Beyond the Wall, Season 1 Episode 33

About spoiled champ card and Targburn using it to get in the play Shaggydog. The plot says "..search your deck for a neutral or in-House Creature card..", so no easy Shaggydog for Targ.

About spoiled champ card and Targburn using it to get in the play Shaggydog. The plot says "..search your deck for a neutral or in-House Creature card..", so no easy Shaggydog for Targ.

Why must we read these cards...was so much funnier the other way. ....Thanks Mitya

Added that erratum (OOH Direwolves) to the original article.

Also, one of our listeners pointed me to this thread, a 2011 discussion (with many AGOT big names) about Agenda prevalence, which is worth checking out if you want to go in greater depth on the topic. Link here.

Some thoughts on empowering agendas if we worry about there being too much no agenda in the meta (Some of which you touched upon, some of which you did not):

- Negative Effects

If an opponent isn't running an agenda, do [bad thing x to them] or [good thing y to you]. There is actually one card of this sort already in the game, Northern Infantry Flank, the Cavalry Flank's much worse twin.

- 'Blanket' Positive Effects

What I mean here is a card along the lines of "after you play [card], everyone who is running an agenda draws a card", or "you may only play this card if you run an agenda", or other such effects that don't care about what agenda you run, but give a boost for doing so. These would be directly equivalent to the likes of Summoned by the Conclave, benefiting those running an agenda.

- 'Specific' Positive Effects

Here I'm talking about empowering specific agendas. Jon mentioned wanting The White Book to be better - how about if there was a plot that said "When revealed, draw three cards if you are running the White Book agenda"? I'm not saying that's a card I want to see for multiple reasons, but it's a basic example of how one could design such a card. Some cards of this type already exist in the meta - Defenders of the North and The Wildling Horde both gain from you running the Night's Watch and Wildling Agendas, and Naval Reinforcements calls out Black Sails by name, the only card to my knowledge that currently specifies an agenda.

- Indirect Positive Effects

Here I mean cards that are obviously more potent in specific agendas, regardless of their initial power level. These can fall into multiple forms. The most obvious would be "make the positive/negative aspect of the agenda more/less reliable" - so for example, release a new Maester and you make the Maester's Path slightly better, since you have a new target for the chains and an additional body the opponent has to stop the chains from going on. Another example would be releasing a new Knight empowering Knights of the Realm, although in this case it also weakens Knights of the Realm due to the double-edged nature of the agenda. The more subtle version of this (and one that I personally prefer) is to release cards that synergise with what the effects of an agenda actually are. The most obvious recent example would be Daenerys Targaryen, who greatly empowers Targaryen Heir to the Iron Throne (foregoing Military), by giving the decktype a method of killing characters to help circumvent the lack of military claim. There are other examples though - by releasing Janos Slynt, a character who can both participate in multiple intrigue challenges a turn AND who gives you an additional benefit for winning the intrigue challenge, that of drawing a card, FFG gave a double-boon to Power Behind the Throne. There are also cards which have synergies with the agendas that don't actively invoke the agendas themselves - for example, Naval Superiority doesn't have to be played in Black Sails, but is significantly easier to work with therein, where the probability of meeting the requirements for the increased claim is naturally going to be higher.

- Let the meta shake itself out.

This is the laziest option, clearly, but it's essentially saying "why is no agenda so popular?" and then countering it. A basic example would be if Summoned by the Conclave is the big reason - is it being played turn one? If so, consider opening with Rule by Decree, to make them discard down to 4 after their search. Or maybe play a neutral deck yourself that doesn't run Summoned (or Alleras) because the proportion of time that you meet a no agenda is high enough that you'd rather not have these double-edged/dead cards wasting space in your deck, and this way you'll have the advantage if your opponent is still hamstrung by those choices. And if the meta gets to that point where the better no agendas aren't actually running Summoned or Alleras, agendas are naturally empowered once again anyway.

Sorry, just things I thought about while listening. Great episode, agendas are such a rich topic that I'm sure you could've gone on having intelligent discussions about them for hours . One additional erratum for you - Jon said FFG hadn't printed a card pushing no agenda since Summoned by the Conclave/Alleras, but Defenders of the Wall from pack 4 of this cycle is a more recent, albeit not particularly interesting or impressive, example.

Great episode!

Pretty cool read in that thread that was linked.  I think I started checking the forums shortly after that discussion.

