Beyond the Wall, Season 1 Episode 8

I enjoyed the clarifications on The Red Viper's immunities, but I'm still having trouble with one concept. I didn't fully understand the rationale for why the Bastard attachment could negate the Snakeskin Veil. Is it because Bastard isn't acting directly on TRV, but rather, on the attachments themselves? Thanks.

That's exactly right. Snakeskin Veil can make the character immune to practically everything, but the attachment itself is still vulnerable.

Placing "Bastard" on The Red Viper doesn't break any rules, as you can still attach an attachment to an "Immune" character (just not a No Attachments character). Once it's on, Snakeskin veil falls off, TRV loses his immunity to attachments (from the veil), and comes under the effect of both the power icon loss and the inability to have further attachments played on it. It's a pretty good way to stop Beric/The Viper from being completely unstoppable.

For more information on immunities, check out this Q&T Regulars, which has a lot of overlap with what I discussed. Sadly I only remembered it after we recorded, but that link is also included in the chapter data.

Edit: Wow. In re-reading that article, I realize there was considerably more than a lot of overlap. Either great minds think alike, or, as is more likely, I remembered everything about that article except it already existing. The Q&T regulars crew deserves credit for a quarter of this episode.

@Joshaw - Pretend the effect "discard all attachments from a character" existed on a character. This would mean that you are specifically affecting attachments and not the character directly. Keep in mind I did not say "choose a character" because that would mean targeting TRV that of which means he is immune because the effect would be targeting the character.

Peripherals(such as power tokens, gold tokens, or attachments) are not included in the scope of immunity for a character they are connected to.

Hmm, not completely sure on how well design can be used to combat certain things. MtG has done this control - aggro arms race already and for them it failed. The key there was printing more of "hexproof" and "immune" characters to fight the controls (hexproof stops your opponent from targeting the said card). It ended with control using the best of those characters as finishers since barely anything was able to touch them and still using control for the non-hexproof cards on opposing side. This is somewhat already seen in the current AGoT meta with TRV and BT.

Like said on the episode it just might be better direction to have some of the older restrictions back like "card with no attachments" as that would encourage playing more positive attachments which are looking to become even more vulnerable in the future. There is also the Bear Island way which restricts the deck and has restrictive targets. King's Landing cycle also used a lot of "non-army" restrictions for control effects which has since been mostly forgotten, but still printed at times (but this is done more to stop positive abuse with The Viper's Bannermen than to stop control from hitting armies). One of the sad things perhaps is how "Limited Response" is not used more.

I kind of like the way SW has done this. There are few expensive fleets which cannot be targeted by opponents effects as long as they are undamaged, which means that it has to take damage from normal game mechanics before it is actually vulnerable to control effects. Not sure how this could be achieved in Thrones.

iirc Drakey had an idea of a mechanic which might possibly work better than just printing immunity. Something along the lines of leaves play ability which can be activated only if opponents card effect forces it to leave play (so no claim or using own cards to get the benefit). Not perfect, but it is something which to my knowledge has not been explored.

Other effect which only has one card in AGoT is making influence more expensive for your opponent. We currently have the winter Janos Slynt which raises the cost of using influence. What if we had more? like say a Stark character which would raise the cost of the influence event by one influence based on how many stark cards the effect would affect on.

I'm listening now and just became your 100th like on Facebook. Now all I need to do is win GenCon to get a free beer from Darknoj.

I don't think he said you needed to win - just show up. Brian wins the Darknoj Beer contest!

What was that Bran deck? I couldn't make out the combo parts. I want to play it!

Hah, not sure I should even consider linking it! The deck was posted by the creator on agotcards.

Really enjoyed the show - the best one yet, I think! Great, solid content and good discussions.

I don't think he said you needed to win - just show up. Brian wins the Darknoj Beer contest!

Sweet. I already have my ticket to be there at GenCon. Listening while working results in not accurately catching all the details. I remembered thinking that needing to win GenCon and be the 100th like seemed a bit restrictive.

Good cast guys. Quick q on the immunities topic then (and i may have asked this somewhere else):

Can Ser Axell Florent's character ability remove a duplicate from the Viper?

Say you wanted to stand the Viper with something like Distinct Mastery. Can Eddard Stark (TToTH) cancel that? Or does the Viper's immunity stop the cancel?

Could Ned cancel a save response granted to the Viper by a duplicate?

1) Axell can discard a dupe from the viper, since his ability targets the dupe and not the viper

2) You can't actually stand the Viper with distinct mastery (he's immune to events), but even if you could, the cancel is affecting the Distinct Mastery, not the Viper.

3) No, a duplicate is not considered to 'target' the noble character.