I’d like to start a discussion on the impact of the neutral agenda “The Long Voyage” and how it has affected the overall AGOT meta. To do this let’s all agree on one thing; card advantage will win games more often than not in a game between players of similar experience and skill. The more cards a player has in his/her hand or at their “command”, the more options that player will generally have in finding an advantage over their opponent. There are of course some cases where no amount of cards in hand will help you if you simply don’t have an answer to something like “Beric Dondarrion” loaded up with multiple copies of “Taste for Blood” but this would be an exception and not the rule.
The Benefits
Before “The Long Voyage” it was very difficult for some deck types to gain card advantage, mostly due to the lack of card draw options in certain houses or the high conditionality of draw effects. When it comes to straight up card draw I think we can all agree that some houses have it much better than others. Some may argue that there are counters and alternatives to card advantage such as hand destruction or recursion of cards, and while that is true I would argue that the amount of cards you would need to dedicate to a deck to consistently achieve a card advantage through one of these methods highly restricts the types of deck builds available for your house of choice. I think these are part of the reason that a card such as “The Long Voyage” may have been designed and printed into existence.
There are many deck types that are empowered by gaining one extra card per turn, deck types that were previously well designed and contain powerful characters, abilities and an interesting strategy but simply lacked a consistent card draw option. It’s these types of decks that many players experimented with and took to tournaments rising high in the rankings until they ran into the one deck that simply out drew them to the win. It’s these types of decks that will benefit the most from running “The Long Voyage” agenda and these types of decks who’s variety in theme and strategy will ultimately add to the enjoyment and diversity in the current Game of Thrones meta.
The Down Side
From a deck building perspective the extra 25 cards required to include in your deck to run “The Long Voyage” could be prohibitive if you are planning on running a highly combo-based deck. The good news here is that super combo based decks are arguably not as enjoyable to play against should the combo actually come to fruition and create an almost insurmountable circumstance such as repeatable “Balerion the Black” triggers or infinite “Much and More” combos followed by a “Rule By Decree”. It’s these types of negative play combo’s that most players hate to see and create a negative experience that may lead to less players in the game should these types of combo’s be left unchecked. I think there is a place for extremely powerful card combos in the game so long as they are difficult to achieve and have natural counters within the meta.
Some control players will also not be fans of “The Long Voyage” simply because it makes a greater variety of decks harder for them to control. To those players I would say that control is destined to have it’s up’s and downs. As new control cards are printed and old ones are restricted there will be natural swings in how effective control decks will be in the meta just as there are swings in how powerful rush decks and aggro decks will be from season to season. To this we are all at the mercy of FFG and our own ability to counter the stronger deck types through clever deck building and strategy. Maintaining a 100% balanced meta between these type of deck strategies is a very difficult task no doubt but I believe the current meta is the most balanced it has been since I began playing the game a little over a year ago.
Another “disadvantage” of the benefits of “The Long Voyage” is it’s ubiquity within the current thrones meta and regional season. As regional after regional results with reports of high concentrations of “Long Voyage” players and with “The Long Voyage” being the most frequent regional winning agenda by far it may be cause for concern that one card is having such a huge impact on the decks being played (Correct me if I’m wrong here). One might even call such a card “OP” and call for it’s immediate restriction, errata or banning as many already have done. My argument here would be that despite the frequency of the agenda being played, I believe “The Long Voyage” has seen regional wins with every house this season and in most cases multiple themes within many houses. Also, because the deck sizes are 25 cards larger, the probability is high that not only will the variety of winning deck types be more diverse but that the cards played by “The Long Voyage” decks should also be a bit different from game to game based on the lessened probability of drawing any one particular card in the course of a game.
Conclusion and Questions
I personally think that TLV is a good thing overall for the meta in terms of creating more diversity. The number of deck themes it enables is likely greater than the number of themes it hinders. Diverse players that like to experiment will likely agree with me here while players stuck on combo, control or hand destruction themes may not. In any event I’d like to hear what others have to say on the topic. Are my arguments valid on the whole or can you convince me through sound argument why TLV is a bad thing and truly needs eratta, banning or restriction? FFG has a tendency to frown on cards played too frequently. Do you think we will see TLV in the next FAQ or will it sail through nationals and the worlds tournament untouched?
