Making the card plain simple "Limited" like the  dwarf tactic "calling the council" would be enough. That's almost like the repeater bolt thrower then. We don't need to put to much cards on the banned list in my opinion.

Gardine said:

Yeah, I totally agree, but it depends whether FFG would allow card text rule change.

Well, they've never added a keyword via errata before, but they did add text to the Bolt Throwers and The Imperial Zoo, for example. So I don't think it's out of the question, and it certainly would be preferable to a restriction or ban.

Virgo, what's the situation in Poland with the infinite loops combos, do you see them a lot, do they perform well? Which ones? In another thread you said HE might be the strongest faction now, was this a general statement or strictly in reference to Return to Glory / Elven Scout loops?

Mallumo said:

1 Restriction wouldn't change anything, lack of Derricksburgs would only slow the inevitable.

2 It's hard for me to tell from my own experience, because my local invasion group died and I play only on big regional tournaments However I follow closely our national forum and I see that although people earlier were playing infinite loops combos (fists of mork, return to glory) the complains started with the 2 Arcane Powers-Kurt Helborg-Pigeon Bombs infinite uncancelable indirect silliness. With Imperial economy this combo is easy to trigger and once it goes there are almost no things you can do to stop it.

3 It was a general statement (at least till Pigeons). HE decks based around Eltharion and removing tokens from cards for indirect are very strong.

In my small group (also in Poland, btw) we simply home rule or don't use some cards, that we find fun-spoiling and/or overpowered. I play Empire and don't use Judgment of Verena for example, I think we also restrict infinite loops, similarly to the Zoo (-> trigger once per phase).

Another example is Heinrich Hemmler, which I think I will stop use, just out of plain honesty - I find this card cost/power relation absolutely ridiculus, comparing to the other factions arsenal.

Still, if I ever go to tournament, the problem will exist.

Paradoks said:

Friedrich, not Heinrich, I don't know why I always change name of this guy. :P

Paradoks said:

We take the same sort of shame approach, but it's more like "Ok, you made a deck that keeps crushing everyone else's new ideas, play something else." Sometimes people will request to play against the killer deck, but those killer decks often just fall by the wayside. This is probably hurting our group's long run chances at winning any tournaments but we play each other way more than tournaments, so what're ya gonna do?

One way to make a competitive game environment (i.e., tournament) fun without arbitrary house rules could be to make it a tournament with only one copy of any card allowed. That way your combos are not going to go off with any sort of guaranteed frequency, but they still exist. It also makes them no longer infinite, which as far as I can tell, is what people are currently hating. Anyway, that's just something I've been kicking around.

Something I saw on the Cthulhu forums was the idea of a "soft ban", a player instituted norm that isn't really a rule. For instance, if we all acknowledged that Arcane Power is at the bottom of all these new loops that people don't like, then no "real" player would play with Arcane Power. Of course, this idea was shot down almost instantly since without a hard rule saying "No Arcane Power" the temptation to be the one person with Arcane Power is too high, which results in everyone bringing Arcane Power and the soft ban not working.

GenCon and Worlds are coming up. I know that people in my playgroup would be particularly disenchanted with some loop winning either of those events.

 Arcane Power also combines with Watchstone of Athel Tamarha. It's way more broken than Visit The Haunted City and should be banned.

 Well, looks like the infinite loop has be addressed. Nice work FFG.