After the release of the full chapter pack cycle i found it interesting what other players think about the cycle, were your expectations met, is there some mechanic you particulary like and what about the game balance, nedliness and artwork?

For me the whole chapter pack cycle seemed to be a semi finsihed product. You could still see a lot of cards related to the CCG area, sometimes in the pure game text and sometimes just because the card doesn´t seem to fit in the current enviroment and brought along a power curve, which is at least no correspondending with the Core set. Three other negative points for me are not fixing the lack of Greyjoy and Martell cards ( i really hope we´ll see some announcement about this issue in the near future) and the dominance of some key cards over the whole winter/ summer mechanic. If you decide not to run these cards and winter/summer mechanic a lot of the cards in the cp cycle are unpredictable at best or crap. The third point is more or less a very personal point of view, i don´t like undercosted non- unique weenies and i think we´ve had plenty of these guys in the whole cylce.

The positive things which come to mind are excellent artwork on most of the cards and the constant effort to introduce new mechanics to the game. I really think the artwork is outstanding, we´ve seen a high amount of really good works since the release of A house of Thorns. The artwork has since than ever been an indicator for me that FFG is still willing and ready to produce a quality product. There is maybe only a little downslope to artwork, while it has been constantly good i´ve had the impression that some artworks were produced for other cards e.g. see Fishwhiskers from the former cp cycle, he has the typical Targ army fashion (helmet etc) you can also see on Jorah´s cohort, or Alannis Greyjoy from refugees of war which looks more like one of these older women "counseling" Daeny. You can find some more examples if you pay close attention, nevertheless all the artworks are great and so it´s a minor issue.

I also like the mechanics introduced in the a time of ravens chapter pack cyle. I think summer/winter and reinforcement were/ are good sub themes, however i dislike like i stated before that the mechanics are bound to only a few key cards which are must of the time so ultimately, it all breaks down to: "if you can´t beat them, join´em." And the nedliness factor suffers from the fact that ravens become more important for the game play than kings and queens.

If the open issues get fixed, i guess the game will be back on the right track. In school notes, i would rate the a time of ravens chapter pack cycle as a C.

Your impressions?

Good topic.

I like it a lot.

I really like the Summer/Winter mechanic and how it affects the tactical state of the game. its a cool mechanic that you can't just ignore the way you can epic battles or some other themes that weren't fully developed. I love the way Targaryen can really take advanatge of their attahcment theme which has been dormant for a while. Gifts for the Queen lets you easily get a raven and a Flame Kissed and in conjunction with the Eyrie, you can leverage your position really well.

I think it works really well as a conclusion to the Five Kings block. Thematically they did a great job of capturing the after effects of a world shaking war in the card cycle. Winter can be very hard on the survivors. (The Stark atatchment is symbolically perfect in this repsect).

i love that there are now three Baratheon kings and each of teh brothers can legitmatley have a deck built around him I tend to think King Stannis is hte best, btu I will play King Robert over Core set Robert and King Renly has become the only version i'll play - supplanting both agenda Renly and Core set Renly at the moment - though all three are incredible cards.

I though each chapter pack had some all star cards in it, and I am hard pressed to pick a favortie. i like the way R&D stayed true to their promise with how the Houses realetd to the seasosn. Obvioulsy Martell and Taragryen have great summer builds as do Stark and Greyjoy for Winter. baratehon has good builds for either season - and Lannister just doesn't care, and probably plays better without either agenda.

There are some great neutrals in the set - Arthur Dayne and Samwell being the obvious, but Gilly is really good as well.

Things I don't like are mainly that the Ravens seem way too storng. I don't think Lion's Mouth was thought out well at all. Men with No king makes me very nervous and I think Lars is more right than wrong in his assesment of them. I don't like the location hate Bandits - their ability is sorely needed and the fact that it is so easily neutered by a veyr popular mechanic s a problem. we need more location control - it has been lacking since Winter Edition rotated last fall and High Tide, Mance, Favorable Ground and these limited Bandits just aren't enough. Thank goodness Fleeing is still around.

