Hello all,

It's been a while I am thinking about this: trying to setup all together a 6p version that rebalances the standard 6p game (the one with the latest FAQs, i.e. with Lanni ship and CLA for tiebreakers). For those who do not know me, I am a rather experienced players with some interesting achievements as for the game, and a person who loves theory-crafting on games (any games!).

The idea is to make something that could be first discussed, then if JM Grip agrees with that, chosen as another option on the site on default 6p. In that thinking, it is important to remember that our dear 8th God is über busy: must be something as easy as possible to implement, so with no major change like drawing new cards or changing completely the map.

Warning: this is for 6p and only for 6p, not for 3p (Lanni already strong, nor 4p (the "good" one, with Tyrell and 1st ed map). Discussable for 5p which is unbalanced anyway.

1- Stats and situation

If we look at the current stats for houses under that setup, we are (with an average at 16,67%) at :

Greyjoy 23,1%
Stark 23%
Baratheon 17,1%
Martell 15,1%
Tyrell 10,6%
Lannister 10,5%

Lessons learnt since last patch :
- Greyjoy still strong. No change, no surprise, however the tiebreaker is usully bad for them.
- Stark is strong due to the tiebreakers. They'll lose more to Greyjoy as they are more inclined to go North these days, however, the tiebreaker if it happens is almost every time in their favour.
- Baratheon and Martell are the most balanced. The first is slightly above, the Martell does not win that many times but we can see in every tournamenet that they are almost always medium to good scores with this house due to their defensive position and their deterrent card.
- Tyrell is still in such a weak position on tracks that they are hard to play in early game before a CoK or Muster happens.
- Lannister gains little in percent and are still last, but I still believe they are more playable than before with the additional ship. However, while before they could win at tiebreakers (on barrels), now they can't (on lands), probably losing the benefits of their additional ship.

Therefore, the goal is to see how we can do a bit of nerf on GJ / Stark and a little up on Tyrell / Lanni, while keeping the others similar.

2- Effects of Westeros cards on each house :

Greyjoy : highly depends on mustering. A game with no muster is a game where GJ is in trouble, usually.

Stark : highly depends on CoK. A CoK turn 2 is a catastrophe, but in the long run he can be the best token generator, so from turn 5 will love many CoKs.

Baratheon : possibly the most versatile as for W cards. With CoKs, except if Doraned, they are fine, they just need their seat on the throne as often as possible - as now.

Martell : their not great token generation puts them in a situation where they hate turn 2 CoKs, and in general frequent CoKs are not very good to them if Tyrell is not friendly.

Tyrell : they long for early CoKs to get out of their dreary initial tracks situation.

Lannister : they can usually afford early CoKs, however, they do not have a great generation in the long run. As they usually always have a star at least they do not care too much about musters.

3a- How to nerf GJ:

Suggested is a clssic often described here: swap of Asha and Balon's combat strengh. That is a huge change indeed, but they still have a good deck with Balon still a good card even if countered by Sword, Victarion to reign on seas, Euron is a classical 4, and Asha becomes more interesting.

3b- How to nerf Stark:

Stark is strong due to its numerous lands and easy access to supply - they usually leave MotM easily to Bara because they don't need it. What I suggest is just to remove Widow's Watch from the map (and its barrel too). Getting to 5 barrels is harder for Stark, and winning CLAs too. Why Widow's Watch : hesitated with Fingers, but that is tactically a very un-interesting place (just rounded by White Harbour), and makes the defense of Narrow Sea even more critical.

3c- How to up Lannister:

They need a boost, but not a too big one due to GJ nerf, and especially one not usable at sea - they mustn't be allowed to take IBB too easily.
What I suggest is to slightly modify Kevan's ability by removing the little start of sentence "When attacking". Makes Kevan an excellent defender and a stronger counter to defend against Balon - Lannister may come back as it is in the books with lots of infantry and not that much cavalry.
Makes them more vulnerable to an aggressive GJ, and changes quite a lot tactics - putting an FM in Stoney Sept may be the right way to go in addition to the usual knight. And that can trigger sexy "guess the card" fights between Tywin / Kevan and Euron / Balon.
Does not change their ability to attack, and makes poor Jaime the real "last card wished in hand".

