2C1C- Episode 184

Also, for the record, I had no idea that they would actually reboot or anything of the things they were planning on changing prior to the announcement everyone else heard. It is incredibly eerie how much I had right, though.

How quick can you get this up on the RSS feed? Seems like I always have a delay trying to grab it with my phone's app (Doggcatcher) and I'd really like to listen to it on my car ride tonight. Or tomorrow, if I must.

There are not enough stars to rate this episode!

Thanks for putting this episode up, and special thanks to Michael Hurley for answering the questions so willingly. You really could hear his love for the game, so I am now sure 2ED will be in good hands!

Also, I liked to catch all the tidbits of information he threw in, like changes on setup, decksize and allying factions. The nedly player in me always felt some kind of awkward, when some characters or locations were thrown together, so I really like the loyality-system ensuring that Robert and Daeny or Eddard and Cersei won't team up, but allowing to mesh two houses much better together than with the gold penalty or treaty agendas.

It is also good to hear, that they are playtesting Melee. I really hope, it will get "fixed" (although I never considered it broken), so all the "melee is not a competitive format" haters are going to convert!

so with the faction discussion. pretty sure our 8th faction is either night's watch or some night's watch/wilding faction.

now on the deck building i have pros and cons for the alliance system.

Pro it uses an agenda so I am assuming we will get house x only or alternative agenda's that will make splashing less popular. 

Loyalty system so hopefully they give this to not only the cards that are broken if combined somewhere else but also iconic characters such as ned, cersie, etc. 

Also, more deck building options. I know a lot of people felt deck building for agot was to linear and now we have WAY more deck building options.

Cons

Thematic feel. I don't as a whole like the splashing in this game loses theme. I would have preferred a conquest like wheel that made lannister able to work with tyrell but not with stark etc. But if they keep the big name characters loyal it will be okay to me I just don't wanna see hated characters working together. 

Balance: it will be lot more work for them to keep this game balanced but hopefully they do their bests. 

As a whole though I am crazy excited for this game! Agot will be there most popular game once again

Cons

Thematic feel. I don't as a whole like the splashing in this game loses theme. I would have preferred a conquest like wheel that made lannister able to work with tyrell but not with stark etc. But if they keep the big name characters loyal it will be okay to me I just don't wanna see hated characters working together.

I wish I could remember where I read or heard this, but if you think outside the box, as an example, the Starks and Lannisters did work together to bring down The Mad King.  So, maybe they do not want to limit 2ED to just the timeline we are mostly familiar with.

Largely, that is me making an excuse for them doing this because I don't mind some things being less thematic if it means the game will be more enjoyable.  Some folks enjoy the game more if it were more thematic but I love how thematic it already is!

Great interview guys.

I love what they've done with the faction-mixing. It makes the effective card pool much larger, so even though we'll be sent back to the stone-age, there are still 36 faction combinations as Greg pointed out.

I'm going to guess that Lanni/Tyrell will be strong.

its great for early game later maybe a nightmare haha but a good kind. I do like how open deck building will be. 

8x8 = 64 (8 factions....1 mono faction, 7 alliances).....that is double what greg said (Lanni/martel =/ Martel/Lanni cause of the loyal cards)...well almost double

I'm so pumped!  I was hesitant to get excited at first, but if they do this right, 2nd edition will be a blockbuster best-seller!  I'd imagine by August we'd have a release date for Winds of Winter--GoT hype will be at an all-time high!  

They're going to need to build a bigger gaming facility for worlds 2016!

As FranciscoG said, yes, there are more combination if you factor in the mirror matches.  

Well, it's not necessarily mirror matches, just that with the loyal cards, using stark with martell can be different than using martell with stark. though they may end up being similar enough to not really feel different.  It just depends on how many loyal cards and how distinct they are in each faction.

Also, I think that allying with any other faction is incredibly thematic and in keeping with the source material. Obviously in the story we are reading not all houses work together at any time, but in the larger scheme (past and future), alliances are always shifted as factions vie for power within the realm.  This game has never been about recreating the story in the source material, but rather creating our own stories that fit within those themes.