All in all though - i have to say i really like this set. I prefer it to it to Clash of Arms whci seemed to be either way too vanilla or way to overpowered. tehre is a ncie balance here, the seasons theme is the coolest mechanic since influence was introduced and every House got some really nice tech to play with.

I really like the Refugee mechanic, and some houses in particular, such as Targaryen, I think really needed some in-house weenies. IIRC, Viserys and Brown Ben Plumm were the only real weenie characters for Targ in the Core set, other than the recruiter.

I was playing a game yesterday, and I had Daario Naharis and two Refugees, and one other character. My opponent unexpectedly used his gold, forced me to use my characters to defend, and didn't win any challenges. He did, however, win dominance, and 3/4 of my characters left the table. I was left with a stupid look on my face, saying "what happened to my refugees?"

I love it.

Hey, nice topic. But there are 2 point of view. First is the "Standard" deckbuilding and the other is LCG only deckbuilding. I am very sorry that Standard is no longer supported but lets move on. There is a lot of good things about the ToR but there are also some negatives.

I like the Summer/Winter mechanic, it is good adition to the game for Standart and for LCG mostly. The bad thing about it is that in Standart if someone has a Summer/Winter based deck and the other does not, he is in a slight disadvatage. I also dont like battles when 2 decks have the same "weather". But battles summer agains winter are amazing. I am glad that the theme for supported more then in just 2 CPs and is not just dead like Epic Phase. The other good thing is the artwork. I love the artworks of some cards, it really makes the game special. I also like to see more Queens such as Jeyne and Allanys or new King Tommen.

But there is still few negatives. First of all NO Greyjoy and Martell!!! Then a lot of the cards works with MB/IG/PS plots and there are almost none in LCG. In Standard it is OK since you can use all the 5KE plots. Then I think that the CoreSet is little unballance with some Houses more powerfull then the others, but in CPs it evens then. Overall the CPs are very good evened up. I would like to see more Bolton, Tyrell, Clannsmen, Tully, Dothraki etc so we could build more decks around them. There are very limited options in deckbuilding so far. One more negative for me is that I see some overpowered cards that could be autoinclude and destroy most of the fun from the game (Man with no King ...). And personally even if I have not seen it in play I am not amused from the Reinforcements cards.

Nice analysis Rozy. You sum up why i don't really disucss LCG all taht often - it still feels veyr unfinsihed and stadnard just gives you mroe options.

But I just wanted to say - that even in Standard, evryone pretty much includes the carrion birds. they are amazingly costed for the stealth function anyway, and you are right - if your opponnt is running a dedicated season deck, it would behoove you to have some way to hit it.

Stag Lord said:

Hmm. Here's an interesting question. Short of the keying trait problems (Kingdom, King/Queen and plot traits), is the unfinished feeling intrinsic to the LCG environment or is it heavily fed by the experience of those of us coming from the CCG environment - so we know what we're missing? I could go either way. I've heard from people who have no pre-LCG experience enjoying the game and its challenges within the LCG card pool very much, and I have heard from people who quickly felt limited by what was available. Point being, people who picked up the game after September 2008 may have a different perspective on the card pool than those of us from before.

I think everyone can agree that Ravens was obviously intended for an environment that included (more) Kingdom locations, King/Queen characters and traited plots. It's not really worth discussing or critiquing those deficiencies anymore.

I guess I'm in the minority in that I'm reserving judgement on the whole Summer/Winter thing. I thought claim replacement was a pretty cool thing, but it was essentially limited to a single set (not even really a whole block). The seasonal thing is also cool, but unless we see it supported beyond this set, I'm not sure it was worth it. (We're already seeing precious little from the House-specific keywords.) On the plus side, though, it does look like the design team generally avoided the mistakes from Doomed - namely, they didn't significantly under-cost characters or abilities because the season requirement was there for "balance." There are a couple of stupid-good season-based cards, but they don't seem to be creating the ridiculous, one-sided impact of something like Massing at Twilight or Prince's Loyalist.

