I agree that promoting the use of no agenda is not absolutely necessary. You can create less specific agendas that can work to augment any type of deck. When I said that I was thinking about the group of players that may not be so excited by agendas and making sure that they weren't required. I'm the type of player that will use an agenda as long as it makes sense for the deck and have no philosophical aversion to them.

I also agree that agendas can be used to accentuate themes, but not as a crutch to the exclusion of releasing card support for the themes in the game that are ill-supported, which is most of them. I would definitely like to see a chapter pack that is dedicated to shoring up existing themes as well. I don't think FFG should be releasing new themes when they have so many that are flimsy. 

Hopefully we've given the designers some good feedback in here and it will help them in the future. It's easy for us to talk about how we feel agendas should be, but much harder to actually execute what we're talking about in terms of agendas. I do think it would be difficult to balance agendas that aren't simply pluses and minuses because it becomes a much more intuitive process than a quantitative one and requires a lot of testing. I am not sure how FFG does playtesting, but I am sure that they could get a fairly large group of hardcore players that would test extensively for free. I know people who were playtesters for Magic and Star Wars LCG and did it for free just because they were hardcore tournament players and winners and wanted to help make the game better. 

Supporting existing themes shouldn't be very problematic at all though, it's just a matter of adding more cards to the existing themes and making sure they don't all suck. 

 well written finite (even if it is mostly theoretical). at the very least people should take away a notion of how agenda's may be poisoning the serious deckbuilding folk among us. when i came back to the game i did so under the assumption the card pool was large and varied enough to do the things i wanted to without being railroaded into a specific build. i think i came back at about the right time, though sometimes i do feel like i'm being pushed into running some cards over others just... because.

Kennon said:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who picked up on this.

@ Finite: So to go back to your Martell example, say FFg created Martell/Maesters, Martell/House Dayne, Martell/Sandsnake, and Martell/NW agendas in the next set and produced cards that expanded each of these themes, what are you and Cory gonna do? You are going to sit down with each agenda, min/max the build from each agenda, and exclusively play that build which is the most efficient. Unless Martell/Summer still proves to be the best min/maxed build. And then you'll only slightly tweak Martell/Summer to handle the new cards. And 20-30 people will nedeck that build. And the other cards will never see play by the majority of competetive players at large events. Because at the same time you and Cory are doing this, so will Longclaw, Dobbler, Mathlete, etc with similar results. You mean to tell me you won't look for the best agenda that maximizes VB, Game of Cyvasse, Arrianne, TRV, BotS, He Calls it Thinking, etc. as well as any new goodies you get in that expansion?

The problem is playstyle, not cardpool. As long as people min/max. the "competetive" cardpool will always be small. Some cards will always be more efficient than others.

I also agree with Rings  that Agendas are the hardest  to balance, and should be handled carefully.

I don't like House specific agendas. The cardpool is too small to support that in the LCG model.

I'm all for cards that penalize a player for running an agenda. Starting with an agenda gives players an inherent advantage over players who don't. I should be able to toolbox against that inherent disadvantage if I choose not to run an agenda. A cycle of bomb cards for each house on the level of AHoTh Tywin would be nice to make people think twice about Running agendas.

I always find it ironic the people who call out playtesters and designers.

Who is "calling out" the playtesters and designers in here? I don't see anyone doing that by my definition, what are you talking about?

Concerning the idea that the top tier players will be able to find the optimum decks regardless of the cards that are released: the implication is that there is nothing design can do to make this process more difficult.  But this is not the case.  Two years ago there was a wide concensus that Lanni was the most solid deck.  Last year, a concensus formed around wildings, but there was no concensus about which house to play them out of.  And this year, the concensus has formed around two or three different builds each of Lanni and Martell.  As the card pool has expanded, it has become more difficult to find a "best" deck. 

And the best way to introduce completely  new decks into the environment (and therefore make it even more difficult to find the best deck) is using agendas.  A non-agenda card for a given house will generally just be inserted into all existing decktypes of that house... pretty dull.  But an agenda can completely change how you use already existing cards.  An agenda can force you to play cards that are different from what you would normally play in a couple of ways: 1) it can make bad cards better ("draw a card each time you play an attachment of 2 cost or more" or "if you have two or more characters with the same trait on the table, each of those characters gets +1 strength"); and 2) it can make good cards worse ("your characters with the ally and refuge traits cost an additional gold to play" or "your non-agenda card effects that draw cards are cancelled").

Wouldn't it be fun to build a competitive Lanni deck without being forced to play 3x gtm, 3x refuge and 3x castellan (or cache)?  Or a competitive Martell without playing the 20+ auto-includes?  Again, what is the downside?

Stasis said:

Erick called out the designers in his first post ~ it was lost among the mass of typos and awkward wordings. :)

baragwin said:

I agree with the ugly, hunch-backed thing in Jabba's Palace (and also Finite). This makes a lot of sense.

