ only has 8 characters that kneel for effects. Two are reducers. Two provide recursion. Two are really bad (Merchant and Ascetic). The last two provide modest utility (D.Handmaiden and M.Aemon).

By way of comparison Greyjoy has 12. Some are pretty lame but Alannys alone would be terrifying. Throw in Murenmure, Wendamyr, Moqorro and the Ice Fisherman for more potency.

I only play tier 1 decks, and I play thrones competitively. I played at worlds and I played against the championship deck (which fielded Long Lances). I play against Targ jumper decks often in my play group. I just wanted to state this to give perspective on my following opinion:

Let's compare Long Lances to another card: Castellan of the Rock because these two cards have opposite and conceptually equal abilities in a sense.

Long Lances:

+is not restricted

++can be triggered multiple times per turn (gets worse with multiple copies of LL)

=has a good trait (army) and a bad, but not the worst, trait (mercenary).

+has a keyword (ambush)

Castellan of the Rock:

-is restricted

--can only be triggered once per turn, regardless of how many copies of CotR

-has the worst trait in the game (ally)

-has no keyword

In addition, Long Lances beats Castellan of the Rock when played against each other, and Long Lances is just horrible to play against when other jumper cards are present, where Castellan of the Rock does not improve necessary with other card intereaction (at least not as much)

I will not be satisfied until Long Lances is restricted AND has its ability nerfed to a limited response. If they do not do this, they should take Castellan of the Rock off the restricted list because, by comparison, it is quite inferior.

flipperlord said:

Great comparison, but this is comparison in a vacuum. I don't think Tom Brady would win many games with the Kansas City Chiefs of 2012, and he's Tom %$*#ing Brady, LoL. Hard to argue that Tom Brady wouldn't be an amazing individual card, though.

mdc273 said:

I understand your argument, but in the metagame, LL is even better through other Targ card interactions where CotR does not benefit nearly as much (which I stated in my previous post), which makes LL even better than it already is in the "vaccuum" comparison with Castellan of the Rock.

Comparing Castellan of the Rock to Long Lances is not the same thing at all. You should be comparing their relative strengths against the other cards and card pool and not just against each other. Just because Long Lances can counter Castellan of the Rock when they face each other does not make Castellan of the Rock inferior when they are not.

If I am another House and I am against Castellan of the Rock, it can significantly assist in kneeling out a lot of my characters. Castellan of the Rock is meant to target and disable key character it is up against, thus being incredibly effective against a deck that doesn't have character standing capabilities.

If I am another House and I am against Long Lances, Long Lances by itself does not shut down my ability to initiate challenges or have a board position degenerating power like Castellan of the Rock does. I can still use my key characters for challenges and other affects.

Bomb said:

My post obviously compares both LL's and CotR's relative strengths against other cards in the card pool… the two charts that I wrote illustrate that lol… I briefly stated that LL beats CotR just as an aside, which i obviously did lol… I am no fool, Bomb, and my "comparison" is to illustrate just how strong LL really is… your second two paragraphs are valid, but my previous post does not disagree with these two paragraphs… those two paragraphs are some obvious qualities of those two cards, and I did not think I needed to waste my time displaying them, although you dont give much credit to LL IMHO.

flipperlord said:

You did no such thing. For example, what are the advantages of Targ being able to stand their own characters? They have a narrow field of characters that kneel for effects (as mentioned before its 8). What advantages do they receive for being able to participate in multiple challenges? Targ has more Renown characters than given credit for but it exists largely only on expensive characters (mainly Armies). What about other beneficial challenge effects? What are the resources required to continually stand? Are they easy to play? They do have competition for other cards? Targaryen's influence curve still requires careful management.

What are the relative advantages for being able to offensively control the opposition? How easy is it to perform? What advantages do you gain for doing so? Lannister may be suffering a little in their recent card pool but they still have diverse options for kneeling opponents. This is backed up additional control effects (ex Pentoshi Manor) and a healthy amount of characters with Deadly and/or Stealth.

