SamTarly:
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere; I did a search and couldn't find anything on it.
I was just wondering what the rationale was for banning The King's Peace. All the other banned cards were either clearly and horribly broken when they came out (Counterplot, Heads on Pikes, The Things I Do for Love), or became so due to a change in game mechanics (Alleys and Whispers). But The King's Peace doesn't seem excessively broken to me, especially with the huge potential drawback of 0 claim. What am I missing here?
coldwind:
SamTarly wrote:
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere; I did a search and couldn't find anything on it.
I was just wondering what the rationale was for banning The King's Peace. All the other banned cards were either clearly and horribly broken when they came out (Counterplot, Heads on Pikes, The Things I Do for Love), or became so due to a change in game mechanics (Alleys and Whispers). But The King's Peace doesn't seem excessively broken to me, especially with the huge potential drawback of 0 claim. What am I missing here?
A product of the game environment at the time I suppose. Back then you could play multiple copies of it, and with far fewer cards that could just claim power, you could keep your opponent from doing any challenges for two+ turns.
ktom
SamTarly wrote:
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere; I did a search and couldn't find anything on it.
I was just wondering what the rationale was for banning The King's Peace. All the other banned cards were either clearly and horribly broken when they came out (Counterplot, Heads on Pikes, The Things I Do for Love), or became so due to a change in game mechanics (Alleys and Whispers). But The King's Peace doesn't seem excessively broken to me, especially with the huge potential drawback of 0 claim. What am I missing here?
It's worth noting that now that it is in Classic, Alleys and Whispers is no longer banned.
The rationale usually cited for The King's Peace banning is that the card essentially skips the entire Challenge phase the first round. Your opponent cannot initiate challenges (there aren't a whole lot of ways to get power on your House before Challenges in Round 1, particularly in the Westeros block) and your claim is 0. So yeah, on the face of it in later rounds, it doesn't seem like a particularly harmful card, but as a standard, "time to build" opening plot, it took a lot out of the game and pretty much defeated the purpose of challenges in the first round.
SamTarly
Thanks, guys--I forgot that you used to be able to have two copies of any plot (that was way before my time). I also didn't consider the case where you don't have any power on your house. No challenges for the first two turns would drastically alter the game.
Trump:
SamTarly wrote:
I was just wondering what the rationale was for banning The King's Peace. All the other banned cards were either clearly and horribly broken when they came out (Counterplot, Heads on Pikes, The Things I Do for Love), or became so due to a change in game mechanics (Alleys and Whispers).
I understand the King's Peace. Could anyone explain why the others are banned? I'm admittedly new to the game, but they don't look horribly broken to me.
ktom:
Trump wrote:
SamTarly wrote:
I was just wondering what the rationale was for banning The King's Peace. All the other banned cards were either clearly and horribly broken when they came out (Counterplot, Heads on Pikes, The Things I Do for Love), or became so due to a change in game mechanics (Alleys and Whispers).
I understand the King's Peace. Could anyone explain why the others are banned? I'm admittedly new to the game, but they don't look horribly broken to me.
Some of it is product of the environment at the time.
- The original "Things I Do For Love" event was just too powerful in the early game environment. There was no possible save, so it both took out the character AND denied your opponent the benefit of an additional card by returning it to the top of the opponent's deck. (Note that all other "return to the top of your deck" effects are things you do to yourself, not to your opponent.) It was just far too powerful in the environment, especially for the negligible cost. Even now, with dupes allowed to save from returning to the deck, event immunity, more cancels, etc., it's still a pretty powerful effect. But in the WES-block only environment, it was brutal.
- Counterplot, I think, was primarily a power-to-cost thing. Also, this was not banned right away (it was one of the last to be banned, in fact). so I think it was Outmaneuver that sealed the deal for it. Between three of these and Outmaneuver, I could potentially see your entire plot deck by round 3. Plus, you know, with multiples in my hand, I could potentially force you to keep cycling your plots until we got to one I like. It was easily abused.
- The one-sided nature of Heads on Pikes kind of killed it. Waaay back in the day, minimum deck size was 40 cards. A couple of these in the popular Stark Murder deck of the time could kill more than half of your deck in very short order. Plus, there was virtually no recursion. It was just too easy to deck an opponent with this card. Even today, think of this in a GJ military/discard deck. The environment may have evolved to make this a "limit 1 per game" type deal, but there was a time when this card ended games, but in a way where I had to sit and watch you accumulate the last of your power with literally nothing to do about it.
JerusalemJones:
I think at one point there was an R&D article about them, or at least Things I Do For Love. IIRC, that one was banned because it gave a particular effect (Remove a character from play and put it on top of the deck) that Eric didn't feel belonged in Lannister, and also because there were ways to discard that card from the deck, making it more powerful than intended (a great TIDFL and Heads on Pikes combo).
