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Get Off My Fiefdom: Carrion Bird
Mar 12 2015 12:00 AM |
Ire
in Game of Thrones
Get off my fiefdom carrion bird errata
In this new article series the main focus is to put all of you ‘know nothing green boys’ back into your place and tell about the real times of A Game of Thrones LCG. We will take glances on why the FAQ holds some errata and rulings and how hard it actually was for us old timers to play the game before the FAQ changes, and how easy you all youngsters have it these days with your fancy restricted lists. Those were the days. The biggest threat to all Westeros - The common raven, also known as, the Carrion Bird
So you think that your shiny new stealthy raven with seer abilities is strong eh?
In my youth we always had to deal with countless carrion feeders, there was not a single battlefield where the vile creatures didn’t take part. We are speaking of times when small winged things were able to peck great armies to the ground, but it didn’t end there, oh no. Later on these creatures evolved, first they figured out how to handle gates and then all hell broke loose when they learnt to read.
The Carrion Bird as we know in today’s meta is still quite a strong one gold drop that is well capable of winning military challenges alone because of its stealth. It is also one of the cornerstones of every season deck to get rid of opposing seasons, and to gain added draw. Carrion Bird has always been played, ever since it was printed, with it’s popularity rising every time season decks took wings. Now, we aren’t here to talk about what the card currently does, but what it did.
Carrion Bird has added one new ruling to the FAQ as well as errata on another card, but it also has an errata of its own: Should read “...one card with the printed Raven trait from play...†as it might be easy to guess this ruling had everything to do with trait manipulation. However nothing was done to this aspect of the Carrion Bird when only Lannisters were able to use it as an easy removal with the combination of Lion’s Gate. Everything changed with the addition of Maesters, The Maester’s Path agenda and Copper Link as suddenly every house was able to trait manipulate when they needed to. So by kneeling a Maester with a Copper Link you were able to give the Raven trait to any card and then shuffle it back to its owner’s deck. Carrion Bird was also an ok target for becoming a Maester and using the Copper Link while attacking. This was possible because at the time you could give Chains to nonprinted-Maester characters. Copper Link also was the first trait manipulation card which worked on non-character cards, and this meant that Carrion Bird was able to get rid of locations and attachments as well as characters, if needed. All of this hard control was made even more delicious by the Carrion Birds final words of the Response: “Cannot be Cancelledâ€.
After Carrion Bird became the go-to removal effect of every Maester out there it was quickly errated to read “printed Ravenâ€. This change also destroyed the Lannister trait manipulation decks, since Carrion Bird was their only reliable hard removal tool before Queen of Dragons was printed with Dissension in it.
While the trait manipulation part of the Carrion Bird died it still saw plenty of play thanks to its above average stats as well as being one of the only cards in the game that could be used to meta against season decks.
That was the reason why Carrion Bird has the errata it currently has, but I did also mention another card that got errata because of it as well as a whole new rules addition to the game because of it. These two things are connected to each other and enabled a nasty combo, it is not known if someone actually pulled this combo off, or if it was caught by TOs and reported to FFG before it could be used.
The card in question is Lion’s Gate, which has the following errata: Should read: "...to discard 1 power from a non-House card in play..."
Lion’s Gate without the errata was quite a powerful slowing tool for Lannister control decks since you were able to discard power from the House card since the House card is considered to be a card in play. You all are probably seeing where this is going… with the Lion’s Gate it was possible to make your opponents House card into a Raven and then shuffle the said House card to opponents deck with the help of Carrion Bird creating an impossible situation for the opponent. No House card no place to put power, no House card no house affiliation for example.
So they only changed Lion’s Gate, what about other trait manipulation? Thats where the added ruling to FAQ comes in, to make sure that this situation could never happen in a game.
FAQ (4.10) House Cards: House cards are considered to be "in play,"and cannot be removed from play for any reason.
So you see, one bird able to crush all hopes and dreams, leaving only blood in its wake. These days its safer to look to the skies as the breed is weaker, but the horrors of the past will never be forgotten.
- WWDrakey, Danigral, Bomb and 12 others like this
10 Comments
Two out of three ain't bad.
Carrion Bird's "printed" errata was indeed added when trait manipulation became too universal with Copper Link. And Lion's Gate received its "non-House" errata in order to stop its use as a slowing mechanism for Lannister.
Sorry to burst your bubble on the third point, though. While the "House cards cannot be removed from play" ruling was added because people tried to use trait manipulation to remove the House card from play, the ruling pre-dates Carrion Bird. In fact, it pre-dates the LCG entirely. It was added back in the CCG days, when trait manipulation was really a thing. (Ah, the CCG card pool. Now those were the days!)
Don't believe me? The ruling is in the Legacy FAQ. Always has been.
Well its good to be corrected as my knowledge on it was mostly on recalled rumors at the time of LCG beginning. Out of interest, can you remember what in CCG caused that ruling as the culprit was not the one I named in this article.
Seems like ktom just one up'd this entire article series with one post. lol
Not off the top of my head. It was the same sort of deal, though. A "give a card a trait" (as opposed to "give a character/location/attachment a trait") and a "discard a card with X trait" (as opposed to "discard an X character/location/attachment") effect finally rolled into the environment at the same time. I do remember it was a discard effect, but I don't remember the exact cards.
know nothing green boys
Shouldn't that be "sweet children of summer"?
~at least without a house card beric wouldn't be able to die
FAQ (4.10) House Cards: House cards are considered to be "in play,"and cannot be removed from play for any reason.
Curiosity I suppose. But if this came to light in the ccg era, why would it not be included in the rule book, rather than in an faq?
I'm not doubting the stated facts, just curious
Wow am I glad I read this. I had no idea about that errata!
Purely for the sake of simplicity. The FAQ was primarily used for "corner-case" situations and for curious interactions between cards as the card pool grew. Also, there was no true trait manipulation printed yet, so the passage wouldn't be in context in the core set rulebook.