Is anyone else playing with this card yet? It's looking the the Asshai/Holy deck in Baratheon is becoming extremely powerful and very discard focused. This is the sort of card that makes it extremely easy to **** people's hands. One strong Intrigue challenge and they're demolished with these. They're non-unique and not Limited Response. If you can slap a King's Ground on them and make multiple challenges with Shadow Politics or the like (even better when your Holies don't kneel due to Power of Faith). And you're easy stripping 2-4 cards from people's hands per turn. And that's pretty conservative since the max occurrence would be pretty rare.

So, I wonder what other people have seen with it. I know there've been a couple games here where I purposefully didn't trigger it at all during the game because my less competitive opponent might well have quit playing altogether if I'd raped him that bad. Granted, not everything needs to be measured off of that kind of situation, but it's an interesting example.

I built an Asshai deck with what I had and then filled in the blanks off of a dabbler before getting my copies of Ritual of R'hllor and Kings ofthe storm. Its a very strong deck, I can get quite a few out in a short amount of time and my opponent rarely has cards in his hand. My deck is 100% asshai pure.

Altar of Fire is great, and having more than one out is painful. And the Power of Faith plot card works VERY well.

Staton slapped me around once with it, and as I looked into building an Asshai deck of my own more and more, I realized it was too powerful.

It's a strong card, for sure. But suffers from the lack of high quality Holy's in the game.

Except Melisandre, you can activate it with Selysse, Acolyte of the Flame, and a bunch of other cost-3 non uniques without any stealth or some rule to aid them in challenges, so it's very easy to control with a proper deck. (Thinking about Martell/Lannister).

Furthermore, discarding is cool, but you really need to prevent your oponent from drawing, via Stannis I guess, so you need another Unique character to keep alive. And you can always face a Targ with a street waif/Hhrakkar Pelt who makes discarding pretty pointless.

So, imho, it's too far away form being competitive. In Stahleck, Gilles played a Shadows/summer agenda build and he got to the top 16, but I think he was supported by his skills as a player way more than by the raw power of his deck.

Altar of Fire is very strong.
one of best decks at CaliCon was a strong Asshai/Cup crest bara deck using Altar of Fire.

Love it - just screwinga roudn with the build and I raped Targ and starls hands. jef is rigth though - against Martell - i got owned. Its challeneg based: so character control serves a dual purpose and nerfs your character and your lcoation. There are a pelthora of holy charatcers - but you need to fidn a way to add setalth and/or deadly in the relaibly get the challenge off against lannister or Martell - or its a watse.

i love the build though. Nice control elements and the potential for a delayed rush - say on Turn four or five. Its nowhere near as strong as noble rush - but its a nice change of pace with a lot of upside.

Right when I saw it I thought it was overpowered, and Holy has some other good cards (the new back from the dead plot, the reprinted military no kneeling plot).

They have the attachment as well that gives the Holy crest.

However...whenever I am looking at this I think "what about 8 strength armies with the intrigue icon played for free" and then have to put in a ton more (like Black Cells/Syrio) and the it gets too many moving parts. ~Another reason to get EMO about 6 agenda decks