Mostly, I think Ravens was a good cycle and it's inspiring some interesting decks. That's the best that can be said for a set in any environment: it's simulating deckbuilding creativity and has provided a few "staples" for decks, seasonal or otherwise.

Is the carrion bird card a must in every deck currently, even in a deck not running the seasons mechanic? Aren't the ways to counterattack the seasons mechanic totally limited?

We have got special cards (Ravens) that can be removed either by other special cards (Ravens) or the Carrion Bird only. Other developed AGOT game mechanics or cards cannot do anything about it and you are forced to use cards from within the winter/summer paradigm in your deck to deal with the seasons mechanic. (But you never know if your opponent will be using it or not.)

I have not played the Summer/Winter stuff yet, so perhaps my questions are a miss and misunderstanding. I just got an impression, and I consider this a weakness of the A Time of Raves expansion, that it is such a hermetic mechanics. That there are no tools to fight it from the outside; that some cards became a must in every deck. Hope you know what I mean. Is my observation right?

Max Wax said:

Yes, but I'd also say no. Sure if you're not running a Summer/Winter deck or Carrion Birds yourself and your opponent makes it Summer or Winter you're not going to really be able to do anything about it. But if you also aren't playing any cards that need it to be Summer or Winter, its not directly hurting you either aside from the 1G modifier.

And as mentioned above, the cards that need it to be a specific season are costed appropriately that its not like they're broken by getting to use their seasonally restricted abilities.

So, its an extra condition for your opponent to meet... but if you're playing a deck that isn't concerned with the specifics of your opponents deck or disrupting them in that way... you're not likely to care if you allow them to maintain the season.

And most decks really do run Carrion Bird anyway, at least in LCG. Its just that good of a card as a 1G Military icon w/ Stealth weenie, and there are some fun trait manipulation combos that pop up to use its ability for without anything seasonal too.

Max Wax said:

Yes and no.

Yes, you are correct that if you want to counter an opponent's Season at its source, you either need to be playing a season-themed deck yourself or run the Carrion Birds. There is no way (short of hefty trait manipulation) to "fight" the season from outside - something that is at least a little thematic.

No, you are not correct in the underlying assumption that the Season must be fought. If you are not playing a season deck yourself (or, more to the point, unless you are playing the opposite season from your opponent), the fact that it is Summer or Winter does not impact your cards and strategies much. Granted, Winter impacts your resource curve, but that's about it. Your opponent's individual cards that take advantage of the season can all be fought by "from the inside." So even though you cannot easily get rid of the card that makes it Summer or Winter, all the cards that care one way or another are no less vulnerable than a non-seasonal card, even if the season is in their favor.

Think of it this way: back in the day, you couldn't get rid of someone's Wot5K Agenda. You could only "fight" it by stopping them from winning military challenges somehow. Summer and Winter are similar to someone who is not running such a deck themselves; you can't get rid of the season, but you can still stop them at the level of individual characters and cards.

Granted, the most obvious strategy to combat all those Summer or Winter themed cards is to somehow "control the weather," and it is vexing to the strategic player that the most efficient strategy for ruining your opponent's day is a difficult one to achieve. But it's not the only strategy possible for dealing with such a deck.

Essentially, the cards that create the season are hermetic, but the overall "mechanic" is not, if you're willing to go after the cards that take advantage of the season rather than the Ravens themselves.

Thank you gentlemen for your clarifications and giving more light on the subject. Very appreciated!

ktom said:

What about the Kings of Summer and Kings of Winter agendas? Is there a counter-strategy for those agendas that doesn't require you to fight to control the weather?