3d- How to up Tyrell:
Their early game where they can lose it all to Martell is really tough. The solution is somewhat easy: an additional ship in Redwyne Straights. Makes them better to defend, even if they will still be defeated turn 2 by 3 ships with M+1, that does require Martell to be taking more risks, use higher cards and leaves Tyrell with one ship in Redwyne even if they lose WSS. Obviously, second ship cannot be elsewhere : in WSS would allow early game attack - they still need to be a slow start -, in port of Oldtown they can't be here at start except creating weird rules (PT at start, neutral ship that does not really help here...).

3e- Oh wait, ships ?...

Now with that setup, 4 houses start with 2 ships (GJ/Bar/Lan/Tyr), 1 KN, 2 FM) while only Martell and Stark have one ship.

And both of them have nightmares where you tell them "turn 2 CoK".
You see me coming: let's try adding a ship in Port of Sunspear and Port of Winterfell.

Does adding a ship in port of WF change radically things ? That allows Stark to CP there, or to move and CP from WH, usually a risky move if Bara is aggressive if you have an only M+1 in Shivering. It helps defend against GJ only, but also condemns Stark to have a ship on his West Coast. And a Stark always wants at least 4 ships in the East Coast... So not a huge boost overall. You could even imagine putting CP* in White Harbour to change starting strategies.

Does adding a ship in port of Sunspear change radically things ? Same as Stark, allows better CP generation, does not allow a game one attack as ESS is empty. You can still atttack Tyrell turn 2 if neither CoK or muster happens, or also a too confident Baratheon - turn 2 WoL could become deadly for the Stag (was already a danger), who tended to love that event before to possibly go Narrow Sea.

And I tend to like the idea of all 6 houses starting with the exact same amount of troops.

3e- TL;DR - Summary of changes :

Map: Remove Widow's Watch.
Initial troops: One Tyrell ship in Redwyne Straights, one Martell ship in port of Sunspear, one Stark ship in port of Winterfell
Cards: Kevan Lannister works in Defense as well, Balon Greyjoy becomes STR1 while Asha Greyjoy becomes STR2.

4- Risks:

Risks I already identify:

- Baratheon:

Bara is the most balanced house as of now and especially Martell gets a small boost - that should be watched carefully for not ruining them. Also may be harder to negociate MotM with Stark.

I already have a change ready in my pocket if the Stag becomes too weak : Melisandre gets Patchface's ability (so fluff to see her removing enemy cards with her shadow!), while Patchface gets a Tower OR Two Towers instead of the useless sword which is on the Red Priestess (fluff: as he has visions, he protects his troops). Far better for the ability to discard a card while less likely losing fight, second tower to save troops (and on a 0 card, tower(s) is far better than sword and can make it an fair / excellent baiting card). Even hesitate to put that rule right now in play as well as the other changes as Bara will only lose from the suggested changes.

Others:
- We will have to study this variant use, especially on tournaments like Loiaf or World Cup / Championship.
- May have missed some über strategies, if anyone sees it.
- JM Grip may never have time to implement these, but I tried to make things as easy to implement as possible. Widow's Watch removal will probably be a bit tricky as it is map change, cards should not be too hard to manually edit considering the small changes in them.

5- But I am not alone:

The very goal of this post is to receive feedback on these ideas, and if many experienced players think it makes sense, well, let's go to ask this to JM !

Thanks for your attention.

