2C1C- Episode 200

That second edition comment your guest dropped (keeping it cryptic so people listen!) about Attachments... I hadn't heard that yet! That's... pretty damn cool.

Oh no, I'm not terribly worried about keeping that secret. I was just in a rush to get it all finished last night and missed posting the specific name.

This week we interview NATE FRENCH about Thrones 2ED.

Agreed, attachment function is really cool.  Congrats on 200 episodes and thanks for the spoilers too!

Seriously, my most favorite part of this episodes are the greetings and comments from all over the world, metas, people, friends and foes.

I hope, this gives you enough power and motivation for another 200 episodes. I will definetly going to hear them.

The rest of the episode is also great in other regards, so also thanks to Brett and Ben making their appearance as well as the guys from Kuwait and Nate French for spending some time with you.

Here you go, guys! Sorry for the slightly longer than usual delay, but here are the House of Talons cards!

RE: In Renly's Name

If it didn't say "attach to an opponent's character" you could send your own naval dudes in as attackers against yourself.

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Great episode guys, congrats on 200 and I'm looking forward to many more!

I loved the players around the world segment. I listenned, telling my wife how I knew everyone.

Amazing episode. The Kuwait meta had some really great analysis.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the collage segment and the Kuwaitis knocked it out of the park.

Congrats on 200 guys !!  another fine @ss episode!

Truthfully it was an amazing episode !!

 Here's hoping for 200 more !!!!

Fine 2.0 should stick. Love it.
Congrats again on 200 eps. The show has a special place in my heart.
Kennon, enjoy a relaxing break from driving the podcast car. But know that your listeners will be eager to hear from you again.

A comment. 

There seemed to be a lot of love for melee in the listener feedback section yet when we went to the preview cards section with our regular hosts we were met with "melee sucks" comments.
To be honest, I hear more reasons why melee is a great way to experience the game and is often the "way in" for a lot of casual players. I don't hear many good reasons as to why melee sucks other than individual preference.
I think melee represents the world of Westeros in a way that joust can't. The battle for Westeros isn't just one house battling another; it involves several houses looking to take advantage of any opportunity.
Melee does not suck. It just isn't as predictable as joust.

You know, that's a valid point. I personally love melee, and I know Kyle likes it from time to time, but it's hard to get over that general distaste that it seems that most of the vocal community have against it.

What I need to do it put out an open call for some players that really love melee (rather than just tolerate it) and have a special episode with some of them to really devote to melee specifically.

Ah, crap, I shouldn't have posted that publicly. Now BTW is going to do that while we're on break.

Really though, I'm sure there's more than enough room for both shows to tackle that topic.

This was a truly amazing episode. I am Zaid Al Khaled one of the guys from the Kuwaiti Meta and we had a blast spending the whole night together just to get those 15 minutes recorded it was awesome to just talk about the game together. I'm super excited for the new edition.

There was something I wanted to say on the podcast that totally slipped my mind and I regretted it because I was hoping to get peoples opinions on it. One of the things I realized I hated about the game looking back at it was Agenda's. Originally they offer awesome deckbuilding idea's. But as the card pool got larger and more effective almost all the Agenda's drawbacks were negligible so that it was a handicap not to choose one. Then they created all the cards that work better if you have no agenda and that made it so that No agenda decks represented well at tournament level. The past year No agenda has even been the most dominant out of houses like Stark (it won our Store Champs as well) etc.. It strikes me that this ended up being really crappy design for the card game. Cards that get better when you don't run an agenda were a really corny way to counter the meta or offer more variety. Either Agenda's are mandatory like they are in Netrunner, Lord of the rings, and Conquest (built into the Identity/Warlord/Hero's which are the house card equivalent) and that way they can be integral to the game and constantly balanced, or you just don't ever include them and make the deck building and faction choice be the theme of the deck. With rotation maybe agenda's might not be as problematic but it strikes me that if agendas are ever effective they are immediately REALLY ****** for the games design. The card pool itself should create compelling deck design, not agendas. Is this a Blasphemous idea? Trial by Combat?

Ha, perhaps not too blasphemous. I have to say that I was long against agendas becoming the default in the game since I had started it well before they were introduced. On the other hand, I feel that the identities in Netrunner and such are awesome! It's a strange dichotomy.

I've thought long about it and in the end, I think that it seems the Netrunner IDs provide a more tangible difference in the style of play that decks built using them actually use. In AGOT, I feel that there's less overall difference between the way a Lannister No Agenda and Lannister DWDW play, for instance, than Kate vs The Professor in Netrunner. Granted, a portion of this likely is the large card pool polishing away the sharper edges between those builds, so perhaps rotation will help.

Regardless, I think I've decided that I'm ok with agendas as long as they are baked in right from the Core set.

Hi Zaidkw,

Do you think "no agenda" should be a viable deck building option? 

I think that if they were to simply mandate agendas, then perhaps they should be releasing more of them.

I think that some of the original agendas did not have enough of a drawback, or their drawbacks eventually became too easily mitigated by a lot of the newer cards.  The purpose of an agenda was to provide a deck building option you could focus around, but if the benefit was too easily obtained while the drawback was too easily mitigated, then it would always be an advantage over not running one.

Perhaps they should have created more cards that were strong if the opponent WAS running an agenda so that it ended up being more of a meta call instead of as much of a deck building focus?  Like, maybe by not running an agenda, the advantage is that it makes the opponent's very good cards weaker?

I agree with Zaid and think "no agenda" tech was cheesy and poorly implemented to an extent here in 1.0. Summoned by the Conclave is the worst offender, followed by the House Clegane Brigands. Quentyn and character agenda tech was better, but I love agendas and the way they make you think differently about deckbuilding or reward you for using cards that you might not otherwise include (such as in DWDW). I love "risky" ones like Siege or PBTT that let you tilt your deck away from a muddy middle and be rewarded for it, so I'm all for agendas in 2.0. I think the key here is to make "agenda" the baseline for something good (perhaps a vanilla agenda in the Core) rather than "no agenda" the baseline against which agendas are compared. 

Hi Bomb,

What I was suggesting was that they should either NOT introduce agendas at all and go magic style where the ability to build is very open and free at the expense of consistency or higher costs. Or you make Agendas built into the game itself like netrunner and conquest are doing it. Game of thrones is older so Agendas came in before they did the newer games that have build in deck themes that come in the form of identities, warlords and the like. But now that they saw how each pack and deluxe having one of those cards makes it immediately interesting to people who want to see what kinds of decks they can build with this new shiny toy they could take advantage and use the idea. But doing things in between like Agendas is going to prove to be half assed in the long run. If they have real drawbacks they will not be played. If they don't you will be handicapping yourself by not using one which will make the No Agenda option akin to playing neutral house now where its almost a silly joke or what a noob would do.

I think its bad design to be in between these two options. Either its part of your game to make everything like a commander game of magic where you have a card guaranteed out there affecting your game play so you synergize with it; or you make the game have a card pool so compelling that building is fresh all the time. This is going to be hard up until we get two full cycles of cards I believe.

I would happily talk about Melee on the show.

However, I do believe you deserve some rest Kennon.