Uses for the Asshai Initiates

By Laban Shrewsbury, in 1. AGoT General Discussion

I'm struggling to think up good uses for the Asshai Initiate ability: "Any Phase: Discard the top 2 cards of your deck to choose 1 character in any dead pile. Move that character to its owner's discard pile. (Limit once per round.)".

The best I can come up with is that it allows killed characters to have what would have been duplicates played as 'replacement' characters. Is that it, or am I missing some nice combos and/or tricks that these guys can pull off? There are other more modest uses, e.g. to weaken Silent Sisters, but nothing which makes me think they're particularly good.

Laban Shrewsbury said:

I'm struggling to think up good uses for the Asshai Initiate ability: "Any Phase: Discard the top 2 cards of your deck to choose 1 character in any dead pile. Move that character to its owner's discard pile. (Limit once per round.)".

The best I can come up with is that it allows killed characters to have what would have been duplicates played as 'replacement' characters. Is that it, or am I missing some nice combos and/or tricks that these guys can pull off? There are other more modest uses, e.g. to weaken Silent Sisters, but nothing which makes me think they're particularly good.

Thats mostly what it is used for, dead cards are a bad thing and this keeps your duplicates from being dead cards if you got unlucky early and had an important character killed.

You can also combo it with:

Blackwater Bay, Mustering Yard, Royal Entourage, Selyse Baratheon, and Regroup

Recursion of your own dead unique cards is the primary use. (Don't forget "To Be a Stag").

There are enough cards in Baratheon that get cards out of your discard pile that discarding the 2 cards could even be a benefit, too.

Good vs. Lady Stoneheart as well. Get her out of the dead pile and she isn't quite as good :)