Last edited by Necrarch on 2020-Dec-15 13:55, edited 2x in total

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

I think balancing a game with 6 distinct factions with very different resources, exposures, strengths and weaknesses is a very complex undertaking.  And so any tweaks should be done with a very, very light touch. Both to avoid a change in one arena having unanticipated downstream effects (like how it is not immediately obvious how trying to even out the odds in a Lanni-GJ fight comes almost entirely at Stark's expense, since it pushes GJ away from engaging Lanni at all), and so you can actually know what you are measuring when you examine the results.  If you introduce multiple variables into the same experiment at the same time, the data it produces because much more muddled and less useful.

I would add as well that these changes compound on each other.  So if you are trying to correct an imbalance between Greyjoy and Lannister, you don't need to debuff Greyjoy and buff Lannister at the same time.

To that end, I think that with the changes that have already been implemented, I would limit additional tweaks to 1) removing Widow's Watch and 2) adding a barrel to either Oldtown or the Reach.  Your reasoning for Widows Watch is sound, but I think Tyrell is the tougher nut to crack.  Adding the ships you contemplate would, I think, be disastrous for Martell's results.  Their biggest problem is that they have a hell of a time breaking out of their corner to conquer any additional territory, and if they lose the option of sweeping into WSS early (which hardly guarantees a victory, even when they pull it off), they become entirely dependent on catching Web Of Lies at an opportune moment to have any real chance of getting a 5th castle, much less any more.  An additional barrel for Tyrell does leave them vulnerable to that early game strike, but provides them a bit of an easier transition to a position of real strength in the middle-late game.  But in a way that does not fundamentally alter the dynamics between any of the house match-ups.

Thanks a lot, Ser Hodor, for that input, very good ideas and points !

- Agree that we can, and should, introduce changes carefully, look at the results and review.

- However, when you look at Martell / Tyrell, a Martell does not always win from an early Tyrell strike (they fail more often than win, actually, it's better for Bara !), however, for Tyrell it's very hard to recover even if it failed. Makes the game quite not fun usually for something you can't prevent happening at turn 2. That's that hopelessness that I don't like.

- What we could try, based on your view though is:

> All the ships addition, for Tyrell, Martell and Stark. To remember, the turn 2 attack is still possible if no CoK or muster with M+1, 3 ships against 2 ships (usually one supporting the other with a 1 Def). Will be easier if SoS or WoL, impossible if RoA. And allows the "same unit distribution" I am fond of. The strongest change is for Tyrell in these, as not in port, and really allows even if turn-2-invaded to keep one ship in Redwyne for sure to raid or def.

> Removal of Widow's Watch to debuff Stark while the ship helps him, even if slightly only.

> Adding Kevan's feature to defense. That will change the ability for Lanni to defend against Greyjoy indeed, and could also be an incitation for GJ to go North to get down that dangerous new ship.

Basically, makes :
- Stark: a buff and a debuff. Slight up for early game, loss for mid/end game, I think. So more a debuff than a buff
- Lanni: a buff
- Tyrell: a buff
- Martell: a small buff, but entering Tyrell turn 2, if still possible, will be harder.
- Bara / GJ unchanged, but will have harder times, one with Martell's extra ship and the better Lanni def, one with the Stark ship and the same for Lanni.

> Adding a barrel in Reach would make much sense for that much prized mid-map castle. I like the idea, but would suggest to keep that idea for later, along with Asha / Balon swap and Patchface / Melisandre swap. Tend to think that Tyrell needs more an early game up that a mid/late game one, and the extrra-ship is really that one.

Please let me know your thoughts, and other people are welcome as well.

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

Interesting topic and ideas.

I think your analysis is mostly correct.
The two main problems with game balance I see are indeed
1) Greyjoys very strong house cards
2) Tyrell's weak starting position and therefore reliance on the right westeros cards more than any other house

