2C1C- Episode 197

Pizza is always better.... .... .. . . .

Only a few minutes in before I headed in to meetings... See how bad Errata are, Will? 

Look forward to the rest.

I always felt like Naval Escort went in because everyone always either forgot or "forgot" its passive. When judging during the Old Ways era the most common thing asked by players was how to fix the situation when Naval Escort was left on the board while it shouldn't have been there. This is also why I like CoC "forced responses" more than agot passives as it gives both players more reason to actually remember the effect when it has the word "forced" in it. (Also doesn't gives players any room to argue that if the opponent doesn't notice a favorable passive for him/her then its ok for it to not happen.)

Never actually felt like the location itself was too powerful as it was vulnerable to normal hate effects as well as having its own passive.

That's something that I could see people easily forgetting, Ire. Well, until the advent of Gran Goodbrother, anyway....

The argument for taking Arianne off the restricted list was ridiculous. Otherwise, good talking points.

To be fair, my Bara A&A did not have any answers for Tommy's kneel. It wasn't much to talk about. I do like it when I get my name mentioned though :-P

I just wanted to chime in with a book point. It is Jamie's monologue/confession to Brienne when we find out that Varys counseled the Mad King to keep the gates shut to Tywin. It was Pycelle who talked the king into opening the gates. So it think he was being honest there.

Also, I thought Varys's explanation to the epilogue character of book 5 was specifically about that character fixing the problems in the Lannister rule, and that was why he had to go.

I'm glad Aaron sped through the game with played together in CT was embracing. 

I'm going to second the call to un-restrict plot cycling Bran and Arianne. Both are far from broken without rivers - particularly Arianne since you have to trick her back into shadows (before someone can kill her) and there is a ton of control of character based responses in the game.

Great episode. Though I have to say, some of your propositions seemed a bit biased towards your prefered houses/playstyles.

Like:

Arianne Martell because "Yeah, let's abuse her a bit."

Bungled Orders because "I just love the card."

Orphan of the Greenblood because "He is not the same powerlevel as viper."

I think, all these NPE or stall cards should stay, but would be open to free "enabler" cards like Red Keep, Desperate Measures and Prince's Plan. These cards are not really powerful by themselves, but enable the use of other cards. Keep these strong cards restricted, to have something to chose between and free the enablers would be a good move in my opinion.

It's hard not to let some of that bias creep in. Though, I have to admit if I'd really let that tendency run loose, I'd have really pushed for Desperate Measures to be taken off.

Still, the argument that the Orphan of the Greenblood is not really at an appropriate power level to be on the list in the current state of the game isn't necessarily just personal bias. As far as it goes for an NPE, it's mainly going to be a one shot annoyance of a control effect in most situations. In a handful of others it is a very strong tool, notably against uber character builds. It'll never really reach the destructive level against something like that which Coldhands does, though.

On the other hand, I've got nothing to defend some of the others like Bungled Orders. Lol, let Aaron tackle that one.

As long as all Greyjoy or Greyjoy-affiliated cards can stay on the list for no better reason than Aaron's hatred of the house, we're all good right?

+5 likes, Mr. Wamma.

~Indeed the whole Martell thing is quite interesting. Martell card = "its not seeing play so it could come off" any other house "well its not seeing any play but there are plenty of decks that would like to play it, so it shouldn't come off". Yeah...

Personally I would not touch any of the cards on the list. I don't see the Martell cards adding much than even more automatic slots to fill, I don't see a Martell deck that wouldn't go to 3x orphan and I was not too big fan of the refugees going off either, Cyvasse... well it was 3x in near every Martell. I'm not sure if things have changed enough for such a powerful (while rarely used) effect should come off. Also Not to mention that if they both were to come off they can combo their abilities like before, nothing too powerful, but situationally can be amazing.

Ok guess I could agree with Arianne coming off, because we have way more tools for her tricks now and the thing why she went in has been buried deep.

just found the reasons given in the podcast interesting, didn't want to sound off too serious

Ya missed two restricted cards: Preston and S&D.

Genuinely I'd like to see Naval Escort come off and Gran go on. Naval Escort, in theory, encourages you to actually run characters. The problem comes because Greyjoy has a character that you near-guarantee keeping, and in turn near-guarantee your Escorts. The Escorts existed without trouble for several cycles before then.