2C1C- Episode 191

Boo-urns!

I blame Kyle, and possibly any guests promoting events.

I was thinking the same thing! Ever since it was announced that a certain guest would be featured, the technical problems have gone through the roof!

And we're up!

Ya'll were a couple of Debbie Downers for the entire first five minutes.... I'm having a blast playing first edition and experimenting with Aloof & Apart (although I won't disagree that an FAQ would help - Bara and Targ are ahead of the curve). 

Whoops, didn't mean to be a downer there. It's just legitimately tough to really keep up. Things seem to have slowed down everywhere.

So what do you guys think? Am I right that Clansmen is getting the best updated support?

I get Nedliness, but personally I don't want it to be the case that all the best cards are the most memorable ones from the books. That removes some of the skill of deckbuilding, if you're saying "well I have to include all these amazing characters from the books".

Also in the specific situations you brought up, they were all non-uniques. It's kind of inherently trickier to make a badass non-unique and keep it Nedly, unless the non-unique in question is an obvious specific proxy for a unique character. For example, Castellan of the Rock - there's only one Castellan of Casterly Rock, and his name is Damien Lannister. But if he was a unique named Damien Lannister, that'd change the card mechanically.

Thankfully I think you overrated the hell out of that Drogo so it's somewhat of a moot point here .

How does making a good character unique instead of not remove the skill in deckbuilding?

The clansmen support is pretty great so far. That Khal is being grossly overrated though.. Jumper Khal is still better in most all Targ decks.

How does making a good character unique instead of not remove the skill in deckbuilding?

The argument on the cast was that the best characters should be the well-known characters - the Khal Drogos, the Daenerys Targaryens, etc., rather than the Long Lances, the Street Waifs, etc. - and my argument was that if that was commonplace then you'd know to put the famous characters in and call it a deck. One of the few benefits of having Ned Stark consistently suck is that it means you have to be a remotely good deckbuilder to leave him out. If FFG took the attitude of "well there HAS to be an amazing Ned Stark, he's such a big part of the first book!" then that would be one more obstacle to good deckbuilding removed, one more element of skill no longer required. I'm not saying 'name' characters cannot be great cards, but if they are as a rule then that's not fun to me.

I think they should be "good" in the sense that every stark deck should have Eddard, most likely. I'm not sure every named character should be AH Daenerys good, but one should not look at the entire field of Eddards and just...never, ever, ever play him. 

Even if every Main character was good, there'd still be more to deckbuilding than just throwing them all in a deck and calling it a day. Your curve would be awful, you'd probably be character heavy, et cetera. I'm not sure putting in bad cards just to create a way of becoming a better deckbuilder is all that great of a strategy. Becoming a good deckbuilder is knowing economy curves and synergy more than anything.

That said, I also think nonuniques should be good, too. It's easy to forget the nonunique characters contributions in the books because they're faceless masses - but Daenerys only rules the easy because she's got armies of guys like the Long Lances and the Unsullied. Robb was only successful because he had an army. Ned was captured by random whitecloaks. etc. I think there's more balance in making Uniques the stand out cards, though - if you make the uniques the great cards, there's only gonna be one out at a time, and it's triggers will only happen (usually) once. 

I don't disagree with any of that. Although for the record I actually do play Ned, though I am somewhat of an oddball...

I think "bad card" is relative though. Look at the current cardpool - in this episode there were multiple cards Kyle and Will admitted would've been good three years ago but wouldn't make their deck now. That's because they're good deckbuilders (to an extent ) and can evaluate that not all cards are created equal.

So if we challenge the preconception that "not all cards are created equal" and make deckbuilding only about managing your curve, getting tight synergies, minimising weaknesses and maximising strengths, etc., then...how do we make those special characters the best cards? Then the cards are no longer created equal.

Instead, some cards are better than others. And if all of those better cards came from the same subclass (memorable, named characters) then that does remove a layer of deckbuilding ability, that of identifying the better cards. It also makes one question why the other cards exist at all.

One other thing I want to address that you mention is the curve being off. Most of the cards people would agree are truly great cost 3 or lower, as a general rule (obviously there are some exceptions like Cersei or Viper or whoever). One could easily build a deck of 'name' characters without ruining the curve. In Stark the only non-army uniques that cost 4 or more are Robb, Ned, Blackfish, Grey Wind (the one people don't play), Jaqen (lol), Littlefinger (who basically never actually costs 5), then a small smattering of Robb's bannermen - Roose, Greatjon, Rickard, Tytos, Mallister. Additionally in the neutral section there are a lot of very playable cheap uniques - Syrio, Varys, Gendry, Ygritte, and many more besides.

I might be going slightly tangential here though. Just to bring it back round to the overall point I was trying to make, "Nedliness should always be strongly considered and what's the point of the theme if people don't get to use the most memorable characters, but design choices should always be made in the interest of game mechanics first and foremost if the game is to actually be fun to play".

cannot believe the new version of the game is only 6 months away !

Love listening to you guys and your opinions and insights on the current game !

another fine @ss episode