Hello and Welcome Back, Loyal A Game of Thrones Fans!

The holidays are upon us and we hope you're enjoying them. We also hopethat you liked our announcement of the latest Chapter Pack cycle, Secrets of Oldtown, the other day. If you haven't already, do check out "Chained and Sworn" for an overview of the cycle. In a nutshell, Maesters are coming into the game in a much bigger way.

The overview article had several card spoilers in it already, but we figured we'd give you one more, just to give you an idea of the kind of exciting stuff that's heading your way in the next cycle. As those of you who have been with the game know, Maesters are one of those traits that can be found across all Houses to greater or lesser degrees. House Martell has the most Maesters in-house, which makes sense since the Citadel is in Dorne, but each House has a Maester or two that serves up a useful ability. Of course, Maesters are advisors and councillors to the lords of Westeros' various Houses, neutral in affairs of state. As Maester Aemon says, "We give counsel, not commands." Still, every lord probably wonders who their loyalty is ultimate to - their House or their Citadel: "Tyrion Lannister mistrusted the maesters. The gods only knew who they were conspiring with, or what they had mixed in those potions they gave you."* Many out there have probably dreamed of playing a deck based on a conspiracy of Maesters, and with Secrets of Oldtown, this dream can be realized.

Until Secrets of Oldtown, playing a Maester-centric deck has been pretty tough - expensive, mostly, given that there aren't really enough Maesters in any one House to provide enough characters for a deck. Alliance (Princes of the Sun, F59) helps as does the Neutral House card. One more card which is likely to become a part of many Maester decks is At the Gates.

Using a search plot lets you save the space in your deck that you might otherwise allocate to duplicates, event cards, or similar, and hopefully allows you to make your deck a little more focused and consistent. Building Season or Summoning Season have their advantages if there is a particular character or location that you absolutely need in play in order for your deck to work, but the downside is that your opponent (or an opponent, if you're playing in the melee) also gets the benefit of searching out their lynchpin character or location. At the Gates is limited in that it can only bring out Maesters costing three or lower, but at least your opponent doesn't also get a Maester in the process. Another nice thing is that At the Gates only refers to the printed cost of the Maester you search for, so the gold penalty does not apply and you can therefore use out-of-House Maesters inexpensively. At the Gates is also a City plot, which gives it a nice place alongside the other City plots from the King's Landing expansion.

So there you have it, one more weapon in the arsenal of the upcoming Maesters. We hope you'll like them and the rest of the Secrets of Oldtown cycle. Until next time!

* From A Clash of Kings, Chapter 44: Tyrion.