If you haven't seen it already, we're up with initial impressions on the Restricted List, FAQ and Tournament rules update!

Join us next week for some thoughts on where we go from here!

Interesting episode guys. I personally feel you are looking too narrowly at the restricted list. What, I think, you failed to see (or perhaps did but did not acknowledge sufficiently on the podcast) is that this restricted list is NOT intended to do the same thing as the original restricted list. To put it in more concrete terms, it frankly doesn't matter if the Orphan is as powerful as Meera. Restriction is no longer just about card or house balance, it has become much more than that. Restriction is the vehicle that keeps the competitive game dynamic, and by extension aims to keep organized play healthy and growing.

In April, I made the case for such a use of the restricted list in a CardGameDB article http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/index.html/_/game-of-thrones/an-argument-for-more-frequent-use-of-the-restri-r126. My basic argument was that house balance is not enough to make this game fun. The game must incorporate flavor and, most importantly, real decisions. Whether you feel Bear's Island is overpowered, surely we can agree that it feels neither very flavorful nor results in meaningful choices in terms of which character you kill (at least 90+% of the time you pick the strongest legal target). The same is true of refugees, Hatchling Feast, and most of the other cards. But even if you disagree, i think you would agree that deck building had become stagnant. In other words real choices in competitive deck building were largely restricted to a fraction of the deck. By adding cards to the restricted list, one might say that FFG actually reduced the level of deck building restrictions by making it much less likely to be disadvantaged by refusing to play these staple cards.

Two additional thoughts. First, I'm not claiming the exact composition is perfect, but the orientation (directionally) is good.

Second, one might claim that an innovative player always had the option to create creative builds without restriction. In practice, however, this has meant that a few strong players at the top innovate, and everyone else copies. And even when they innovate, the vast majority of the cards in the deck are the same staples.

This is just my two cents, but since the viewpoint wasn't represented, I thought I would share.

Deleted due to double post….

Arg…. I'm torn. On the one hand, I want to reply more directly to some of the ideas that you mention here, on the other hand, I just want to post the next episode early!

For the moment, I'll say that we made a concious decision to split the FAQ feedback into two episodes. This one was focused on initial reactions- one of mine being that I'm personally not as sold on the shift in Restricted List usage being the best plan. That is unless it becomes a rotating list with a couple updates each year where some cards go on and some come off. Just adding to it all the time is not going to offer as much potential. Anyway, the second episode that I recorded yesterday with Greg was more of a "where do we go from here?" episode with the intention of talking more about what this impact does. Special previous, Greg and I get into an argument directly related to forced creativity and competitive options.

I'll mull it over a bit more and see what else I can bring to this discussion without just eating up all of the info from the second cast.

Unless of course I just decide to push it out early…

Well, surely a new FAQ warrants the boy on the street crying "Extra! Extra! Hear all about it! Special edition podcast!".

I agree with Twn2dn, and posted in a similar vein on Cardgamedb. I think that using the restricted list to shake up the meta is justified, and I hope it will work. I also hope that it'll do so by being a living restricted list and change with the "Seasons" of play, and I hope that using the restricted list in this manner is a stop-gap measure until a more permanent solution can be found to the inertia/increasing entry cost/burden of knowledge inherent to an ever growing LCG. Given the introduction by Nate/Damon to the FAQ update (especially the following quote)

While we continue to explore long-term solutions to these issues, we have decided, for the immediate health of the metagame, to introduce a more liberal usage of the game’s restricted list, and we have added a number of “staple” and “crutch” cards to the list in an effort to encourage players to think about the game and the metagame in new ways.

I think they've done what they set out to do, given good reasons for it, and are keeping in mind a longer term solution. Sounds great.

For those of you who don't have 2 hours to sink into listening (I clearly do), I can summarize Episode 102 for you:

The hosts state quite plainly that it is their decks that got all the cards restricted in joust while they repeatedly understate what may have been the greatest solo melee deck ever built (that happened to also combo off other decks of the same type).

At this point it's a running gag in my mind that my army deck keeps getting nerfed, so I do tend to bring that up, but past that I don't really recall placing special significance on any of our decks being the reason that anything was restricted. Though, I admit that it is easiest to talk about how an update like this impacts our decks, since they happen to be the ones that we're playing most often.

Aside from that matter, I'm not quite sure what a solo melee deck would be? I mean, I'm sure which deck you're referring to, but I'm not sure about that terminology.

He means it was the best melee deck without another copy a the table. Even when two brothers openly said they were working together, the deck won the table 1st or 2nd turn without either of them being able to stop it.

kr4ng said:

Admittedly in hindsight I may have been a little harsh of the new FAQ (it turns out that, shockingly, I'm really indifferent about it) although a few of the inclusions still do not make much sense in my mind. Additionally I do believe that I openly reffered to the Martell Scourge + Hellholt Engineer deck as incredible but degenerate when paired with a similar deck at the same table unless it left the episode due to some of Will's editing magic. And, in our defense, that is a true statement.