Or maybe the agendas aren't very popular for some other reason I'm not aware of.

Arma virumque said:

There are no other counter strategies available. But let´s face the truth the winter agenda is harmless, but the summer agenda is very useful. I would also rate the necessity to counter the winter/summer mechanic from another point of view. There´s a huge difference if only some random cards in a deck depend on the winter/summer mechanic or if a whole deck concept depends on the mechanic. If only a few cards support the "weather" than you´ll be fine with usual control cards, but if tehre are a lot of cards it´s necessary to counter the deck at it´s roots - the wether mechanic.

It´s my impression that a lot of the previous speakers are assuming a half bread half butter seasonal deck and not a 100 % dedicated season deck. I think it´s necessary to run the special counters against the weather or you´ll give too many advantages to your opponent.

Arma virumque said:

In my experience, it is very rare for someone to play a Summer or Winter deck without tacking on the corresponding Agenda. If you are playing Summer or Winter, you (probably) already have all the tools you possibly can to combat "control the weather" and the Agendas only hurt if it is the opposite season, so why not? But in the context of this discussion, Agendas are a different animal. If someone plays an Agenda, you essentially have to deal with it.

But yes, there are counter-strategies for both Agendas that do not require you to control the weather for decks that do not want to run Ravens. They are strategies to minimize the impact of the Agendas on you, not to turn them against your opponent.

- Counter Kings of Winter by making sure you have fewer cards in your hand than your opponent at the end of the Draw phase. Done right, with the proper recursion effects, Marshaling or Challenge Phase-based draw, etc., it's not really surrendering a card advantage to your opponent. Heck, next game you play, keep an eye on how often you have fewer cards in your hand at the end of the Draw Phase than your opponent anyway. Bet this Agenda impacts you less than you think.

- Counter Kings of Summer by making sure you have good draw and/or reliable draw effects built into your deck, or by making sure you are winning Intrigue challenges and/or employing other hand-gutting techniques. Many KoS players depend primarily on the Agenda as their draw, so if you find a way to draw even one extra card each round, you are probably balancing out their card advantage. The same effect can be had if you are constantly going after the cards in their hand. It doesn't benefit them much to draw an extra card in the Draw phase if you are discarding 2-3 cards a round from their hand.

So the strategies exist to minimize or mitigate the benefits of the Agenda without having to "control the weather." You just have to find the cards and effects that let you do so.

Old Ben said:

What's a "100% dedicated season deck"? With roughly 30 cards total across all 6 Houses that key off of each season, is it really giving "too many advantages" to forego a season of your own?

Granted, I don't know that there is a better military weenie than Carrion Bird in the game right now, so I'd probably run one for my own reasons, but feeling the need to get rid of my opponent's White/Black Raven before the game starts isn't in the top 5. Having the option is nice, but the Carrion Bird makes my deck more because it is a 1-cost, stealthy, self-recursing military icon than because I'm afraid of my opponent's "seasonal advantage."

Like ktom said, it really only hurts when you're running cards yourself that have the negative penalties for it being the "wrong" season yourself. Otherwise, most typical counters to the cards a seasonal player is using work just as well as against any other deck. And in the case of the former, you're obviously running a deck that will be wanting to pack the seasonal control cards for your own strategy anyway.

ktom said:

But in the example given (countering Kings of Summer with draw mechanics or discards), you may be able to "balance out their card advantage," but aren't you still giving away what would otherwise have been a card advantage on your part? That's still a stiff blow to take just because you're not running the "hermetic" counter-strategy (to borrow Max Wax's term).

I'll admit that I'm approaching this from a different perspective. Since I'm supplying all the cards for my "meta" (such as it is), I've been reluctant to invest in the Time of Ravens cycle because it seemed that as soon as I started trying to play with seasonal mechanics for any one House, I would be forced to buy a bunch of additional chapter packs just to give all my other Houses the necessary counter-strategies. I'm trying to limit my spending to no more than one of each chapter pack, but that doesn't get me enough carrion birds or ravens to supply four Houses. And once I made that decision, it seemed like the value of the later chapter packs went down, because I had little seasonal synergy.