1) Greyjoy in a 1vs1 against Stark or Lannister usually comes out on top and oftentimes it's (near) impossible to stop him from taking over the seas with balon/victarion/aeron alone, so usually most players don't even try when things go well for GJ allowing him to do it with weaker cards even. Catelyn, Tyrion, Kevan and Cersei, although seemingly strong against GJ at first glance will often fall short of their potential, because they're too situational and a clever Greyjoy will not fall for the more obvious traps. Some players may remember first Edition cards made for a more balanced GJ/Stark/Lanni setup and a rock paper scissors relation for house cards, but while Cersei and Catelyn stayed the same in the 2nd edition, balon and victarion got huge buffs, while also gaining aeron as a failsafe (which also invalidates tyrion most of the time), removing that aspect almost entirely.
So I can understand your desire to tweak the cards somewhat.
However you can also look at it as a feature.
GJ in the hands of an experienced player is near invincible, when he has only one enemy. What happens a lot is Stark and Lanni opting for peace from the start. GJ will take down one player, while he and his ally will happily ignore each other until the end of the game. I believe this is the real mistake in this setup and this can be extremely frustrating for the player who has to take on GJ all by himself, especially if it's Lannister (Stark can actually do fine if played well).

I think the best solution to this and many other problems (including a turn 2 naval invasion by martell) would be a regular reassesment of the board and a diplomacy that matches the shifts in power. I believe this is the way the game is meant to be played. An alliance between two players should never equal a free pass to just ignore one front, while wiping out another player unobstructed.
Sadly experience shows this is a common practice. Of course there are times when it cannot be stopped or you're unable to help, but most of the time I do make an effort at balancing the game by attacking a neighbor who is winning a fight.
Especially against GJ with the blade Stark and Lanni can often force him to lose one of his fights by building pressure from both sides or at least force him to use his strongest cards.
These are also situations where lying to your neighbor and "ally" is the more honorable move than letting him wipe out another player, who is requesting your help.
Who ever played with me before and thought himself safe, may have learned that to his sorrow.
Therefore I rarely neglect defence even against a self-proclaimed "ally" in favor of a more aggressive one-sided approach. In the end there are 5 enemies at the table and allowing your neighbor to grow too strong is often not a good idea if you plan to win unless you can guarantee you'll be profiting at least as much from the alliance as him.

I hope I could offer you some valuable insight. In the end I do believe most balance problems can be solved by the right application of diplomacy although the willingness to reevaluate your alliances and sometimes offer your seemingly selfless cooperation to a player in need are preconditions for that.

PS: Tyrell is basically the same. Weak in the beginning with the wrong westeros cards, horrible cards to defend his sea (where is paxter redwyne, when you need him?) and in sore need of good allies then, but with the qot he usually has something to offer for a potential ally and loras offers a huge comeback potential if the game doesn't go your way at first. On the other hand mustering and clash will turn him into a danger starting in turn 2

Last edited by The Stranger on 2020-Dec-16 20:23, edited 1x in total

Fully agree on these. We tend to have here a meta to go against GJ, as experienced players, but adapting to an inbalanced situation. And still, even in WCh, Loiaf or WCup, you still have far better success for GJ vs Lanni or Martell.

The problem for the Lanni / Stark alliance is that they have little to gain from it if they are not the target of the Kraken, and any smart GJ will not go against both. Especially Stark with his slow start is happy to see a Lion's fail - Lanni can be more tempted to betray. In the long run, actually, and if Tyrell is not weakened, I tend to think that the worst threat for the Kraken can be the Rose.

Anyway, a little bit of rebalancing - not huge, something smart and well designed - to change the meta and make the two "low" houses easier to play for not super experienced players would not hurt, I think !

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

Then how about making balon a 0, aeron a 1, victarion a 2 and asha a 3?
Or add a port to seagard to make it live up to it's name

Port on Seagard : active when Tully is in play in the PBF, and the main inland fortress for the Kraken should always stay his. To sum up, a true pain for Greyjoy if he loses Seagard as his support in IBB can be broken. Seems big, and I am not a great fan of two ports in the same sea area (only happens in SBB with SE / DS and the option to put a ship in port of SE for Martell is... discussable).