Wow, I have a perfectly valid post, and you guys expect me to articulate every detailed card interaction between these two cards… if you fail to at least understand my point, then I don't care about your opinions to be honest lol

flipperlord said:

Yes that is exactly what I expect you to do. At minimum at least try to explain how an offensive strategy (kneel) vs a personal response (standing a character) interacts. Its still quite possible to stand a character and not be able to use it effectively. Kneeling an opponant's character is very rarely not useful.

Should we restrict Darkstar? He can withstand multiple attempts to kneel it, is a useful defense against Intrigue and works well with other defensive cards (which Martell has no end of). The stripey bastard is practically a one-man anti-Lannister army. He probably bribed Littlefinger to screw up the 7 kingdoms. Clearly needs restriction.

playgroundpsychotic said:

(TL;DR at the end)

Okay… let's take a little plunge into the Hornet's Nest. So, let's do the leg-work and compare Offensive vs. Defensive in this case, using Castellan and Long Lances as an example.

Net impact (of the effect):

The overall impact of both kneel and stand depends on the highest power-level of a player's characters. In the case of kneel this would be your opponents character, with stand your own character. Essentially, with equal power-level cards and similar board positions, the net impact should be the same (NOTE: This of course is rarely true, an even board position is quite a rare creature). So, if both of your 'best' characters were equal power-level, then getting the option to use them one time more or one time less should be equal. Of course this isn't as simple in the real world, but a more indepth analysis there would take several pages, need to look at how challenges interact etc.

Now, apart from a few exception (Cersei, maybe Yezzan's in certain matchups) Lannister characters tend to be on the weaker side to other Houses in power-level, so kneel usually gives them much more than stand would. Try running Highgarden for a bit, and you'll see what I mean. Targaryen on the other hand has quite good power-level characters in the pool now. From targeted removal working around immunities (Pyat) to 7 STR renown armies with draw capabilities (Golden Company) and recursion kneel-effects (the aforementioned Archmaester Marwyn).

Now, there's another thing to take into account - you only have power over the constitution of your own deck. You can make sure that Long Lances will be extremely effective in your deck during the build process, but with kneel you can run into some Weenie-heavy build which has no important centerpieces, but rather floods you with cheap high STR nonuniques.

Of course when playing against a good player, they will attempt to manipulate their board to minimize the effects of your kneel, and conversely manipulate your board position to minimize your use of stand.

With Targ characters being close to the highest power-level currently, stand for them is pretty close to being as effective as kneel is for Lannister, so the net impact would be pretty much equal (see deck structure section for a related subject)… except for one really important anomaly. Our old friends the Maester s and their Chain s. How useful is getting to re-use a pile of Valyrian Steel Link + Tin Link + Bronze Link + Copper Link on a Linked Advisor? I'd argue that pretty absurdly useful, much more useful than standing or kneeling a single character. And with the limitations on Castellan (more on this later) this probably swings the net impact in the Targaryen direction. This of course has less to do with Long Lances, and more to do with TMP and Maesters themselves. More on this subject when we get to limitations.

Stackability:

Long Lances wins hands down. Theoretically can be repeated once per phase even with one card, and several times each phase with 2 or 3 Long Lances. However, this is mainly due to the fact that several Long Lances can trigger simultaneously, check the Timing part of the analysis for related discussion. Castellan has one of the worst stackabilities in the game, due to the Limited Response: . Decent stackability with other Lannister Kneel however (except for AGH), but that's a whole different subject again.

Cost/Deck Structure:

Regarding deck structure the comparison is pretty straightforward: Castellan is simply much easier to include and requires less from your deck. It doesn't require influence, other specific cards (apart from what you're anyway using) and doesn't require you to have good targets built into your deck. Similarly to not looking at stackability with other kneel for Castellan in the previous section, I'll not discuss the subject of influence-light and Ambushless Targ decks being few and far between. For the sake of brevity (ahaha), let's just say that these two even each other out, and leave it at that.

