2C1C- Episode 177

I love the idea of multiple new "Core sets" focused on Joust. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already. A way to ease the burden of entry without reducing the card pool would make everyone happy. 

For that Bara/Stark deck with Bran, you can also run an Asshai Initiate to keep Bran out of the dead pile. 

For the upcoming Sand Snake event, if the character leaves play it will no longer be affected. Hasn't that always been the way things work? "Until the end of the game" is only the duration of an effect just like a strength buff that lasts "until the end of the phase". 

It looks like the next chapter pack is still at the printers, so we'll see at most 1 more pack before Worlds.

The last two years, pre-Worlds FAQs were released on October 11th and October 14th.

I really like the idea of playing a different deck on day 2 after the cut. This solves the "scouting" problem. 

a- If the character leaves play, the lasting effect will cease to affect it. 

b- the wording of the icon loss is specifically covered in the FAQ ("all instances of") from way back, which was odd at the time because no cards used that wording.

c- No Danger Zone? End Credits cut short? No Easter Egg? Why do you torture me so, Kennon?

Istaril - Asking the tough questions.

I also dig the idea of having the option to switch decks/cards between swiss and the cut. 

Largely the lack of usual ending was due to the massive headcold that I had this week. I'm sure you'll notice a much more nasal quality to my intro when compared to the bit with Bruno. That's not just editing on my part, that's actually how I sounded. So I wound up deciding to pass on recording an outro bit as well to go with the usual music. Plus, it may come as a surprise, but Bruno was WAY more on topic than my usual cohorts, so there really wasn't a funny outtake to drop in as an Easter Egg. More's the pity.

Personally I really like dislike the notion of potentially changing decks between the swiss and the cut, for a few reasons. Most principally would be that some decks are more "coinflip"-y than others. I'm worried it would result in the swiss being predominantly "safe" decks, then the cut becoming more janky outlandish decks resulting in weird matches unrepresentative of the tournament as a whole.

Why would people who are in the running to be the champ choose to move to a high variance deck in the cut round?

Winning 4 coinflips in a row is significantly easier to do than winning enough to make the cut then winning 4 in a row. I'm not talking the Bruno/Atkinson level people, but the people who typically make the cut but don't win (*handwave*) would probably be tempted.

Or maybe not a coinflip deck. Take the Bara KotHH deck from last year, where the general impression was that it was tougher to make the cut with than win the cut with, because in the swiss rounds you have to worry about the time-limited rounds and the fact that it steamrolls to power late on meaning it's very easy to get a mod win, or even a mod loss.

Ha, people like myself, you might say? I don't know, I think some people might, but that it would likely be fairly rare. There's not really any good way to know whether your chances of winning any particular game would go up or down based on switching to that deck, so why gamble on that?

Now on the other hand, I could indeed see some people switching to slower decks that don't play well into having a time limit, which could skew the post cut meta and make for some incredibly long cut rounds. That could be a concern.

Right, I actually like the sideboard possibilities!

You should have Bruno on more often. It's nice having a champ on the show again.