the shadows have come to dance, my lord, dance my lord

Under the sea, the summer sun and the winged snake in chains stay under a hill, I know

It's always winter under the sea and the squid straggles glimmering dragons, I know, I know

Under the sea the stags laugh and only a princess will hear, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh

Under the sea the wolves have mail instead of fur, oh, oh

We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh

[edit: I'm really bad at this but I had to]

And to speak some sense I now do agree with this thread seeing as how we do in fact have diverse meta, but its still being dominated by the same kind of decks as a year before with just more efficient cards, but I think WWDrakey made this point clearer in post before this.  Seeing a lot more agendas to more themes sounds like a really good idea.

Well, we had a couple of errattas based on an agenda already (the Targ one and Maesters)!  What does that make it, 50% of all agendas have been changed/erratta''d►  ~Sounds like a good type of card to me! 

Seriously though, the agendas printed have been fairly balanced.  Maesters was a little tough to start with (but is still playable), and I think the ''Targ only'' language was just missed at printing. 

But, the issue isn''t agendas.  It is new sub-themes and supporting old ones more.  The easy way out might be to make new agendas, but agendas are just as much made by the cards printed to support them (i.e. good Maesters, strong Knights, etc.).  Except Kingsguard, which will always be crappy (at least in Joust) 

I made this point in the rotation thread.  If you have 1-3 main themes for each house, and maybe release 1 sub-theme per CP cycle, it is logical that the main themes will just get more and more efficient.  Either your sub-themes have to be REALLY good with every card on the cutting edge of being too good, or (assuming no rotation or limitations on deck-building to X CP''s) the main themes will always win.  *shrug* 

Staton said:

Staton, you have predicted Seal of the Crown. I can imagine the first time you saw that card you were like this

 

rings said:

That is correct; my fear of a burn-dominated meta of negative play experience is widely published in the underground harmonica concert circuit. 

papalorax said:

We got agendas that come from the main deck too!

It is as if this thread were a gateway to the future.

rings said:

Hmm… Now now, the current track record with agendas is even worse than that. Erratas for all 6 Wildling Agendas, Alliance, Knights of the Hollow Hill and Maester''s Path. However, the KotHH and Alliance ones are less related to balancing and more with correcting bad wording. Total number of Agendas: 21. So… either a little below 50% or exactly 33%, depending on how you want to interpret the results. However, with this small a group of datapoints, the fact that 6 of the 21 agendas are dependent on each other quite badly skews the results.

However, there'' something to be said about Agenda Erratas. They should never affect the result of a game, unlike erratas to other cards. Mainly, since you can ask about any possible errata before the game even begins (the card is visible to both players from the start), instead of when you encounter it mid-game, where it could affect the end result of the whole game. And asking this doesn''t really even break the flow of the game, since it hasn''t even started yet.

rings said:

Well, they are ''ok''. However, the combination of only Agenda-decks being able to win large tournaments for over a year now (to at least 95% accuracy), in combination with the limited number of ''realistic'' Agendas available to each house drastically limits the cardpool used in competitive decks. We''re already pretty much in bed with  

rings said:

Exactly. The LCG environment is riddled with countless half-baked themes, without enough support. (I admit, that just thinking of Baratheon Learned, Joust, Summer, Winter, No-Season, Shadows, No-shadows -support makes me want to cry) And thus the actual number of competitively playable cards is oddly small in comparison to the actual cardpool size. Even when comparing to CCG''s. And what''s more worrisome, the changes in that smaller pool are really slow (something like ~10 cards per CP-cycle maybe►) Getting a larger portion of these cards out of binders and at least onto the decktesting table was what finite''s idea seemed to be about. For that to happen, we need SOMETHING that can turn the table around enough to provide them added value.

However, due to the existing Agendas (and other factors related to the game, such as almost anything being controlled quite easily) I''m quite skeptical of synergy providing ''regular'' cards being able to widen the competitive cardpool in a similar fashion as a single Agenda card. Mainly, since we already have these kinds of cards, but they aren''t really doing anything. Examples: New Tyrion was supposed to bump Clansman decks. Nothing happened. Queen of Dragons (Dany + Dragons) were supposed to enchance the Dragon synergies, and while these were actually tried out, they just didn''t function effectively enough. Even Shadow Enchantress wasn''t enough to bump Baratheon Shadows upwards. The only way to succeed along this route is to constantly raise the level of the synergy-effects, but I''m not really sold on this being any better (or less Errata prone) for the environment than a plethora of Agendas. I''m all open to ideas on how this could be achieved though, so feel free to propose.

