I just wanted to review some of the statistics associated with Tides of Battle, versus not using these cards.  The group that I usually play with doesn't like them- they're too random, and they enjoy the fact that this game has only a few random parts to it.  Battles are more of a psychological affair than one of chance.

But looking at the statistics, in normal games with no tides of battle, Stark and Greyjoy are by far the most likely houses to win.  The Tyrell player will be discouraged, knowing that this house has only won 9.3% of games.  Let's look at the stats for no ToB:

Stark: 22.8%
Greyjoy: 22.7%
Baratheon: 17.1%
Martell: 16.6%
Lannister: 11.4%
Tyrell: 9.3%

This type of game would be impossible to balance win rates between all houses, and I don't think anyone would really enjoy that anyway.  The geography of the map itself is unbalanced.  However, let's look at what ToB does for the win stats:

Stark: 24.1%
Greyjoy: 21.6%
Martell: 15.5%
Baratheon: 14.5%
Lannister: 13.2%
Tyrell: 11%

So Stark, the leading house, enjoys a 2% increase.  But the other three leading houses, Baratheon, Greyjoy, and Martell, all suffer a decrease, and the bottom two houses Lannister and Tyrell enjoy a 2% increase in win rates.

It appears then that ToB does offer a small benefit in making the game slightly more balanced.  This benefit won't sit well with players who enjoy being able to predict every single variable in the battle, but it does reflect a bit more realism is uncontrollable variables in battles (such as the weather, morale, officership, and other intangibles).

For me, this change is worth it, and I will be using ToB in more of my hosted games in the future.  It's also a refreshing difference from years of playing without them.

What does the community think?  Is ToB the best way to even out the win rates of the houses, or are there other less random ways to achieve this?  The statistics tab on this website is a wonderful tool for analyzing this.

I am not a big fan of ToB, have to say, for the reason quoted above : adding this random factor does not fit very well to the philosophy of this luck-factor-not-too-dependent game (W Cards are already a big thing).

As for rebalancing the classical 6p, feel free to drop an eye on the dedicated thread.
https://www.thronemaster.net/?goto=community&sub=forum&fid=3&tid=77388#top

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I would agree that the Westeros cards already introduce ample randomness in the scheme of things with 3-5 possibilities for wildly different results in 3 different decks, rerun 9 different times throughout a full game.  And while I'm not opposed in principle to introducing some degree of randomness at the individual battle level, I find the thing that still puts me off them is that, even if they do tend to increase overall balance in results, they also tend to make people play even more cautiously than they would without them. And if the price of a more balanced game is that it is also a more dull one, I'm still not as interested in playing the "more perfect" version.

Tides do make for a way more interesting game tho. Pulling a win from certain defeat or accidentaly winning with Roose? That is unexpected, makes someone vulnerable and vulnerability creates action. The point of tides is not take make ppl play more cautiously, but to embolden them and make every game more fun and unique
But does it actually work that way?  In my limited experience, it didn't seem to.

Tides do make for a way more interesting game tho. Pulling a win from certain defeat or accidentaly winning with Roose? That is unexpected, makes someone vulnerable and vulnerability creates action. The point of tides is not take make ppl play more cautiously, but to embolden them and make every game more fun and unique
But does it actually work that way?  In my limited experience, it didn't seem to. I think it depends a lot on the people who's playing. In my group the experience is VERY positive. Nobody would even think about playing without Tides.

In my games, people were more bold playing with Tides, I've seen a lot of players attacking despite being -2 on overall strength. Sometimes it was crap, but several times there were epic wins! And to be honest, people always remember those.

Another curious thing is how the Lannister-Greyjoy "imbalance" gets affected. In my group we never had that problem. I only knew about it when I started playing online here. It's incredible, but Tides end up balancing the field. I think that despite having the sword, Greyjoy has much more to loose from unexpected looses than Lanni.

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