For those who do not frequently check out the front page or news pages, check THIS out!

You know, just when you think FFG isn't listening....

Wooooohoooooooooooooo. Looks so great. Now i´m a very happy and crossing my fingers for a good and well balanced set of cards. ;-)

FINALLY!!!!

here are some of my intial thoughts/ ramblings:

"an important “House Greyjoy only” plot reprint" I wonder what it is. Not enough unopposed for rise of the kraken and i hope its not we do not sow

"So the A Time of Ravens Chapter Pack cycle has come to its conclusion, and I’ve been hearing that Men With No King are pretty wicked. Should be an interesting twist on the metagame, where a neutral card border is somewhat dangerous. At the same time, I am aware of the concerns about this card, and it has been moved to my watch list. We’ll see how things develop."

---- Hey! he did get my e-mail ;P He is still missing OOH color border being dangerous too, though.... I've stopped running streets and carrion birds in my decks, i'll just use yours.

"As a product, the AGoT LCG is exceeding expectations, and the game has shown significant growth for the first time in years." I think this was the second most important part of the news item (and way to go Spain!!!!) I know it has been selling pretty good in spots, but it sounds like it is having the intended effect of using a casual fanbase to support the game for those or wnat to take ti to the sompetitive maximiums.

EDIT: forgot Shadow crest. I'm intrigued (get it?), i hope its not pay 1 gold, put in shadow area, then during shadow phase flip card into real area....that makes varys waaaaaaay too undercosted. Maybe if shadow phase is after dom or something.... it would be nice to know how this actually works

Lars said:

Where do you see anything about a Shadows "phase"? Or are you just playing "ferinstance" with how a card comes out of Shadows, as the article and Varys implies they must? On the cost, I'm guessing the "s" before the 1 means something more than an indication of "Shadows." The Crest does that.

Looking at Varys (who is interesting in that he'll discard himself if you're not careful), I'm both encouraged by the first real Ally hate we've seen in a long time, and a little discouraged by the possibility that Shadows might be AGoT's version of Yu-Gi-Oh "flip effects."

Oh, and you forgot perhaps the most important part of the GJ announcement:

"And the final bit of good news is that Kings of the Sea is already at the printer, and should be available for an early summer release."

To me, this implies that the set will be available before Gencon. If so, that's really cool of FFG because this is the sort of thing I could see as a Gencon release.

playing 'ferinstance' (nice new term btw). I was saying i hope its not this way. I figured the s1 was an indication not of shadows but that he went to the shadow area as part of his cost (i think i was thinking that you could be a shadow crest, but not have to go to the shadow area). You also seem to be implying that the controller has no control of when varys comes out of the shadows phase, if so that would be interesting. I had assumed you could choose when you want to 'flip' him and thus for a single gold (at least as far as i know for now) you have ally hate sitting there on command.

I did see the release and think, cool, but sensory overload caused me to not comment on it in my ramblings I'm very happy that i have a chance of continuing to play Greyjoy at Gencon in the main joust tournament. this could be 3 years in a row now!! heres hoping Martell is released at gencon (i know it would suck to 'not be able to play them' at gencon, but i think GenCon needs a rest from martell decks )

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee XD The resin house card thingy looks sweet!

The new Balon seems like a bit of a sissy, but Varys looks like he's stupidly cheap. I don't know how shadow gold will work yet but I can't see how they would make 1 shadow gold cost more than 1 regular gold. My guess is it will just be the timing of paying it.

... oh wait, it's a passive discard of an ally, and he's an ally. Hmmm Syrio Forel & co. just got a lot worse in standard :-(

Well, I'm left feeling....... optimistic!!!! How's that for a surprise?

At the risk of getting maybe a little too excited, I have to say this report had a little bit of EVERYTHING I wanted to hear. This is the best news I've read in quite a long while.

Thank you Nate!!!

Yu-Gi-Oh "flip effects" ? ~ I hope you received that information about Yu-Gi-Oh randomly. ;-) Seriously, something which actually sounds like an alternate charachter state has been part of almost every more complex and/ or successful LCG/ CCG. I always found it to be a nice variant and i have pleasing memories about Tatooine canyon bluff rules back in my sw:ccg times.Without really knowing the details, it seems to be an interesting play mechanic.

And i hope that we´ll see the expansion a long time before GenCon, and probably a Martell expansion at Gencon.

ktom said:

Maybe it's there to stop you putting Shadows crested cards into play with things like On Raven's Wings.

Lars said:

I'd agree that the player probably chooses when something comes out of Shadows. More thematic that way. I was thinking more that since his ability is passive and he himself is an Ally, you'll have to pay attention to when you bring him out of Shadows - just like any of these traitor-like effects.

perthius said:

Not agreeing with that. I can already see in a Winter deck. I'll put a War Horn on him, declare him as an attacker in a military challenge, then hit him with Winter Armada. Boom. He's 7 STR. Hope you have a single character with at least 7 STR (or a jumper like Greatjon) to oppose, at least 8 STR if you don't want me to win. And it's not like he has to be attacking alone, so I can always throw a Carrion Bird in there to stealth out your 7 STR guy.

Built with the right STR pumps (~and there are none of THOSE in Greyjoy), he is far from a sissy.

Eh, a thought the announcement was just ok.

I'm kidding, that announcement is full of awesome, awesome news. Especially the suggestion that the game's impact on FFG's bottom line is, if not significant, seemingly positive. (AGOT CCG/LCG is sort of the perfect storm (in a positive sense) for me; if it were to die off, I'd very likely be done with constructible/customizable games.)

Perhaps there will be ways to "expose" your opponent's characters that are in the shadows, so Varys ability would indeed be double-edged as noted by Ktom and the 1 Gold/3 STR ratio is therefore more reasonable (assuming the "s" in the cost doesn't have some cost impact that also may help balance the cost/benefit of the card).