So my situation's a little unusual, perhaps. I suspect that any card that is both neutral and a "must have" for all four Houses is always going to cause me to question whether it's worth adding to my private meta.

Arma virumque said:

How do you figure? I'm not seeing how concentrating on your own card draw or gutting their hand is giving away your card advantage. They brought the Agenda and they made it Summer, so they're drawing an extra card every round. You can't do anything about the way that they built the deck (well, YOU can, but in most cases...). You are at a card disadvantage right there. So this whole idea of "balancing out their card advantage" is combating what they have set in motion independently of anything you did or brought to the game.

Your only choices are to stuff your deck with Ravens yourself (which is losing a different kind of "deck slot" card advantage unless you design the deck as a Seasonal deck to begin with - that's what we're trying to avoid) or to balance it out. You are not giving away an advantage by neglecting the season yourself; you are accepting that the "base equilibrium" in this match-up is different unless you want to run the Ravens and dealing with it.

Oops. Embarrasing misread of the card on my part. I won't even go into how I was interpreting it, because I can't figure out how I got there myself.

Thanks for the help. Happy Birthday, by the way!

Well, I have played it mostly in the area of LCG only. And even though it is a huge part of the overall cards, I would give it a D. It was obviously supposed to be part of a bigger picture, and having SO many cards key off things that are not really there (Kings/Queens, Battle plots) hurt bad. Plus, to be honest, a few of the big themes just were so-so (Bannermen anyone?). There are some fun cards, and some good ones, but overall it just seems like Carrion Birds/The only one-side search plot and the rest... Maybe I just expected the world considering we were moving to the "no fluff cards era", and hitting the LCG/new market with a bigger splash would have been excellent.

In Standard, I just haven't played enough. I don't think Summer/Winter effects are strong enough to build a deck around, but I can be proven wrong. There are a few cards that make my still-built standard decks, but not that many. In Standard I would give it about the same - a D. The old chapter packs, and the base set really did more for my decks than Ravens.

rings said:

Were there Bannermen in the Raven's expansion? I thought that was only the last pack of the W5K series. And a couple of those aren't terrible in the right deck for LCG.

I do agree that they really did seem to force the rotation of ITE+ way too early. Even now, after having been playing with LCG only for about 2 months I'm feeling rather restricted at times. Especially in regards to Martell characters and Cancel/Save effects. Even just 5KE cards would do miraculous things for the environment. That or the ITE Legacy pack.

Having 3 or 4 cards a pack pretty much unplayable in LCG does suck, and really looks like its not the card design or formats fault. But the poor and premature decision to cut everything not-LCG for sanctioned play so soon. I'd have said after GenCon this year might have been a better time to start phasing it out.

The last CP of the Raven's cycle actually kind of was a big let down for me. All of what... 1 unique character? And a bunch of identical formula generic armies and events repeated. With so many important named characters still without an LCG version. (I guess this could still fall under the caveat of premature rotation?) Not to mention the Men Without A King, which is going to potentially limit the playable neutral characters we'd already been so short on. Ugh.

Rings: You really should take a look at Summer decks in Standard: They are REALLY strong.

The thing about summer comes back to draw off the agenda. uncacnellable draw is always goign to eb very strong and i do pack Carrion birds inot all my decks for their utility (sure) but also to hit the Ravens. I really do feel that (at least in the case of summer) I need to be able to change my opponent's season - otherwise i am letting him play his game to too great of an extent. Ktpm - you're right that the Birds are strong enough to warrant three slots on their own, but even without stealth I would still run them for the ability. I am not as concerned about in game effects from my opponent's season, but I don't wnat them setting up such a reliable draw engine - not whiel there is soemthing i can do about it.