As discussed with Ser Hodor previously, we have to make small changes, evaluate them and the see if we need more.
Also with the perspective to ask for as little changes as possible to JM Grip, will be the same thing.
So changing 4 combat strengths at the same time debuffing two biggest cards for the GJ is huge, I think, and too big for that 'small steps' strategy. A 1 card on Aeron for a card swapping does not make much sense neither. As said above, the swap of combat strength between Asha and Balon is often played in home rules, and I still keep it in my pocket if the first set of changes is not enough. We can consider your suggestions as the third layer if still needed.

Anyway, many thanks for your ideas, they are truly interesting, and the more experienced people putting ideas together here, the better !

Last edited by Necrarch on 2020-Dec-16 22:20, edited 1x in total

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

Interesting suggestions !

I like the idea of an additional ship for Stark, Tyrell and Martell. I guess it's a good idea to even out unit distribution, and I also think this could really help to balance the early game: Tyrell's life would be less dependent on Westeros cards, while Stark and Martell would have the opportunity to consolidate power in ports. The additional power token should come in handy in case of an early CoK, as it is often a serious setback for Stark and Martell in the current setup.

Regarding the removal of Widow's Watch, I don't think this would strongly impact the game. Stark's natural territory would still amount to 10 land areas, much more than for any other house. I agree it would be a bit harder for Stark to reach a 5th barrel, but not that much: MotM will most likely belong to Stark if he is at peace with Greyjoy, and Seagard or Greywater Watch could provide a barell to Stark if he is resisting and fighting against Greyjoy (usually in the midgame after Greyjoy has fought Lanni).

Finally, I feel like Kevan Lannister would be too strong if he also provided +1 combat strength to defending footmen. For example, using unraidable support from Stoney Sept, Lannister would easily get a second card with a combat strength of 3 or 4 to defend his core territory. I still think that exchanging the combat strength of Asha and Balon is a better option to lower the win rate of Greyjoy. Balon would provide less opportunities for a guaranteed win, while remaining an excellent house card. In my opinion, Lannister would benefit more from this change as compared to house Stark, but this remains to be investigated and tried in game.

Last edited by _LoGo_ on 2020-Dec-19 11:08, edited 2x in total

I think it's important to keep in mind what the actual goal in all this is, which is more balance in the final results. If you "fix" the game to more perfectly balance the starting positions - such that Tyrell doesn't have to worry about his starting track weaknesses, Lannister can fend off a Greyjoy assault without much effort, and Stark has nothing to fear from an early Clash - then you don't actually achieve that end.  You just ensure that every game begins with 4-5 turns of stalemate.

Which would make the game a lot more boring, for starters, but also not achieve the balance in the final scenario. For instance, people focus a lot on how overpowered Greyjoy is, and the focus of that focus naturally falls to how strong Balon and Victarion are. But I think that is very misleading, and actually Greyjoy's strong results are as much a reflection of other factors (beginning with the blade, an extra ship, and  easy access to loads of castles and barrels) as they are the house cards.  I actually think that Lannister's cards are much better overall, and any ideas about beefing them up further are misguided.  As it is, for as fearsome as Greyjoy can be in the early game, they are my preferred enemy in the late game as Tyrell or Lannister, since they lack any sort of counter to the special ability cards (QOT, Loras, Cersei, Gregor, even Tyrion) that can be much more catastrophic to lose against than Balon or Victarion who often win with strength to spare but have no swords or any other special consquences to give those victories teeth.

If you actually removed Greyjoy's potential for early blitzkriegs, as seems to be the focus here, I think you would see the inherent weakness of their house cards become much more apparent as they were forced to play defense more consistently without access to the strong offense they normally rely on.

Absolutely, Ser Hodor. That's why it is important that this new setting is tested with experienced and willing players to check that it does not break the game. I know that Ril suggested we try it in PBF first, before asking for any implementation by JM.

The goal is not to block the game indeed, so clearly you don't want to break all the game dynamics by doing that. So test + test + test is required, as the current imbalance is NOT bad, with everyone between 10 and 23%. But even at top level (e.g. Loiaf div 1/div 2) GJ wins are more frequent than Tyrell / Lanni's. No one says the latter are impossible neither. Stark wins are usually not very fun 4/5 castles with CLA and full defense.