Timing:

Now, this one will be quite tricky. The best timing for any kneel/stand effect is Challenges, since this will allow you to tip the challenges in your direction via surprises, and that's also the only point at which the effects are completely equal in power-level. That's why You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf gives power, while Distraction doesn't, really. The situation is also asymmetric. For kneel Marshalling is a good timing, since it happens before Challenges, but for stand it isn't all that useful without specific cards like Street Waif. Of course there are some issues with Marshalling -kneel also, in regards to iniative. If your opponent goes first, then you can't target any cards he/she plays this turn etc.

So, how do the cards compare here? Long Lances (when ambushed or triggered by other Ambushes/comes into play during Challenges effects) hits this sweet spot. However, it's stackability (also standing during other phases) is weakened quite a bit due to the other phases being much less useful for stand. Castellan on the other hand hits the 'good' mark for kneel (Marshalling), but not the actual sweet spot.

As a conclusion, I'd say that the same reasons that make Long Lances lose in Deck Structure (requirement for influence to Ambush etc.) allow it the win in optimal timing.

Targetting Limitations:

Without attachments for Castellan and Targaryen for Long Lances. Actually, I'd put this one down as a tie. Being only limited to standing Targ-characters stops plenty of abusive combos, while not being able to hit characters with attachments (especially Maesters) gives Castellan a nice built-in weakness. The funny thing of course is that the same thing that makes Castellan quite good in the current environment (positive attachments being weak) is caused by the one thing that they can't target (Maesters with chains).

Character Statistics:

Two icons that are common for the House, 3-for-3, both have a negative trait, but Long Lances has a positive trait and a keyword. So, Long Lances wins.

So. There you go, one indepth comparison between Long Lances and Castellan (and kneel and stand in general). Now, feel free to refute this, but I require at least an equally detailled and theory-based (not anecdotal) approach to take it seriously…

Does this require Long Lances to be restricted? Or that Castellan should be unrestricted? Dunno, the whole 'presuming to understand how cards should be balanced' thing is a can-o'-worms that I wouldn't want to open. But like Twn2dn said, it's definately a card that should be kept an eye on. Honestly, the only part that really irritates me about them personally is how they break 'House Feel' with regard to Baratheon, something that the game has been losing quite a bit lately in other regards as well, with many Houses converging towards being able to do the exact same things (pretty much everything) without having real weaknesses (Stark intrigue anyone?).

TL;DR: Long Lances beats Castellan 4-1, with Maester s as their teams MVP. Drakey rants about something obscure and non-sensical called 'House Feel' that no-one else cares about.

I'm beginning to think that saunas and excellent metal bands have turned Finns into superiour beings. And best of all, you didn't punctuate a single sentence with lol.

playgroundpsychotic said:

An alternative view would be that we're just really bored for half of the year, since everything is Snowed Under or just Frozen Solid … However, one should never underistimate the power of excellent Metal and saunas either.

WWDrakey said:

As a Canadian, I prefer to think that cold weather helps create practical thinking.

flipperlord -

I apologize if you took offense to my post. I just don't initially view Castellan of the Rock vs Long Lances in the same manner that you do. Please don't refrain from posting what you think because it's a valuable and fun discussion.

WWDrakey -

Thanks for the insightful post!

I forgot about the non-attachment requirement for Castellan.

I am removing "Limited Response" from Castellan and turning it into "Limit 1 per phase" for the purposes of this fun debate. It will never become an limitless response.

You outlined why Long Lances is far more versatile than Castellan. However, I think that it is safe to say that they are generally uncomparable because of how they are used. It's more of a control card versus a rush or utility multiplier card.

Long Lances increases your ability to perform actions for you in a game.
-Allows you to reuse your own characters for challenges and paying for costs. These characters are limited to Targaryen characters only.
-Generally easy to trigger with the number of put into play effects Targaryen has.