I'm guessing Rise of the Kraken for the Greyjoy reprint. Longships of the Iron Fleet would be nostalgic as well.

Nothing but good news in this article. this may allow my meta to rotate out 5 Kings with Iron Throne thsi summer for our organized play. Veyr encourgaing.

As for Shadow - the way you have the 1s in teh upper elft where you pay teh cost makes me think Lars might be right in his guess/estimate. There may well be a new pahse for these chaarcters to enter play. Or somehting like that. i don't know - but yes - its going to be great to have targeted ally hate back in teh environment. Plus Nate mentioned the lcoation control problem.

This is very exciting and very, very encouraging.

I think I just had a TIA. (that's Transient Ischemic Attack aka mini-stroke).

I was very close to giving up the game, as my frustration mounted. Now I'm gonna be excited all spring till my house comes back! I'm very happy. And that Balon FINALLY has both king and Ironborn, which makes me a happy camper.

Finally Greyjoy!!

Looking forward to this.

I wonder what the card count is?

I think all Shadow characters will cost "s1". Why? Well if there would be character with costs like "s2" or "s3" the small "s" would have to jump around on the gold coin because all other digits take more place than a "1". So maybe you will need a certain form of location first before playing a shadow character. This would balance the cost.

mischraum.de said:

that would be an interesting way of costing it along thsoe lines it could also be like the epic battles/retreat and regroup where nate is making more use of the lay this event down next to your house card and it greats a shadow phase or if x happens then flip y shadows? endless possibilities, but i do like those more then just a shadow area/phase (note. a shadow phase is my own mussings and not official).

Stag Lord said:

a little birdy told me that there is another aspect along these lines coming back into lcg soon....

Coming back to the flip assumption that Ktom mentioned, in Magic and Wars ccg there were charahcters you could choose to invert / flip to take their final form.

In Magic you had to do something like pay a generic cost of 3 mana (comparable to gold) to play a card face down. You could choose anytime to to turn the card face up for it´s whatever the turn around cost was called triggering comes into play effects.

I think some equal mechanic could be also available for the AGOT LCG. Say you´have to pay 2-3 gold to put a charachter into play as a generic shadow charachter "2 str. intrgue icon", than you could pay it´s shadow cost anytime or maybe after a won intrigue challenge to turn the card face up and get out of the shadows. If leaving the shadow works something like this i guess there would also be one or more cards which sent charachters back into the shadow status allowing the controlling player to profit again by the comes into play effect. I´m really excited by the thought i like these "comes into play" game texts, as well such a flip function allows a lot of speculation in game play wether there is a weenie charachter or an army hidden in the shadows.

Very happy about these news!!!

At least it's encouraging for those who didn't like LCG at all.

BTW, I've always liked this format and I'm lookin' forward for these new sets/plots/whatever.

What's with the big "middle finger" to Martell?

Besides that I'm all for the announcements and impressed by the thoroughness of the article. Time will tell how much of it can be trusted but I will give the benefit of the doubt at this point.

Re: Shadows I posted this in another topic when they were first announced:

"What if the Shadow Crest cards were played face down during any phase and any amount of gold could be placed on them. You could place more gold on them any phase you want, even in future rounds. When revealed(maybe Challenge phase only so any individual Marshaling phase can't be abused) pay the amount of gold for the cost and then the remaining gold if any goes to your gold pool(could combo with the Plot: Planning Ahead). While face down they are immune to all card effects. Some of them will probably have a "When Revealed" ability."

I don't think I am right but probably some of the aspects are. I think the s1 means that you have to pay 1 gold to "reveal" that card from the shadows. Now how much it costs to put a card in the shadows, that is anyone's guess.

There also might be some double edged shadow "hate" cards like pay a cost to name a card and choose a card in the shadows. If they are the same the shadow card is revealed and looses its "when revealed ability", if they are not the same, the card remains in the shadows and the owner of the card in the shadows gets their current claim(minimum of 1) of any challenge type they choose. This is just me thinking out loud.

Egg said:

I don't think it is a "big middle finger" to Martell at all. I think they probably just started with Greyjoy (probably because of the Kingsmoot Melee variant Nate mentions) for this expansion. He certainly implies that there will be a Martell expansion, too. ~~And hey, they had to start somewhere. If they'd started with Martell, someone would ask why the big "middle finger" for Greyjoy.

If we want to make sure there's a Martell expansion, we should probably start by making this one a success.

fair enough

*this post it now long enough*

Absolutely awesome. Much faith has been restored in many a gamer I imagine, myself included. Thanks Nate & FFG.

As a noob to AGOT, I am very excited about everything that Nate said, and I for one will continue to support the game.

New Kings or Queens for the houses - Wonderful! I can finally stop house ruling this into the games I play with my brother.

Greyjoy deck - Brilliant! Another house can only mean more fun for all (with exception of Martell lovers, but at least I'm sure we'll have another expansion to look forward to as well).

Military, Intrigue and Power Struggle Plots - I hope they don't duplicate the ones from A Clash of Arms as I already have those.

Kingsmoot variant of play - sounds... intriguing :-) (how will power and island titles interact I wonder. I guess you require a certain amount of power towards each island before you control it (instead of placing the power in your house), and when you do you get some sort of special benefit similar to existing Core Game titles???)

Kings of the Sea is already at the printer - EXCELLENT!!!!

A "Call of Cthulhu" LCG 3d resin insert - Maybe Nate got a bit confused there... ;-)

This announcement has just made my night.

Sad for the hardcore martel player in my group, though. He's holding out hope for a martel expansion by Christmas.