BTW - it is nicely balanced in that it is pretty fragile.The Summer agenda gets brutally hosed against winter and I knwo aorund here in NY people are reluctant to play the summer agenda becuase of the fear of drawing only one card per turn. teh winter agenda is far more popular at the moment.

And agreed with ktom and Rozy that there really isn't any more point in observing that soem cards are hurt becuase of teh alck oftraited Plots or kingdom locations. it really isn't a productive critique of the set any longer. .

Stag Lord said:

I totally agree, particularly against the Summer Agenda. My position here has not been that there is no reason to "control the weather" with the Carrion Birds, only that if you choose not to, you aren't necessarily shooting yourself in the foot (as seemed to be the general feeling at the beginning of the topic). My contention has been that playing a Season deck is not strictly necessary and that, while not a choice I would make, you could even choose to leave out the Birds.

For myself, I agree though. Short of a 5KE Agenda, I'll usually throw in a couple of Birds. I don't use them because of their seasonal control potential, but it's not an option I'd lightly forego.

ktom said:

Yes, there only 30 or so different cards spread among all houses, but there are cards you want to run thrice in one deck. A dedicated season deck (or 100 %) would for me use all the possible cards available for their own house, the neutral stuff and maybe one or two OOH cards. Personally i would only play Targaryen as a what i called 100 % season deck, because see they seem to have the best chances to keep the weather in play with the ravens and lady daenys chambers, also their focus is clearly on one season and they have a lot of good cards.

RJM said:

I think i all depends on the matchup. Summer decks are most of the time not a catastrophe, you´ll get an additional income and yes you can also have other draw cards, so the +1 card draw on the agenda won´t hinder your gameplay.

If you are playing against winter decks it´s somehow different. First you get choked by the white raven, okay your opponent get´s choked too, but he has had the chance to work a strategy around that. Secondly most of the winter associated effects are destructive, a shadow stalker kills a target charachter every turn and wintertime marauders can remove almost every avilable ressource in the LCG on top you get to discard non- unique charachters and attachments too. I find it hard to argue that in such a situation only cards with negative penalties are harmed by the "weather".

Sometimes the summer/winter mechanic feels a little bit like the doomed mechanic, it´s also been a mechanic which could have been only less influenced by your opponent, unless he/she wasn´t running the silver bullets in her/his deck.Stag very well pointed the positive effect out before "you can´t just ignore the weather" which is in my opinion right, i also like it from a nedly point of view, but i don´t think it´s great for a card game. Maybe it will be a non- issue if the weather mechanic won´t get more developed and we´ve today seen all cards ever printed that refer to winter/summer.

I've played against season decks with decks that ignore the season. NOt even Carrion Birds. I wanted to see if it could be done. It can. I find that a fast, tightly tuned deck with a heavy amount of gold and two resets and good draw really hammers my opponent. I load up on Stealth and Deadly and I find that my opponent can't really maintain any decided advatage, especially when I include whatever character/challenge control to round out the deck, based on the House I'm using. At least as far as Joust goes. In Melee I let other people fight for seasonal dominance and and slip past or power through my challenges to whoever is weakest at the time, and rally the troops to confront the leader, depending on where my own power level lies in relation.

As to including seasons in a closed Meta, If you buy the Winter and Summer decks you have enough ravens for the four core set Houses to each get two and there are a lot of fun cards in that cycle. I fully understand why you may not want to include Men With Out Hats, but there are few cards that are neutral one-shots that I see as being unbalancing in this sort of closed system.

dormouse said:

Men With Out Hats? I like the sound of that card!

* Men Without Hats

Cost 0

Str 1

Band. Two-Hit Wonder.

Response: Sing "Safety Dance" to save a Band. Limit once per game.

Response: Sing "Pop Goes the World" to save a Band. Limit once per game.

"We can dress real neat from our hats to our feet
And surprise 'em with the victory cry"