Still, shouldn't we try to make it a little better? If we hear at "take care, it can change things", you'll ultimately fall into a "never change a thing", which is not a solution. The recent change with Lanni ship and CLA is, I think, really cool as for the spirit of it.

I tend to think what has been suggested above should not freeze the game : The extra ship for Martell and Stark will put them from 4 to 5PT only in case of a turn 2 Clash, so less than all others still. However, it gives them more options for what comes next.

The extra ship for Tyrell does not prevent a turn 2 attack from Martell if no muster / no Cok if he puts 3 ships and +1 - just rains of autumn is an additional issue for him. We can even see new cases with Martell with the blade in case of CoK.

And GJ would still be able to attack quickly and strongly. The ship in port of WF is something that just replaces the first ship drawn from the initial WF CP*, Lanni has just better defense on lands with FMs.

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Summary of the suggested changes up to now (by whom) (which houses is affected and with + or -):

- Everyone 1 - Equal troops (Nec) (S+,T+,M+): +1 Tyrell ship in Redwyne Straights, +1 Stark ship in port of Winterfell, +1 Martell ship in port of Sunspear.

- Stark 1 - Removal of Widow's Watch (Nec) (S-): Widow's watch removed from the map. Required if 1 is chosen to give a compensating debuff on Stark.

- Greyjoy 1 - Asha / Balon Combat Strengths swap (Nec) (G-): Asha becomes CS 2, Balon CS 1.

- Greyjoy 2 - Asha / Balon / Victarion / Aeron Combat Strengths swap (The Stranger) (G-) Asha becomes CS 3, Victarion CS 2, Aeron CS 1, Balon CS 0.

- Greyjoy 3 - Port in Seagard (The Stranger) (G?, more likely a - but not sure as can serve for CP/GoT/better supply use) Add a port in Seagard on Ironman's Bay.

- Lannister 1 - Kevan Lannister defends (Nec) (L+): Kevan's ability to have extra combat strength for footmen also works in defense, not only offense.

- Lannister 2 - Lannisport super garrison (ZWC098) (L+): Garrison in Lannisport becomes 4 instead of 2.

- Tyrell 1 - Extra barrel in Reach (Ser Hodor) (T+):
A barrel is added in Reach.

- Martell 1 - (no change yet)

- Baratheon 1 - Patchface / Melisandre Ability swap + sword / fort swap (Nec) (B+): Melisandre stays 1 CS but gets Patchface ability to remove a card, Patchface stays 0 CS but gets a fortification icon.

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We have already a nice list here. Still, let's wait for more suggestions, let's say until the end of the year, and start a poll on these to implement the top 2 or top 3 in some PBFs starting next year ?

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

A great discussion with a lot of great ideas from all of you, with some I agree more and with some a bit less.

But I think you all are forgetting an important point which Necrarch mentioned at the Start: The work any modification implies and the lack of time to work on it by JM.

I think we should stick to 1 modification. Let's agree on the simpliest and easiest and fastest one and ask for that. If we ask for a lot we might not see it implemented at all.

Because of this, I think the option of 1 extra ship for Martell, Stark and Tyrell is the one to choose.

Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of the other ideas, but they seem very hard to implement.

Last edited by 18HopeCSF on 2020-Dec-21 17:18, edited 1x in total

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Many people have died for their beliefs; it’s actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe
_________
Silent Knight
World Cup - Team Argentina Captain

The issue here is that it helps Stark and does not help Lannister.

At least would add the removal of Widow's Watch, which impacts negatively Stark and can also give an incentive for GJ to go North.

That could indeed be a good start.

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

Noted as your opinion, ZWC098. Thanks for that.
Anyway, we will NOT ask JM for any change before reaching to a more or less stable version, so I think it is better to test by PBFs first : let's not waste his precious time to try temporary stuff.

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver