Beyond the Wall, Season 3 Episode 12

Thanks for the good show guys, was nice to hear some talk about Melee. I honestly think they best thing they could do for it would just be to not worry about collusion at all. If two guys are at a table colluding to put one through, then that player has more allies than the other players and that is what it takes to win the war.

I think this would lead to less debate and worries over which plays are legal/illegal and if everyone knows that going in then it won't be a surprise.

I know this gives a huge advantage to players that go to big events in groups or teams, but if some players are going solo to play melee then it could create a neat dynamic where they are forging alliances with others that have shown up solo. It turns into more of a team game and then it might be more seating dependent which could make it less interesting but i don't think that it would be worse than it seems to be now.

This is coming from someone who never played 1.0 and has not been in a competitive melee event yet but just going on what I have heard about it. 

Perhaps i will have more to say after competing in a melee at Regionals in May 

Well applying Mill claim to 3 people at once is a good thing. I don't see a problem there being a bad card .

Still I agree we as people are overreacting at places but still Lani got more overall good cards than some other houses (NW cough NW).

Well applying Mill claim to 3 people at once is a good thing. I don't see a problem there being a bad card .

Still I agree we as people are overreacting at places but still Lani got more overall good cards than some other houses (NW cough NW).

First, mil to 3 people simply makes mil as good in melee (if you have the title AND a specific card) as good as it is in joust... so nothing to fret about.

And while no one will dispute that NW has gotten a shorter end of the stick, I can definitely see why the dev team is playing it safe with them. A fully functional "Wall" (as in defensive only) deck can be a very NPE - as we'd seen with "Boats! Boats! Boats!" in 1st edition (GJ The Old Way). Of all the themes, it's the one I'd be most cautious in designing too!

Absolute agreement with you Alex, The crossroad sell-sword is absolute garbage and small council chamber isn't much better. I don't understand why the two cost claim replacement event is getting better press than Bronn the most efficient card printed in 2.0. Illyn is good, but he is still a tempo hit if you get him out early so is probably pretty balanced.

However, Lannister are by far winning more games than anyone else according to the iron link (58% win rate) compared to Bara and Targ at 52% which suggests something.

And while no one will dispute that NW has gotten a shorter end of the stick, I can definitely see why the dev team is playing it safe with them. A fully functional "Wall" (as in defensive only) deck can be a very NPE - as we'd seen with "Boats! Boats! Boats!" in 1st edition (GJ The Old Way). Of all the themes, it's the one I'd be most cautious in designing too!

I don't think that it is NPE at the closest you still can attack and force the opponent in bad situation. Even on the offense front NW has one good tool that being Ghost.

Example Bloodthurst was Pinnacle of NPE. Martel spend 3 cards (that you don't see) to stop all challenges and get them back at the end. Old way was hard but most of the stuff was on the board and you can play around it. NW plays with cards on the board and all on the open. Not much tricks in hand to screw the opponent, and even if we have they cost a lot of money that NW don't have.

I don't think that it is NPE... ...Not much tricks in hand to screw the opponent, and even if we have they cost a lot of money that NW don't have.

I agree - I don't think the current NW decks are NPE, I just think the defensive mechanic (As embodied by challenge denial cards like For the Watch!, The Sword in the Darkness, Craven, Shadow Tower) is inherently difficult to get right. It doesn't take much for it to become un-interactive and it's hard to judge when it will hit that critical threshold. 

That's why I, personally, am glad they're erring on the side of caution for that particular mechanic. I have no doubt it'll come into its own, I'd just rather make sure the designers know how it works and interacts with the metagame before it does!

Two things I would have liked to have heard were:

1. What are some more examples of cards that improve in melee relative to joust in 2.0 (Superior Claim was the only one given)

2. What are some of your favorite melee-only or melee-improved cards from 1.0? (For me it is Loyal to the Last!)

1. King's Robb Host, Ghost, Wolfs of the North

2. The Iron Throne (ASitD), Fatest BoB? (The Grand Melee)

As one of the few people who has played Melee at both Stahleck and at Worlds, I think that melee works incredibly differently in Stahleck.  At Stahleck, you do not give up, or settle for second.  You fight tooth and nail for first.  You don't look across the table, see a Greyjoy player who looks likely to get to 15 power this round if nobody attacks him, shrug, and settle for second.  I saw that far, far too often at Worlds.  In my last table in the melee, Corey built up this huge board of Dothraki, and nobody ever decided to attack him, despite me exhorting that it would let him run away with the game if he never had to kneel characters to defend incoming attacks.

At Stahleck, you make sure that the fucker who is going to get to 15 is going to have to work to get to 15. Also, people are less likely to make deals.  "Can we trade unopposed power challenges" is something you don't really hear at Stahleck.

