The Fourth Ring is showing excellent performance, winning numerous Sheriff events and taking half the spots in Top 8 at GenCon. Any new deck you build has to pass the Clowns Test, and if it doesn’t perform at least moderately against 4R, you shouldn’t take it to a tournament if you plan to win. And it’s been this way since New Town New Rules, when the infamous spell Paralysis Mark was released. Many players believe that this is the most meta-defining card in the game. Some say that Paralysis Mark is not so troublesome without Blood Curse, but we remember that Clowns didn’t dominate back in the times of the core set.
Do you feel like Paralysis Mark defines the metagame too much? Should AEG do something about it?
Ban it.
Restrict it and Blood Curse, so that a deck could only have 4x total of both cards.
Errata it to test against a dude’s grit, not value.
Release some anti-huckster cards that would make life harder for clowns.
Paralysis Mark isn’t really OP, people just need to learn to play around it.
I see you got the poll figured out! I feel like people just need to learn to play around it. It’s a control card. You need to bait it’s use by tempting your opponent with a juicy target, that turns out to be a sub optimal play for them. Takes a little bluffing and work.
I’m sure paralysis Mark is OP since NTNR till faction pack. Kung fu seems to be natural counter to it.
But that is only single faction. I don’t want game to become rock sissors paper that is ends as soon as outfits revealed.
Alex, we have LOT of time to adapt and to test different approaches. No single evidence to support your words.
Me too (grit, not value). And concerning “sub optimal”: reducing the number of dudes (especially with influence) that can thwart you plans is never sub optimal.
Considering the evidence for adapting your playstyle is going to be completely anecdotal, that means you’ve not had success with it. I’ve had considerable success with playing dudes with the sole purpose of making them mark targets. For example, Steven Wiles. I play him, put him in range, he immediately is perceived as a threat and my opponent is likely to pull a mark for him. Sweet now I can actually play the turn out like normal. And it only cost me 1 ghost rock and a dude I was likely to discard during my upkeep phase.
@Imperialist- Locking down a dude I don’t care about over the guy who’s actually going to do something for me that turn is what I call Sub-optimal. Especially if I still have a play hand full of cards. If you put considerable pressure on early enough, then Paralysis Mark becomes harder for them to find time to do.
You can also get them to boot an existing dude then drop a dude from your hand who picks up that slack. The card can totally be played around.
That’s anecdotal for sure(so is your steven wiles example), but I have won every tournament I played with clowns, and my octgn winrate with clowntrol is over 80%(more likely about 90%).
@Db0 do you have octgn statistics btw, like netrunner one?
Soothe sort of works, but you’re just chaning which dude is booted and any decent 4R player should be booting the blessed with Soothe first.
There are many answers to paralysis mark, you just need to think outside the box and adapt.
I’ve been tinkering with an 8 / 10 / K MCC shooter that starts Louis vs 4R and it hasn’t dropped a game vs clowns yet. Para Mark is practically useless against it.
Only 11 of the sheriff victories have been won by 4R. If Para Mark was as OP as people think, that number would be a LOT higher.
Not only that, but they don’t seem to be able to win many events where the attendance is >16 (which provides an extra round and a larger cut so much more challenging)
I would not be a fan of errata for power reasons. Either print some stuff that will tone down its effectiveness or ban/restrict it.
A restricted list for tournament play seems effective to me. The deck building restrictions allow for 4x of a specific value, so restricting problem cards making them into a one of would allow it to be effective but not necessarily gone.
I don’t have a huge beef with the card, but I pretty much only play multiplayer. Where it is most certainly not a problem.
I would have to abstain. I haven’t played a lot against it aside from one player locally. It’s a pain in the ass, but it has never felt overpowered, just really good. Costing an extra GR wouldn’t hurt.
I don’t disagree that the card is powerful, I just know that smart play has severely limited it’s presence in our locals. And it’s not going to work every time. You’ve got a high win percentage with it, which is also ultimately anecdotal. Misplays happen and not everyone is ready to play around the card. It’s hard to pin down exactly how many of those games were won because of PM on it’s own.
Also, I picked up the FP at Gencon and you’re right about kung fu being a natural counter. The outfit ability pretty much laughs at it and the aggressive nature of the deck and mechanic make it hard for a huckster to do his thing.
LCGs have always thrived off of printing counters to powerful cards over time as a balancing mechanism. I would be surprised if we didn’t see ways to deal with it better in the future. Spell immune dudes, goods that grant spell immunity or some kind of spell resistance (make a pull - if it’s lower than the value of the spell, ignore the effect. If it’s 6 lower, ace the spell), or even actions that counteract a spell or turn it back on the caster is reasonable, unexplored design space. In general I think that 4R Control, P. Mark and B. Curse are very good cards, but not insurmountable. Small tweaks to the cardpool can mean big changes to the meta game.
I’m pretty strongly against power level erratas or restricted lists. I played Thrones 1.0 and it was a painful learning curve to deal with. There are still times I get excited about an idea to find out that it doesn’t actually work the way it’s printed, or two cards can’t go together because someone broke them with a third card back in 2009. If situations arise where uncounterable win conditions with no/minimal counterplay exist a restricted list might be justified, but just for balance? No thanks.
Paralysis Mark is a strong card. It shapes the meta. That’s not an inherently bad thing though. There’s always going to be a Top Dog of some kind, but I don’t feel PM is nearly so bad as to squeeze out all potential competition–which is generally what I’d consider to be “OP”.
