aegon, i didnt say to trash that card. but i do not think you try to understand others.

vaapad, we tried this too. core, houses, and five cycles excluding the naval first cp. and it changed quite a lot. so even i speak from my personal experience. we had to choose to include refugee or retaliation… and above that we had the old restricted list. i found that more versatil and more creative…

Alando said:

Nice to know that there are others with this sentiment. Bear Island is a little baffling: let's take a perfectly balanced card with it's own drawbacks and restrict it. Why? Probably only because of n00b-rage against it with HoD. But they didn't touch Tunnels, which is probably better than BI HoD. Again, why? Because Lanni has been out of the top for a while now, most likely. (Sure it's still hurt by losing it's refugees, but they have other cheap chumps…) This shows either partiality or a little ignorance of the competitive environment from FFG.

It's funny it takes a year of rage from the entire community to finally get Tin Link restricted, but only 2 months of rage in a non-competitive time of year to get Bear Island restricted. Casual players should not dictate the competitive environment, but that's what happened in this case imo.

Peace out.

Danigral

Danigral said:

If you listen to Damon's interviews, he basically says that since there are more casual than competitive players he designs for casuals. BI is an easy, strong casual deck. If the designers are focused more on casual play, then it really is no surprise that BI was restricted.

Bear island is not balanced, outright murdering any army in field each turn- not balanced, the restriction that you can't have neutral or in house stark cards may have been dificult years ago but now its an easy restrisction to get around.i didnt't think the scourge was that powerful by itself, especially considering you can ignore its effects with discarding cards. Bear island is much stronger than the scourge in my opinion, taking icons doesnt stop winning dominance, character abilities, or solve the problem of a character on field, bear island doesn't have to worry about that automatic 1 character a turn attrition is worthy of being restricted,.
 as for the tunnels, losing the refugees makes that deck incredibly less strong, no more free +3 or more strength tri cons, and many of their low cost character only have 1 icon and its often an intrigue icon, far less scarey than the refugees. mt friend plays a deck like this and i lost outright to it almost every game because  a single refugee was stronger than the red viper. the tunnels is still strong but its manageable now

*only in houise stark cards*

The Scourge was an auto-include in every Martell deck. Bear Island was rarely seen before HoD, and now positive attachments are far more playable.

be that as it may, maege works just as well for fetching the island, and im not saying the scourge isn't strong, but it effects could be negated, by any player i might add, but also theres no strong reliable way to ensure you get it aside from a less than mediocre plot, its not really house of dreams worthy. I guess i can see restricting it but it still feel it was a little much considering everything else they took from martell

I don't think the Scourge really needed restricted either, especially with Orphans being hit. I think FFG just kneejerked a bit over people complaining about the power level of House of Dreams. So they restrict Bear Island, Scourge and Aegon's Hill. Tunnels and Iron Throne escape because Lannister and Baratheon are seen as weaker houses (and also because both builds often used six refugees so got hit there anyway).

Wolfbrother said:

Wolfbrother said:

You're forgetting that it can't kill stark characters or characters with attachments and it has absolutely no value during challenges. You're also overlooking that a BI deck has a very sub-optimal resource base. However, you're on to something when you say that BI can kill an army. Most people think about the cost of characters in efficient decks, and pass on exorbitant armies; however if they do run them and play them, your army completely dominates whatever challenge you put them in most likely. (~OMG, restrict armies! They own me in one challenge!). Perhaps restricting it shows that FFG wants us to run their new shiny fleets with little risk. ;) I'm teasing you of course, but for realz.

The Scourge affects challenges phase, takes out your best character whether it has attachments or not, or deals a blow to your hand advantage for the compromise of 1 icon back (forcing you to tip your hand about which challenge is critical for you.)

Also, I was assuming that a Tunnels deck would opt for Cache over Refugees, but they don't have to. In fact, they could depend on GTM and Tommen for draw as so many (good) Lanni decks have done in the past. How do you know that they are "incredibly less strong" one day after the FAQ dropped. You couldn't have rebuilt your Tunnels deck and played against every other retooled deck at this point. ;)

I'm assuming they added BI to the RL because they wanted the player to keep it out of decks with Meera Reed, and No Quarter(and I guess possibly some of the other restricted cards you may use, like Retaliation?). 

Maybe they just went after every HoD Location that seemed to slot easily into decks.  Targ doesn't need a specific deck type to run HoD AH, Martell doesn't need one to run HoD Scourge, BI is borderline since the player has to remove most if not all non-Stark cards from his/her deck, but that mostly means removing Neutral discount locations while they retain the advantage of being able to play Hungry Mob in setup - with most Houses losing Refugees (and with the abundance of other playable cheap Stark guys out there) Stark isn't terribly hurting for HoD Setup cards.  Compare to Tunnels, which requires a whole deck built around it.  They may have just left Bara Iron Throne alone for now since the loss of 4-gold possibilities in setup is really bad for Bara, and b/c any opponent controlling an Iron Throne already effectively shuts it down.

There was 3 tunnels decks at Black Friday with little success. I ain't scurred. Bring it on bitches ;) And I say that in as derogatory a way was possible. Lanni is stupid, their cards are yellow and their siblings suck eachothers genitals.

dcdennis said:

mmm, I can think of only 1, and it placed 5th.  And, although Twn2dn never got paired against it during the tourney, that tunnels deck did very well against Twn2dn's maester burn deck during meta games.  As a targ player, I certainly fear tunnels.

aqwarty said:

I get it now  … I do still respectfully disagree with your opinion though. :)

I think this faq are a very bad, because FFg do the easy way "restrict or banned", i dont like this because although i think that the game needed a change, im a buyer and i like play with the card that i bought, when ffg do the lcg format, said that ALL CARDS will be played, but now there is a big list or restricted, Designers of FFG, please, think more, not the easy way, you can rewrite all this cards to be less powerfull, and be carefull to not do the same mistake in the future, because now you had designed a plot with claim 3 with not problems……

P.E:

REfugee: If you don´t pay a gold in dominance discard REfosugee.

Meera red : Erase come back to shadows.

Bear Island: I think this restricted card is very ridicolous, i have a strong deck but it have a problem, I CANT HAVE NO STARK CARDS.

No quarter: Use with a unique character that not have a war crest.

Aegons Hill: If you have a power struggle plot you can…..

Long lances: Only one per round

Tin link: Discard non unique attachments.

conclave: Gains a keyword until the end of the challenge.

Orphan of greenblood: doomed

hatchcling feast: this card its not the problem, its the threat of the north.

Sitrang: can´t affect character with attachments or army characters.

This is a example, please designers, more imagination nor only de easy way!!