Organised play - bans and restrictions

[stato]

Big news from GW, bans-restrictions for certain cards in organised tournaments.

Link to the article

Link to the list of banned and restricted cards

[mmimzie]

Yeah a great list of pulls. those bans are spot on to behonest. anand the restricted cards... let me say uve had deck list that were basicly just the restricted list lmao. 

 

So it's going to be very exciting working on decks.

[Reggi]

Tbh, i'm happy with that lists. I can't wait to see what decks we will see on tournaments soon :)

[stato]

6 minutes ago, mmimzie said:

Yeah a great list of pulls. those bans are spot on to behonest. anand the restricted cards... let me say uve had deck list that were basicly just the restricted list lmao. 

 

So it's going to be very exciting working on decks.

As someone who is just getting into it and not playing at a high level, its a pain in the ****** for me.  I dont know what cards do anyway so needing to add in a bunch of restrictions just makes it too much effort.  Probabaly wasnt going to play other than with friends and occasional at the local gaming place, but that will go now as all tournaments will be forced by competitive players to implement standard tournament rules.  I fully this is probably good for the game, its just disappointing it needs it, and it spoils it for people just playing for fun.

[Skyeline]

The shakeup this is going to cause to the organized play meta is going to be enormous! The restricted card list is a whopping 26 cards, which as @mmimzie noted above, are definitely the most popular universals.

While I'm a little disappointed from a design perspective to see that we've had to resort to a ban list, I do fully understand and support their selection of those banned cards. The restricted list on the other hand seems like a stellar way to cut away at the terminal "same-deck" we've been gradually encroaching on with every Underworlds release.

I'm also glad that they released a deck builder alongside this change as it's going to a bit of a chore to deck build and keep the 5 restricted card limit in mind, simply because it's a long list and damn it they're all so good. I haven't gotten a chance to test it out yet, but fingers crossed that it's good.

For any folks on mobile devices or who would otherwise would have trouble checking out the links to the lists, here they are for reference:

The Bans:

• Great Concussion
• Quick Thinker
• Time Trap

The Restricteds:

• Objectives
  • Advancing Strike
  • Alone in the Darkness
  • Change of Tactics
  • Defensive Strike
  • Escalation
  • Extreme Flank
  • Fired Up
  • Loner
  • Perfect Planning
  • Precise Use of Force
     
• Gambits
  • Earthquake
  • Illusory Fighter
  • My Turn
  • Pit Trap
  • Ready for Action
  • Trap
  • Twist the Knife
     
• Upgrades
  • A Destiny to Meet
  • Awakened Weapon
  • Helpful Whispers
  • Incredible Strength
  • Shadeglass Dagger
  • Shadeglass Hammer
  • Slumbering Key
  • Soultrap
  • Tethered Spirit

 

[BaldoBeardo]

12 minutes ago, stato said:

As someone who is just getting into it and not playing at a high level, its a pain in the ****** for me.  I dont know what cards do anyway so needing to add in a bunch of restrictions just makes it too much effort.  Probabaly wasnt going to play other than with friends and occasional at the local gaming place, but that will go now as all tournaments will be forced by competitive players to implement standard tournament rules.  I fully this is probably good for the game, its just disappointing it needs it, and it spoils it for people just playing for fun.

Not the most experienced player, but my current deck is now going to need a lot of work...

These cards are good in the hands of a novice, and brutal when combined with others.

Although - personal rant - I don't see why earthquake is only restricted compared to great concussion. When you know what you're up to earthquake has a bit of a tell in the wind-up to it being played, but bleh.

[michu]

18 minutes ago, stato said:

As someone who is just getting into it and not playing at a high level, its a pain in the ****** for me.  I dont know what cards do anyway so needing to add in a bunch of restrictions just makes it too much effort.  Probabaly wasnt going to play other than with friends and occasional at the local gaming place, but that will go now as all tournaments will be forced by competitive players to implement standard tournament rules.  I fully this is probably good for the game, its just disappointing it needs it, and it spoils it for people just playing for fun.

It's sad truth, but any game with CCG elements needs a banlist after some time, see: MtG, Yugioh, Pokemon, Vanguard, SW Destiny.

[Skyeline]

3 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

Although - personal rant - I don't see why earthquake is only restricted compared to great concussion. When you know what you're up to earthquake has a bit of a tell in the wind-up to it being played, but bleh.

Unfortunately Great Concussion is simply a far more powerful card than Earthquake. There's a reason after all that Earthquake usage fell off a proverbial cliff in top decks once Great Concussion hit the scene.

The flexibility that it provides is absurd:

• Ruin objective holds
• Create a 2-hex gap between fighters (or even whole warbands) to stall out or stop aggression
• Make Alone in The Darkness a foregone conclusion if both are in your hand
• Isolate fighters who are separated from the rest of their warband (particularly brutal against 2 and 3 move teams)

Not to mention the fact that the nature of how Great Concussion destroys positioning in a non-uniform fashion means that there isn't really a viable card to undo the positioning damage. Earthquake can at least undo Earthquake, but Great Concussion can't undo Great Concussion in the majority of cases.