Cards that are "broken" are not necessarily obvious at first glance. The greatest example of this was when WotC released the Mirrodin sets for Magic. In the Mirrodin set they released a series of Land cards that were also artifacts. They also had a creature (Disciple of the Vault) that could deal 1 damage to an opponent after an artifact left play. In the second set, they released a creature that you could sacrifice artifacts to bump up its Att/Def (Arcbound Ravager). Suddenly, people were running artifact land decks, 4 Disciples and 4 Ravagers. Sac an artifact land, use all four Disciples, repeat. It got so bad they banned 9 cards at once (the Disciple, the lands, and 3 other cards -- but they kept Ravager, as it wasn't broken without the combo). According to Wizards, at every major tournament the top 8 were all running either Ravager or anti-Ravager decks; no other deck type was strong enough to compete against the Ravager deck.
FFG appears to have a policy to errata broken/infinite combos rather than banning particular cards. Also note the number of cards that have been errata'd rather than outright banned (sometimes, like Wheels within Wheels, for game balance and sometimes, like VED/WED Jon Snow, for "nedliness" -- allowing Jon to actually use Longclaw).
Trump:
ktom wrote:
The environment may have evolved to make this a "limit 1 per game" type deal, but there was a time when this card ended games, but in a way where I had to sit and watch you accumulate the last of your power with literally nothing to do about it.
But wouldn't that be the point to decking in AGOT? It's not an automatic loss as it is in some CCGs, but being stuck with your limited resources should be a penalty. Did FFG decide they really just didn't want to see decking since it can lead to an unexciting finale? Or were people running 4 Heads on Pikes and some way to get them back and so it was just getting ridiculous?
ktom wrote:
Even now, with dupes allowed to save from returning to the deck, event immunity, more cancels, etc., it's still a pretty powerful effect. But in the WES-block only environment, it was brutal.
This brings to mind something else I was curious about. I realize expansions are always bringing about new keywords and mechanics, but what has changed in AGOT over time as far as basic rules? You've mentioned a change in minimum deck size and wider usage of dupes. Are there other examples?
Maester_Luke:
Trump wrote:
This brings to mind something else I was curious about. I realize expansions are always bringing about new keywords and mechanics, but what has changed in AGOT over time as far as basic rules? You've mentioned a change in minimum deck size and wider usage of dupes. Are there other examples?
The game started with deck size 40 and expanded to 60 at some point during the first year... probably as more cards became available.
You could originally run two of any plot card (some were still printed as "Limit 1") and that was changed to "one of" sometime after the release of Ice and Fire (but before Throne of Blades IIRC). The growth in the # of plot cards helped with this.
Oct. 10, 2003 was the installation of the Draw Cap... max 3 cards drawn outside of the Draw FAW.
The release of Valyrian had the advent of influence as a resource (you can argue about the level of impact), a persistent change to the costing in the game (much like crests will be?)
LUke
ktom:
Trump wrote:
But wouldn't that be the point to decking in AGOT? It's not an automatic loss as it is in some CCGs, but being stuck with your limited resources should be a penalty. Did FFG decide they really just didn't want to see decking since it can lead to an unexciting finale? Or were people running 4 Heads on Pikes and some way to get them back and so it was just getting ridiculous?
People were running 3x Heads on Pikes and tossing Valar Morghulus (kill all characters in play) second or third round. It wasn't unheard of that players were discarding 20+ cards from an opponent's deck in a single Marshaling phase. HUGE "negative play experience." Decking an opponent is one thing (and FFG obviously did not decide that decking is a bad thing given "Head on a Spike" and the recent direction of some Greyjoy cards), but decimating a third to a half of an opponent's deck in a single marshalling with 1-3 effects that have virtually no cost is quite another. So I think the big "sin" of Heads on Pike was that it was too EASY to cripple your opponent without appreciable risk or investment on your part.
Trump wrote:
what has changed in AGOT over time as far as basic rules? Are there other examples?
LUke outlined the big ones. (Though he's missing the word "two" in his description of the plots - you used to be allowed 2 copies of plots in your 7-card deck, now only 1.) The other one that people don't always recognize as a big change to the basic rules of the game is that the "player/framework action window" timing structure we have today was not actually formalized until near the end of the second block (I&F, so after ACoS was released). Before then, there was no "moribund" and Responses were considered separate actions. Many card interactions came out somewhat differently before the formalized timing structure. (Believe it or not, the formalization and "moribund" in general actually made things more consistent and easier to figure out.)
bloodycelt:
Ya know I bought a box of mirrodin and made an affinity deck right there.
It used atog instead of the ravager.
Even so... everyone else started putting shatterstorms and other anti-artifact cards in there.
I stopped playing btw before they banned those cards.
Anyhow back to thrones...
I think milling should be an option, just if they're gonna do it make a location called pyke:
Instead of a setup you may start with Pyke as an agenda with the text:
You cannot win the game with 15 power.
Players lose the game if their deck has 0 cards at the start of the draw phase.
....
If anything the most annoying aspect of mill is waiting afterwards for the opponent to win.
JerusalemJones:
bloodycelt wrote:
If anything the most annoying aspect of mill is waiting afterwards for the opponent to win.
Yeah, pretty much. You do mean the "milled" player winning, right?