Staton claims that the best players will find the best decks in about a week, even if we had an explosion of 30+ agendas. I have to disagree here. It's not that the best players aren't the best, nor even on the timeline, but rather the implication that there even will *be* an agenda that is "the best". What if there are two agendas not unlike Summer/Winter that are bullets of each other? One is deemed "better" by the gurus, and everyone netdecks their beast of a deck, and then one relatively unknown person brings the exact opposite build to a tournament, which is equally viable against other decks too, and crushes them all without a second thought. This is why the diversity opens up so, so much - I think you're not guaranteed to necessarily have a "best" deck. You might have a series of decks that rise to the top, but I'm not so sure even about that. What you *would* be likely to see is Dobbler pulling out the strangest build you've ever seen and joust his way to victory; he seems to be pretty good at that, if you look at any of his recent decks (dunno if he posted any of them, but if you look at the themes).

 Yes, I often unfairly get lumped in with the "min-maxing" crowd, and anyone who plays me on a regularly basis knows that most of my decks don't fall into that range.  

Instead I'm a cross breed of Shagga and Jamie with a strong bent towards teching for the current metagame.  I'm much more likely to play something I think can regularly beat "the best deck" than I am to use that deck.  

In Minnesota I expected alot of Martell (and I was right).  I built a control deck (obviously using Martell myself) that was designed to minimize my opponent's Vipers Bannermen and Red Vipers using Valar Dohearis.  In California I played a Targ combo deck centered around Rhaenys Hill, Open Market and Summer.  In Missouri I played a Lanny Maester deck that ran a 10 card Men With No King subset.

I guess considering the original material of this post, I haven't really heard a good argument on why there couldn't be cards that negatively affected agendas more?  Why is it so important to have a starting card that can't be targeted?  Seriously, I am just wondering. 

I think having a 4/3 unique that blanks all agendas would be super cool.  Or a nuetral 2/2 guy with one icon that gains an icon and then doesn't kneel to attack/defend?  It would actually open up game play and the feeling of 'meta' (~that Dobbler loves to try guessing), which is a good thing...no? 

Again, if there are cards that punish you for using a certain house card (a starting card that doesn't really give you anything, other than access to certain cards) - i.e. the traitors - why can't there be something similar for having an agenda (a starting card that DOES give you something, albiet sometimes with a possible downside)? 

Maybe this is mutually exclusive to Erick's point on agendas (I swear I read it, just mis-understood I guess!), but I think you can have both - a more robust agenda system (with careful playtesting) and cards that make them a little more risky.  *shrug*

rings said:

I'm not sure how I feel about Erick's point in this. I'm divided on it. I don't think blanking agendas would work - consider an NW deck that uses all three agendas, crushes face with it to get to 15 power, and then plays that dude to blank that player's own agendas. That's a hard problem to solve. I kind of like your 2/2 character, but I feel like it would end up being worthless, unless you plan to ban Venomous Blade. :) Admittedly, you would still possibly get a lot of use out of it if Martell doesn't become the top build again after the agenda schism.

What about the idea that agendas should temper themselves? I think there's a lot more viability in this claim, and then the cards that get put into the pool do not need to be balanced so hard against every single agenda. Does that make sense?

Rings: I think Erick addressed your question in his post about the "blank agenda".

The problem is cards that hurt agendas only help one decktype (the "blank agenda") but hurt many other decktypes (all agenda decks).  The result is less diversity in the decks (and therefore in the cards) being played.

For instance, how many martell decks have you seen that don't play Lost Spearman?  Zero, because there's really no incentive not to play it.  Which is boring because auto-includes don't make for interesting deck design.  But if you printed an agenda that made attachments cost -2 and refuges cost +2 (a simple example), there is now some incentive to play a martell deck without Lost Spearman and with cards you otherwise wouldn't have played.  And isn't it more fun to have more choices about which cards you play?

- Corey

baragwin said:

Didn't Kennon say he pulled that out of his champ deck at regionals?

I know that Stukov's deck that won the Italian Nationals did not include Lost Spearmen, I believe the rationale being Dissension is commonplace in Europe at large.

Certainly an interesting and thought provoking post from FSW.

You can definitely count me in the camp of old guard players who are reticent about agendas. They are untouchable cards that change the very rules of the game in some fundamental fashion – and as such are very difficult to balance. Having suffered through years of things like Treaty, Defenders of the North, Wildlings etc and now Maesters – I will always be a little concerned about how these cards are handled and how they affect the metagame.

But I like the argument in theory: a plethora of Agendas, many House specific that elevate the efficiency of characters and locations that may not see play and open up deck building options at both the h competitive and casual level? What’s not to love there? The original post is quite correct in that the environment is very predictable at the moment and with five and a half cycles of Chapter packs – you think you would see a little more variety. If Agendas are the way to introduce that, I champion the effort. I have come to accept that at the moment, all competitive decks will be running an Agenda. This is the naked reality of competing at the moment. You are handicapping yourself if you aren’t. Since I can’t see how that will change, I encourage the addition of more Agendas that will let players see more cards in the draw deck – I’ll just remain nervous about the execution of such an idea, given the seven year history of the Agenda card.

I also do agree with Rings that if this is the road we are heading down – having a 4/3 unique who blanks all agendas is probably a really good idea. If something OP does develop with the new Agendas, an “in environment” accessible fix makes a lot of sense. Yeah – it boosts the “blank” agenda build, but the agenda deck would still have a counter in character control, and it might serve as a decent balancer. Given the all but permanent nature of the Agenda card type - I’d be a little more comfortable with an Agenda flooded environment with such a check.
 

Stupid boards