If nothing else, it's worth keeping in mind that Earthquake is now competing against a lot of other very high value cards for deck inclusion.

[CaptainSoup]

27 minutes ago, michu said:

It's sad truth, but any game with CCG elements needs a banlist after some time, see: MtG, Yugioh, Pokemon, Vanguard, SW Destiny.

That's true. What you gotta think about though is how those ban lists are implemented. IMO MtG does a fairly good job and controlling their cards where as Yugioh is a god awful mess when it comes to their ban lists. It seems like GW is off to a good start though so it will be interesting to see down the line how well they maintain their ban/restricted lists. 

[Gottkaiser]

I'm not sure on the issue to be honest. I can understand the reasons and goals, but especially the restricted list needs to be carefully watched and adjusted as more cards are released and the meta changes. It will be interesting to see how this will work out in the end.

[Desidus]

This just means that Distraction goes back to being an Auto include to try and prevent Supremacy / Our only way out in objective decks....

[Intrinsic]

Super excited for deck building now! I played a 16 man competitive tourney over the weekend, every deck was majority cards on this list, including my own. Definitely a needed change. One card I'm surprised didn't make the restricted list, Hidden Paths. 

 

[Tutenkharnage]

4 hours ago, Desidus said:

This just means that Distraction goes back to being an Auto include to try and prevent Supremacy / Our only way out in objective decks....

@Desidus knows what’s up!

(Also, I will continue to use it to line up victims for Mighty Swing.)

[Tutenkharnage]

3 hours ago, Intrinsic said:

Super excited for deck building now! I played a 16 man competitive tourney over the weekend, every deck was majority cards on this list, including my own. Definitely a needed change. One card I'm surprised didn't make the restricted list, Hidden Paths. 

 

If Hidden Paths were restricted, we’d all be playing stall builds. Unlike almost every other card on that list, HP has a number of easy counters, with Sidestep and Distraction topping the list. And it’s literally the only way for some warbands to get down the field against stall builds, to score Supremacy when they win boards, etc. Great Strength shows up in every list, too, but it’s jot restricted; instead, GW limited the amount of slots you could invest in the tactic by restricting Incredible Strength instead. (And I, for one, welcome our new Gloryseeker overlords!)

[Desidus]

1 hour ago, Tutenkharnage said:

@Desidus knows what’s up!

(Also, I will continue to use it to line up victims for Mighty Swing.)

For my Stormsires deck it just means now I have  distraction and centre of attention to annoy opponents positioning. 

[Sleboda]

11 hours ago, Skyeline said:

I do fully understand and support their selection of those banned cards.

As do I. My only complaint is that Earthquake wasn't on the Banned list.

They need to do something to make holding objectives a viable way to play (and thus also help the Chosen Axes, who currently have the hardest inspire condition, which in turn limits their ability to use Objective cards that trigger with inspired fighters).

[PlayerJ]

9 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

As do I. My only complaint is that Earthquake wasn't on the Banned list.

They need to do something to make holding objectives a viable way to play (and thus also help the Chosen Axes, who currently have the hardest inspire condition, which in turn limits their ability to use Objective cards that trigger with inspired fighters).

with it in the restricted list, there are better things to take then earthquake

[Sleboda]

5 minutes ago, PlayerJ said:

with it in the restricted list, there are better things to take then earthquake

My standard deck makes use of 6 items on the restricted list. At least 3 of them would go out before Earthquake.

In my opinion, the ability to control the state of the board is the single most powerful thing in Underworlds. That's probably why I'm roughly 40-4 with the Thorns. They excel at dictating positioning. Earthquake is a major card for this style of play.

[Reggi]

9 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

My standard deck makes use of 6 items on the restricted list. At least 3 of them would go out before Earthquake.

In my opinion, the ability to control the state of the board is the single most powerful thing in Underworlds. That's probably why I'm roughly 40-4 with the Thorns. They excel at dictating positioning. Earthquake is a major card for this style of play.

But aggro lists probably will not take earthquake. You have both traps, twist the knife, advancing strike, presiuse use of force, Ready for Action, Awakaned Weapon, Escalation, Alone in the Darkness and few others. And that was the goal. That aggro decks would hard time to play earthquake to stop objective, cuz there are other very good cards for them to take.

[mmimzie]

Is ban earth quake just because the threat of the card is just too good against any hold objective deck. Not to mention that in the event that you do bring earth quake to counter objects, earth quake is still a pretty good card against most aggressive decks as well.

[Mikarovic]

G'day guys. 

Long time lurker with a couple of points. Go ahead and tell me how off base they are.