My favorite quote from that old agenda thread:

The cardpool is too small

Ah what a fun old thread to send me back to. Those were the days!

Anyway, I've only had the chance to make it through about half of this week's episode, but a few thoughts so far:

I think that there's a likely chance that player's opinions on agendas are heavily influenced by the time period in which the started playing the game. I started the game during Westeros Edition in 2002, prior to the advent of agendas as a concept or card type. Thus, when they were introduced, they were touted as an alteration from the baseline of a non-agenda deck. That is, if a deck without an agenda has a 0 value, the +1 bonus from the agenda should be balanced with a -1 drawback such that the overall power of the card (and thus decks utilizing it) should be the same as one which does not. Now this is incredibly difficult to balance and those pluses and minuses will often be things like +1.45 and -.75, but I think that the overall goal should still be the same in my perception.

On no agenda decks and their prevalence, I'm quite surprised to have not heard anyone make a mention of or differentiate between true "no agenda" and "character agenda" decks yet. While it is difficult to track them in the Annals and such due to limitations of the deck registration form, there is a sizable difference between them in concept an execution.

Also, on the matter of Black Sails and whether there is a drawback or not, wouldn't the mulligan issue extend to any shuffle effect over the course of a game? If you have a "normal" draw deck that has clumped in some fashion playing a Herald or the like has some chance of changing the distribution ratios in your favor for draws going forward, though, if done properly you won't know if they are better, worse, or the same once you're done. In Black Sails, you're in the same boat as the mulligan in being statistically more likely to have the same or very similar distribution afterward.

Also, on the matter of Black Sails and whether there is a drawback or not, wouldn't the mulligan issue extend to any shuffle effect over the course of a game?

Well, yes and no. But mostly no.

The issue here is that you don't really get to look at your deck then decide you don't like the distribution, and choose to shuffle it. What you get to do is shuffle it; it doesn't matter if the card you wanted was going to be the next card you'd draw, or the bottom of the deck. You're exactly as likely to make your situation worse as you are better by shuffling. 

While you may be more likely to result in a same/similar distribution in the smaller black sails deck, the argument is the same as the deck splitting; you actually have and advantage because you have that information, while the player with a regular 60 card is still just as in the dark about his distribution of cards as he was before.

Now, admitedly, with the fact that shuffling isn't normally truly sufficient to randomize, there are clumping issues that might benefit one distribution over another.

As for 'chargenda" decks, there are a few issues here. The first is that 'chargenda' isn't an agenda choice on the decklists, that it's wholly possibly to play against someone and never get the agenda in play, etc, so it makes it very difficult to track the stats. What's worse, at what point does it become a 'chargenda' deck? When the chargenda is included thrice? twice? If a single copy of Kevan made it in? Especially since many of them aren't really a deckbuilding decision! Your deck doesn't drastically change with or without the inclusion of Quentyn, Aaron Damphair, Kevan, and, so far, Griff. You're not including Shireen at all regardless. So Kindly Man remains the only 'chargenda' choice that, as far as I can see, significantly impacts deckbuilding relative to No Agenda. 

Put another way, by including a chargenda in your deck, you're typically only, at worst, risking the 'drawback' of having the chargenda itself be a dead card (say, if your opponent has 2NCFs, it might not be wise to play it). To me, that's more of a 'cards in deck' evaluation of power than the way we look at an agenda choice.

OK, so then in that case, I probably wouldn't really call the mulligan a drawback either. It's really more of a positive due to that foreknowledge of whether it's potentially worth the effort or not.

Wrapped up the episode. Wow, Istaril and I have fundamentally different views on the design and balance of agendas. I find Knights of the Realm, for instance, to be one of the most perfectly done agendas because of the self policing aspect rather than lazy design.

Glad to hear it, if there are many who feel the same way, it might justify their existence!

To me, those agendas just feel too binary; the drawback is, to exaggerate it a bit (ok, a lot - but it's more the case for, say, seasons), functionally non-existent except in the mirror match. Can the 'negative' of running an agenda really be 'well, if lots of other people do it too, you reduce those matches to a coin flip?"

Even regardless of that, how many matches do we really want to have determined and locked-in, probably on setup, by one element? If all agendas had similar drawbacks, that would just mean more 'coin flip' matches. It may be balanced, but it's not very fun...

We can just meet up and flip coins to determine tournament winners.  I think Jon would like that.