As one of the few people who has played Melee at both Stahleck and at Worlds, I think that melee works incredibly differently in Stahleck. 

Differently, perhaps, but I don't necessarily know whether that makes it better or not. And even 'better' is a bit tricky; is it better for the participants, is it a stricter adherence to the rules, etc.

As I mentioned, one of the arguments that came up often in people defending the European experience was "if I sit at a table with a meta-mate, I'm going to do everything possible to make sure he loses, even to my detriment" - which sounds laudable and self-sacrificing, but is a clear violation of the rules of playing for your own best possible position. And, in the Stahleck reports we've had on the cast, these are clearly happening with some regularity. 

And yes, there has been a much bigger stink around melee on the north american side, so I want to make it clear I'm not trying to accuse anyone on the 'other' side of anything specific, but I find it hard to accept the notion that it's all better and only the DC crew (or North American view) are to blame. To me, it just looks like Europe, possibly by virtue of playing more melee (Although that seems to be the case primarily in France, which isn't always heavily represented at Stahleck), has grown to accept a certain set of informal conventions - not necessarily based in the rules - and is therefore... how to put this.. "equally broken, but people are more accepting of the way it is broken"?

Furthermore, I recall a situation that was described to me about Worlds 2014 where two European players discussed between them, not in english, prior to flipping plots and then flipped an Assault/Valar combination. Their opponents certainly felt they'd been colluded against - regardless of what had actually been discussed. Note, I'm note accusing these players of anything either - I wasn't at the table, and it's quite possible they were discussing something not relevant to the game.

Still, given these two examples I think you can see why assertions that the North Americans playing melee are to blame don't quite sit right with me. I think there's more to the story.

I wrote a lengthy response to both the podcast content on Europe and Alex's post above, but cgdb seems to have eaten the whole thing, the greedy mare. So let's settle for shorter version:

It's a shame you had to misrepresent Europe and miss all the salient points of why European Melee is better when choosing to bring it up for no real reason, in an otherwise-exemplary and interesting episode.

It's a shame you had to misrepresent Europe and miss all the salient points of why European Melee is better when choosing to bring it up for no real reason, in an otherwise-exemplary and interesting episode.

Rather scathing criticism! It wasn't our intention to mis-represent it, obviously, but I'm not sure we've... ever had it accurately represented to us. Most of the arguments we've heard about it come from the heated debates offered contrasting it with some scandal at Worlds, which aren't necessarily the best environment to accurately asses the contrast.

Melee hasn't featured all that prominently in any of the European podcasts, any of the articles written by Europeans on this, or other, sites, and, outside of the French community (which I follow) and Stahleck itself, doesn't seem to form that large component of competitive play. It's hard to get real information about it, except what we've experience first-hand.

I guess that could be justification enough not to discuss it at all, but if we only spoke on subjects on which we were well informed, we wouldn't have much of a cast  . 

I have had the good fortune of playing melee with several Europeans, among them World Champions and Finalists like Maekar and Guerric B., I did not perceive there to be a drastic difference in how we approached the matches we were in.

Could you point me to any good discussion that accurately represent Melee in Europe?

Could you point me to any good discussion that accurately represent Melee in Europe?

Most table discussions at Castle Stahleck are a good primer, I heartily recommend.

Good episode, thank you. More DC meta! Or get Buzz back, he was hilariously sardonic in Beards. Spoilt by one too many Mountain jokes.

I'm in agreement, any number of Mountain jokes is too many. But when I begged listeners to object last week, nobody did. Thankfully, a few are coming out of the woodwork this week!

Surprised to not hear talk about rules issues and controversy at joust final tables with the designer looking on as judge since if I recall correctly, Jon was at a table where that very thing happened.

Likewise surprised to not hear any discussion of the melee archetypes.

Yeah, the 'delayed Quentyn' issue didn't actually occur to me until I was assembling the cast, and I didn't feel it was fair to edit it in to make myself sound smart - if it didn't occur to Jon at the time we were discussing it, it can't have marked him that much .

We mentioned the melee archetype articles, but left their content to... well.. them. I'm not sure we're the right people to elaborate on them, after all - they, as they're described in those articles, are very new concepts to us (or old concepts, framed in a new way). Hopefully that's something you can dig into, as you've clearly given it a lot of thought!

A little late to this one since I didn't want to listen before talking melee for a segment we were doing.

Solid discussion overall and very salient points that FFG needs to step up and treat melee like a legitimate format if the intend it to be.

Surprised to not hear talk about rules issues and controversy at joust final tables with the designer looking on as judge since if I recall correctly, Jon was at a table where that very thing happened.

Likewise surprised to not hear any discussion of the melee archetypes.

The joust issue accorded to me i just did not think it was a issue. To me mistakes will happen late at night and the most important part of any agot match is all players had a good time.