The one ban I'm a bit sad about is Quick Thinker. It is one of the few, if not the only, truly reactive defensive ploys. Most defensive ploys are pro-actively defensive. Insensate and other like cards pre-empt your opponents activation. The opponent can play around it by spending the activation more effectively than inflicting a single point of damage. Quick Thinker "gets" your opponent due to it reacting to your opponent's activation. The effect is hugely powerful; not just snuffing out the enemy's charge, but also better locating the intended target, perhaps on an objective or next to a good target, so I understand its banning on grounds of power, but I'm sad to see perhaps the only truly reactive defensive ploy go. Almost all defensive ploys have a preemptive nature, and as a result, aren't all that good. People typically cram their ploy slots with offense, but Quick thinker was so good it got a spot. I hope GW come up with some more re-actively defensive cards that aren't as busted. Countercharge is an interesting example. If you Countercharge someone over they can assist, adding a "+1" to defense rolls, potentially making the attack whiff. Nowhere near as good as Quick Thinker, but in the same small group of reactive cards than can help keep your fighters alive.

Big winners seem to be factions with strong faction specific cards and objective-based objective decks (always odd having to describe objective decks as being objective based). Farstriders, for example, play very few faction-specific cards and really lean on universals, a whole bunch of which are now restricted. By my count I was running all 3 banned cards and 14 restricted cards. I can't imagine these factions are just flat-out bad now, but they're gonna need some serious thought not just about which 5 restricted cards to take, but they might even have to fundamentally change play-style. Perhaps Skaven pivot away from Skritch Voltron and focus on using their speed and ubiquity to cap objectives, for example. Meanwhile the two cards that hosed objective-taking the most got banned or restricted and I doubt many people will use one of their 5 slots on earthquake, unless they anticipate a massive resurgence of objective taking warbands. 

All in all a positive step. Something like this was going to have to happen on a long enough timeline, as has already been mentioned.

Have fun.

[paul7926]

15 hours ago, stato said:

As someone who is just getting into it and not playing at a high level, its a pain in the ****** for me.  I dont know what cards do anyway so needing to add in a bunch of restrictions just makes it too much effort.  Probabaly wasnt going to play other than with friends and occasional at the local gaming place, but that will go now as all tournaments will be forced by competitive players to implement standard tournament rules.  I fully this is probably good for the game, its just disappointing it needs it, and it spoils it for people just playing for fun.

Any competitive game will need either a banned/restricted list or rules amendments as more and more things are released for it.  Otherwise it will slowly degenerate into a single 'best' list and one or two other lists that come close to beating it.  Just the way it is I'm afraid.

Having said that if you want to play for fun against your friends then there is no need for you to enforce it.  Play the game the way you want to and enjoy yourselves.

[HollowHills]

The only one that annoys me is Time Trap. Not because I disagree, but because it was only at the launch of Nightvault that an FAQ made it into such a good card. To explain, the faq made it so any card that lets you "take an action" trumps charge tokens which in the new core rules prevent "actions" from being taken by that fighter. As such the old interpretation of Time Trap was that you could for instance charge with one fighter, then charge with another. Or move and attack. For the cost of two activations. The new faq version meant you could double charge the same fighter, or charge and then attack with the same fighter. Or charge and move back etc. As such you could move halfway across the board and kill two fighters on the way, all the while only gaining a single charge token for it.

Basically it annoys me because an faq made it really good and then they banned it because they made it good.  

[zombiepiratexxx]

Got to say I saw this coming. As many others have said, any CCG has these kinds of lists. With GW effectively having a brand new game type in their cupboard it was almost an inevitability that there'd be a few OP cards that crept in as releases came out. Once the cards get in the hands of the general community, that's when you see how truly broken the clever deck-builders can make things. Opening up the tourney meta is not only a good thing, but this also opens up design space for future cards and, hopefully, GW learns from what breaks the game and that can aid them in developing cards that can be game-breaking, but that have potential counters as well. 

There will always be cards that are better than others, but we really don't want/need a game where everyone takes exactly the same stuff almost irrelevant of what warband you're playing. 

[BaldoBeardo]

2 hours ago, HollowHills said:

The only one that annoys me is Time Trap. Not because I disagree, but because it was only at the launch of Nightvault that an FAQ made it into such a good card. To explain, the faq made it so any card that lets you "take an action" trumps charge tokens which in the new core rules prevent "actions" from being taken by that fighter. As such the old interpretation of Time Trap was that you could for instance charge with one fighter, then charge with another. Or move and attack. For the cost of two activations. The new faq version meant you could double charge the same fighter, or charge and then attack with the same fighter. Or charge and move back etc. As such you could move halfway across the board and kill two fighters on the way, all the while only gaining a single charge token for it.

Basically it annoys me because an faq made it really good and then they banned it because they made it good.  

I don't quite agree - the core rules changed.

The risk/reward for charging was you get two actions at the price of not being able to do anything else. Making charges prevent activation meant that ploys could still be used to mitigate a bad charge or get more bang for your buck.

Separating this from move action = no more move was a good decision as it made the choice between charging and moving more considered, ploys notwithstanding.

All the FAQ did was clarify that card text trumps rulebook.

So in the case of Time Trap (a season 1 card) the season 2 change to charge mechanics meant this card was exceptional when used on an 'alpha strike' model.