Castellan deceases your opponents ability to do perform certain actions in a game.
-Allows you to restrict the opponents ability to use targeted characters that may be effective in challenges or for paying for costs. These characters can be any opponents character that has no attachments.
-Very easy to trigger by playing a character or location.

Castellan disables characters that don't kneel to attack/defend, kneel to trigger their abilities, and helps keep big and key characters from being effective during the challenge phase. To overcome what Castellan does, you need to have a better board position after the kneeling, a restanding ability, or really good characters still standing afterward.

Long Lances enables your own characters to allow them to be used multiple times in a round/phase. These characters might be key targaryen characters in the game and can help you win multiple challenges.

The question is, what is easier to overcome? Is it easier to deal with having a key character degenerated board position? Or is it easier to overcome characters that have been restood and are ready to use their ability or reused in a different challenge? The point of view of the opponent will mostly come from what happens in the Challenge phase as this is where the board position battle rears its ugly head the most.

WWDrakey said:

I was more irked with the direct comparison. The flaw in the logic is highlighted by the fact that Ben Roethlisburger is a better QB than Tim Tebow. The Denver Broncos beat the Steelers in the playoffs last year. It would be more accurate to say (based on your post) that a deck containing and centered on Long Lances should generally be better than a deck containing and centered on Castellan. However, I still do not believe there is enough empirical evidence to say that a deck containing and centered on Long Lances is superior to all Tier 1 decks in such a way that it will have a win rate against all Tier 1 decks of significantly more than 50% if both decks are assumed to be controlled by players that will execute "perfect play".

Theory is theory. There was no Mayan apocalypse even though there were people theorizing there would be one. Facts are facts. Water consists of two hydrogen and one oxygen. I can do something concrete with the latter, like break down H2O into its elements. I can only logic out a theoretical situation with the former, like spend all my money expecting to die, and then be proven wrong or right. While Long Lances may be irritating and eventually confirmed as overpowered, I prefer enough evidence for a concrete determination rather than repeat the Laughing Storm scenario.

Edit: H-twenty (H20) isn't water… I am bad at spelling…

At least, I think we can agree there are some cards that should come off the restricted list: burning on the sand is one that comes to mind.

As the card pool grows, some cards should be removed from the restricted list and some should be added--as general of a statement as that is…

kr4ng said:

For BotS I would disagree. I doubt FFG wants to push that event out more (especially to a deck like Martell KotHH with Princes plans) when they are now releasing a new naval mechanic that seems to heavily affect combat math and results by the naval icon.

This has been done before mostly with Banned cards coming out, but TLS came out of the restricted list as well. I personaly would like to see the list modified more often be that for remove cards, but mostly adding new ones as well. I'm still waiting to see how they change Compelled by the Rock and Jaqen so that they get out of the banned list.

~ Man, the new spoiler for Fury (front page) really sements Baratheon as the ruler of stand-effects and compares favorably against both Long Lances and Meereneese Fighting Pit. All my negative feelings over Long Lances have now been completely alleviated.

That boat has the wrong trait, it should be a Submarine instead of a Warship .

Sigh.

~It's a good thing that the Fury can't stand characters with attachments. Repeated use of maester chains would be far too powerful!

Ire said:

I would have to respectfully disagree with you as well. BotS isn't that powerful, ruins setups (barring martell kothh), takes up 3 events slots when event slots are at a premium in this game, and most of the time the card is underwhelming (yes, I am sure everyone has that one time when burning on the sand was just so uber for them).

If they took it off the restricted, I still don't know how many copies I would run especially after the whole next cycle comes out.

Ire said:

Do we have any reason to think that this will happen? Maybe it was mentioned in an article that I missed, but both cards would need a major change for them to ever see play again; Compelled could be changed to only 1 attachment and you simply gain control of it, end of story, but Jaqen is a mess.

Skowza said:

Skowza said:

Yes, when they announced that the packs would be reprinted they also said they would redo Jaqen and Compelled so that they could come out of the banned list.