My only problem will be that the mains are probably all going to be loyal and i won't be able to run Robert and Cersei in the same deck :'(

Best. Episode. Ever.

Most of the other FFG core sets have had around 230-240 cards....

So if you have 25 cards per faction x 8, that is already 200 cards, leaving little room left over for house cards (8), titles (6), Neutral cards and Plots.  I assume we will see 20-23 cards per faction.

With 24 per faction and 5 loyals you have:

24+18 = 42 ....you are missing 18...that would mean 9 neutral x2 more.

Then you have 24x8 + 18 + 7x8 = 266 cards .....wow thats a lot!!

I don't believe there will be a 266 card Core set.  I firmly believe it will be 240 or so

Can someone clarify the alliance system between factions? I was listening while driving and think I may have missed some nuances. I understand that you can ally any two factions (excepting those "loyal" cards from the secondary faction). But what did this have to do with the agenda card he described that was mentioned in the context of a two-sided house card, I think?

THat's how you know who you're allied to. You take the house card for your "off" faction and flip it over to the agenda side and use it as an agenda with your main house.

THat's how you know who you're allied to. You take the house card for your "off" faction and flip it over to the agenda side and use it as an agenda with your main house.

Ahhh, I get it. Thanks, Will. Seems like an elegant solution.

With 24 per faction and 5 loyals you have:

 

24+18 = 42 ....you are missing 18...that would mean 9 neutral x2 more.

 

Then you have 24x8 + 18 + 7x8 = 266 cards .....wow thats a lot!!

The product description confirms 5 sleeve packs (maximum of 250 cards, if that's accurate).

That seriously constrains composition. If we assume 4 full plot decks (28 cards), 6 Titles, 8 dual-sided House cards, that leaves us with a maximum of 208 player cards for all 8 factions + Neutral. 

That means it will be literally impossible to create 4 tournament legal decks, no matter which way you slice it. So let's say we need to be able to generate 2, and all cardpools are even. 

Without Neutrals, we can't make 2 60 card decks (even ignoring Loyal, best we can do is 52 card). 

That means we need a minimum of 16 neutral cards a deck! At a bare minimum that's 2*16 neutral cards (32 cards), bringing us down to 176/8 faction cards (22). 

22+22+16=60. That includes NO loyal cards at all, and a complete inability to make decks for 3-6 players (contrary to what's stated on the box).

Somewhere, some of the info we have must be wrong.

Either:
1) Sleeve count on product page is inaccurate
2) Hurley is wrong about being able to make "tourney legal decks" for joust from one core set.

Or we have some very unlikely scenarios like no full Melee support, factions with different numbers of cards in the core set, or no Loyal cards (and many "Neutrals). Some of this can be alleviated by printing many dual-house characters, I suppose, but that seems unlikely as well.

I'm betting that you can't make tourney legal decks out of a single Core set. That's part of why I'd like to see the minimum deck size drop to 50, to help ease some of that pressure.

I'm betting that you can't make tourney legal decks out of a single Core set. 

Yeah, that's my bet as well, but I'm pretty sure I heard Hurley say the opposite when describing the agendas.

I'd be OK with 50 card decks if the limit on cards drops from 3x to 2x (since plots are already 2x, so we could have 30 card CPs), but that seems unlikely and there's something to be said for the choice of 0x-3x of a card ( a greater range).

I think several assumptions are probably wrong.

One, you are assuming you can make "more than one" tournament legal deck out of a single core set.  Has that been stated anywhere?  Because of that assumption, you have assumed 28 plots (I doubt we get that many).  

I'm willing to assume 8 house cards.  And I'm willing to assume 6 titles.  And I'm willing to assume between 240-250 cards in the 2nd ed core set.  Beyond that, I'm just groping in the dark.  Will we get 14 plots?  28 plots?  Somewhere in between?  Can we assume that we can make 1, 2 or 4 playable tournament decks immediately?