Beyond the Wall, Season 1 Episode 12

Minor change: A version of the cast with slightly better sound-balance was uploaded at 22:00 EDT.

As a big Targ hollow hill player I would never put Redwyne Straits in any deck. The biggest disadvantage of Hollow Hill is the card disadvantage. You really only have a starting 3 gold disadvantage with Hollow Hill because of the +2G from agenda, and its really less than that since the influence is also a resource in those decks. You want to use your plot deck to maximize card advantage, not gain additional resources. My two cents.

Also, even if you are going the mummers ford route of river plots.. there are much better openers for Hollow Hill decks.

Lastly... Restricting The Red Keep was a lazy move by FFG. Don't restrict the resource base in the game, restrict the play cards then allow the player to make a tough decision between what play card helps their deck. Restricting The Red Keep basically was a soft ban on a large number of cards and reduced the number of viable T1 decks. It hurts meta creativity.

Lastly... Restricting The Red Keep was a lazy move by FFG. Don't restrict the resource base in the game, restrict the play cards then allow the player to make a tough decision between what play card helps their deck. Restricting The Red Keep basically was a soft ban on a large number of cards and reduced the number of viable T1 decks. It hurts meta creativity.

The Red Keep should never have been printed in the first place. It's stupidly efficient and made triggering influence events and ambushing characters way too easy.

psh silly people taking stark over martell in wildling haha

I think Red Keep was one of those things that the game needed when it started. There were not too many influence providers so an easy and sure way was needed to get things rolling. After release of The Red Keep we have gotten the Martell influence weenies, kingsroad fiefdom, Missandei, Great Pyramid of Mereen, the free city locations and Martell also has gained several other influence providers. It is still possible to do high influence decks without Red Keep, but there is now more risk on actually doing it and it also makes it harder to play Favorable Ground while doing so since your own influence base will not survive it.

The trouble with TRK isn't the resources, but the relative invulnerability - its another asset that barely needs protection, and with which your opponent typically cannot interact. It made favourable, PP, bleeds, etc just too safe. I think its restriction enables aggro decks that just were too risky, so the net effect isnt a reduction in diversity.

More importantly, it means that resource bases are more interactive, which I think keeps along with the general theme of the FAQ.

The Red Keep is just ridiculous in terms of durability. Every way of getting rid of it involves using at least two cards (e.g. Meera + FroSo, Blowing it up, then King's Law etc.), and it was a major enabler for Favourable Ground. There's nothign more disheartening than watching your opponent bring out a red keep on a dry season turn and favourable grounding away all your locations, knowing full well that his/her Red Keep woul survive.

Haven't listened yet (or read other comments, don't want spoilers!), but seeing this released early has made me smile. My week just got better.

Also, even if you are going the mummers ford route of river plots.. there are much better openers for Hollow Hill decks.

Curious as to what you think these might be.

the first snow + rule by degree combo is back in the environment, their is a chance that awritt is talking about these types of control plots in the kothh decks.

What's the reason that y'all expect to see less Rally Cry? I think it's more playable out of non-KOTHH.

Rivers, Cities other great plots...they will take the place of rally cry in a lot of decks i think.

Nice podcast, congrats!

I think that, due to the rock-scissor-paper balance that exists bettween decks, the best deck will be relative to the meta it's played in. It has always been like that, but with this FAQ it seems even more obvious.
For me, deckbuilding isnt about 'building' your deck anymore, its not about looking through the cards, thinking what goes where. ITS ABOUT FINDING THE BEST DECKS ONLINE, and then making the call which one fits best in your meta. The same will be with gencon, worlds or stahleck, and every major tournament.
The deckbuilding process for big tournaments was dead the moment decks appeared online. Of course you can build decks for casual play, but when you're gonna go to a competition, you're definetivly gonna go for a netdeck, that has been tested, played by a bunch of people and you know it works, as long as you know how to pilot it.

For me, deckbuilding isnt about 'building' your deck anymore, its not about looking through the cards, thinking what goes where. ITS ABOUT FINDING THE BEST DECKS ONLINE, and then making the call which one fits best in your meta. The same will be with gencon, worlds or stahleck, and every major tournament.
The deckbuilding process for big tournaments was dead the moment decks appeared online. Of course you can build decks for casual play, but when you're gonna go to a competition, you're definetivly gonna go for a netdeck, that has been tested, played by a bunch of people and you know it works, as long as you know how to pilot it.

I actually think this is good for the game, but maybe just because I'm use to it. I'm not sure how long you've been playing card games, but people have been sharing ideas about the best collectable card game decks online for 20 years now and player base has exploded. It's far from dead.

1 - Through sites like this one, players can learn the kind of decks that competitive players assemble and reach a high level of game play in a shorter amount of time than before.

In a small game like this with a well published card pool, many people are coming up with similar ideas because we can read the same cards and think about how useful that might be with other cards we've read. Last week Bruno said he's working on a Martell plot cycler. I've had one for months. Am I smarter than a 2 time world champ? No: but considering the synergy of the river plots and a card like the new Arrienne, even chumps like me can figure out there may be something worth exploring if you add in additional plot manipulation effects.

2 - Having decks online (and playing online) connects the global metas. At last years Seattle Regional, no one copied Bruno's Bara TLV, but most of us had thought about it. In our local meta first turn Art of Seduction was not popular, but everyone who made the top 4 had heard Jon talk about it on the podcast and we all had a first plot that we'd be OK with our opponent giving us for 2 turns.

No one at our tournament actually copied the deck, but it was on all of our minds.

3 - If you play online, you'll see a lot of decks that were directly copied from online sources, but that's great. By playing them and playing against them, you'll find out it's strengths and weaknesses and learn to tech against it for your local tournament.

4 - All decks have builders, the best builders include the element of surprise. 9 character bloodthirst with multiple OOH locations had a builder. Greyjoy KoTHH with the Targ Hills had a builder. Lanni No Agenda starring Core Set Pycelle had a builder. Bara discard-as-much-as-you-can-then-See-Who-is-Stronger had a builder. The FAQ is out there… make your own masterpiece.

With the mention of dragonpit at the end, i'm surprised that there was little discussion of its natuarl counter in tunnels.

@mnBroncos What would you say that Martell adds to wildlings that's worth giving up Meera plus in house wildlings?

is tunnels really the counter to the new age dragon pit.....i think testing would need to be done to determine that since dragon pit has change so much...

I am excited to Tweak the Dragonpit deck we built on the podcast.

Gasp, our first cast not to get 5 star rating! We're slipping!

*grins*