orion_kurnous said:

Rewording all these cards is not really a reasonable alternative, and in some cases (your Meera suggestion, for example) it would totally change the nature/value of the card.  Additionally, they've tried this in the past and found that it didnt work: obvious examples are The North Agendas, which received multiple erattas, and TMP which they are still trying to fix, even after erattas and restriction to 4 cards associated with TMP only time will tell if it is still too strong.

Have to disagree with you entirely Orion. Errata is generally bad - the more I have to keep track of that isn't physically printed on the cards, the worse it is for players. Sure, a restricted list is something that isn't physically printed on the cards, but it's not something I have to reference mid-game when my opponent plays a card. 

I support errata only when it's used to make a card do what it does (intuitively), as is the case for something like Castle Battlements.

As for not being able to play with the cards you've bought… you're acting as if a restricted list is a banned list. I just ran up against a deck running refugees as its restricted… and if this thread is anything to go on, even the cards some people are dismissing as "basically banned" will still see occasional play. Not to mention melee. I don't think you have a leg to stand on if you're making the "I want to play with the product I bought" complaint.

just fyi each icon lost triggers its own response, any charater with multiple icons may get each of those icons back for multiple cards

Wolfbrother said:

 

The sourge its very pwerful i put it in all my martell decks because i use not as a icon removal, i use as a location that discard cards from hand, and if you are playing vs stark or baratheon normally they have few cards in hand. The BI have a great restriction, all your cards must be stark cards, you must quit carrions, randy tarly, varys, sstreet of steel and any street or neutral location that reduced cost, and in a maester deck you cant use it because the chains are neutral. Bear island dont work vs characters with atacchments and now with the restriction of tin link  we´ll see more attachments.

card attrition is solid, but i still feel character attrition wins out, if i can't deal with your character that turn its still there. Where as bear island solves the problem of a character outright. I'm not saying the scourge isn't strong i just feel Bear island's character attrition is stronger

It is. There is just zero logic behind the statement that BI is weaker than Scourge in reference to effect. Kill is very nearly always the better option rather than control for a turn.

Now the deck building and targeting restrictions are definitly very different. The question is how much of an issue are they in practice versus theory?

I don't think anyone is saying that kill isn't stronger than icon strip. If you compare the two locations, that's balanced by BI being a higher cost location, play restrictions (only control Stark cards), and target restrictions (no attachments). Additionally, the Scourge has a response that allows the opponent the opportunity to give back an icon.

HoyaLawya said:

Yup. Additionally, BI can only target non-Stark cards and is dominance phase. Scourge is challenges phase.

Of course kill is better than icon-strip, but does that inherently make BI a better CARD than Scourge? Not necessarily.

Danigral said:

The issue is that this is situational, almost binary balance. The card has multiple modes of effect dictated mainly by your opponent's deck. Is it a Stark deck? Effect = 0. Does it run attachments? Yes? Effect is variable. No? Effect is to kill the best character as long as it is in play.

Cards like this must inherently be undertuned (as Bear Island is by being on the restricted list). There will always be an optimal situation for a card (in this case no attachments and no location hate). Either you want that build to be viable (I prefer more viable builds than less) or your balance for Bear Island winds up in such a way that it will make that build non-viable.

If you want more viable builds, Bear Island (and similar cards) should be completely overhauled. It should not be conditional on only non-Stark characters (this is purely a balance perspective, not thematic). It should remove the no attachment restriction. Then the card should be re-balanced. It would probably end up being higher cost or having a trigger requirement that includes a game play element (like winning dominance or winning a challenge by 4). Bear Island is a poorly designed card from a viability of builds perspective. Poorly designed cards should be some of the first cards put on the Restricted list by the nature of them warping the viability of builds.

Scourge, though different, winds up in the same boat. It reduces the viability of big-character, low draw builds. Players can say, "well that's what they get for not playing draw", but really, nothing should be mandatory. A sub-optimal build should be sub-optimal simply because the combination of cards suck together, not because the combination of cards is non-viable due to a predominant build. It's design is relatively poor in the same vein as Bear Island. If it were to be redesigned it would probably wind up with a higher cost or change the icon removal to only have an effect if the opponent actually has cards in hand. It needs to be designed in such a way that it does not make big-character, low draw builds non-viable. They should suck because they just suck, not because a card makes them suck.

Choosing to not play a class of cards (like location removal) should not make you lose outright. It should marginally reduce your chances of winning against that build. Marginally should probably be at most 5% (that was the difference between pure DPS and hybrid DPS in WoW for a long time). Cards like Bear Island and the Scourge reduce your chances of winning without location removal by much more than 5%.

BI's big drawback is the timing. Pretty much everything else (including deck building) can be worked around by a skilled player, except in the mirror match where an opponent's characters can't be targeted. Then the location is awful. But as I argued in another thread, evaluating the power level of restricted cards is useful only to the extent that we can agree they are (1) so powerful (or efficient) that they are extremely common, and (2) their ubiquity harms player choices/variety. Refugees are a good example… Not game breaking, but they have distorting effects on deck building that results in less variety and, frankly, thinking when deck building. BI basically plays itself… hit the best available target every round. Planning to Valar, may as well use it anyway. At least with No Quarter one needs to decide whether using the effect now vs later is more beneficial, though usually that decision is easy too (I'm glad that card was restricted). Even if we disagree on which cards are stronger, maybe we can agree that these cards are both resulting in less engaging gaming both during deck building and during game play.