Now, let''s look at the Agendas we already have, and how they are able to widen the cardpool by existing. I think Knighs of the Realm is one of the best examples here really. I mean, who would competitively play Hedge Knight, Former Champion, Arrogant Contender, Vanguard Lancer and many other Knight -characters without this existing► I''d bet that nobody would look at them twice (I only chose nonuniques here, but the same goes for many unique Knights). And this is not related to just Trait Agendas. KotHH itself opens room for several cards that wouldn''t otherwise see competitive play (thinking mainly of high influence cards, but I also saw Core Set Rhaegar used in a KotHH Targ in the recent OCTGN Tourney to maintain board position). Would Maesters have had any real impact on the environment without their own Agenda►

rings said:

This is sadly the case. Currently we just have those few ''cutting edge'' themes, and the rest is just the ''basic'' house build. What I think finite proposed, or at least how I''d like to see it, is that we attempt to rectify this in *some* fashion. I just think that with the limited trickle of cards in the LCG and the plethora of ''unfinished'' themes existing in the game already, Agendas would be the most efficient way of approaching this. 

On a related note: I think the charagendas are a sort of attempt to work around the ''Agendas are untouchable'' problem, and an attempt of widening the usable cardpool. Will be interesting to see how they pan out in practice. However, as a pessimist I must admit to having doubts about them really having a large enough impact. Time will tell, I guess.

WWDrakey said:

Totally agree.  And they have made them (unlike in the CCG days) pretty powerful if the Targ one shows us anything.  It will be very hard to beat the power of a card that stays in play and is untargetable, but they certainly did with Targ.  Knowing FFG they did something for every house (which sort of annoys me, there is little way to balance these, so you get another 'winner' of a pretty strong cycle).  ~So, you balance hard-to-balance cards with slightly less hard-to-balance cards… 

I think the point stands that there is a high likelyhood of agendas needing erratta it seems (from experience), which traslates into the fact that they must be the hardest type of card to balance.  Which isn't a surprise.  But, I can't say they don't add anything to the environment - I am torn on if they add as much to the table as they take off.  Add in plots (my favorite mechanic in any card game ever) and you have quite a few game effects that are very hard to counter.  Again, I don't mind this - personally I like to impose my deck's will than respond to my opponents…but there is a level for everything.

My knowledge of the advanced scene is far from substantial enough to know whether this is a good idea, but I was wondering what people's opinions were on making the more common agendas restricted. Would that be a good move that would see people less likely to auto-include certain agendas and cards that played off them, or would it just make other cards on the restricted list never see play because, for instance, people might consider Kings of Summer more useful for draw than the Viper's Bannermen? Or would it nerf some agendas too far and cut off potential strategies and themes that might otherwise be interesting? It does seem weird to suggest that FFG should make cards designed from the off to go on the restricted list, but it could allow for more fanciful agendas to maybe exist at the expense of the more common restricted cards.

Not really expecting much agreement here because I'll admit I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I'd be curious to know why I'm wrong, it'd be a good learning experience!

JCWamma said:

From a deck diversity standpoint I would say it's not a good idea to make common agendas restricted. The main purpose of the agendas are to add diversity to the decks so that you have multiple builds out of each house with different agendas. Placing agendas on the restricted list discourages people from playing them. Fewer played agendas results in more vanilla just pick the best in house and neutral cards type decks.

HoyaLawya said:

I have to disagree, many times that I have build a deck and it is close to finish I take a look on what could make it more powerful than it already is. The answer to this usually is summer/winter. With Samwell I get better draw than what my house might have, the house usually has good season effects of its own and most importantly the agenda drawbacks are too small for the gain they have. So I cannot speak for everyone, but the season agendas have restricted my deckbuilding a lot thanks for the fact that they add so much with fairly little effort, but they do need atleast 8 card slots from my deck and often more. Now if the agendas would be restricted I would still run seasons in some decks yes, but it would not be so easy choice as it is currently is to just add season to a deck to make it better.