What houses do you think will take most to the new maester agenda?

I really want to find a way to make it work with the Targaryens and their new dragons box.

I feel that the trait manipulation on the copper chain could help greatly with the "only dragons participate in this challenge" mechanic that is presented. Having 4 or 5 dragons out could make the deck, it seems... I know that Targs don't have many maesters they can use, but at least Maester Aemon can save himself...

It seems like a no brainer that Martell will be in prime position to utilize the maesters up front. They have by far the most. But do you think the agenda and the maester mechanic gets in the way of what they do otherwise? They seem very defensive, and are designed to discourage others from attacking them it seems. Yet, the Maester agenda keys off of challenges you win. And if you only take a few chain links on your agenda, is it even worth giving up a different agenda for?

If I can't get the maesters to run in Targm my next hope is to run them in Stark.

Can anyone think of any particular combos that seem powerful with the maester traits weve seen so far. I'm pretty new, so I'm sure there are lots that won't stand out to me...

It's hard to say right now. There's only one chapter pack of the Maester cycle out right now, so there will eventually be a lot more Maesters and chains and events that support them in the future. Based on the first chapter pack and The Conclave, it looks like there will be a good pool of neutral Maesters that should make it possible to run them out of almost any house.

As of right now, I would say Martell has the most / best selection of Maesters. They also have the Doran's Game event which looks interesting and is obviously synergistic with Maesters.

Thanks for the feedback.

I have a question about how these maester links will work. They seem to key off of the character kneeling. Clearly a given character can have multiple links, but can a single maester have multiples of the same link? Could I put three Copper links on someone. Then, when I kneel that character, I can chose three people to gain a trait? I understand that only one of the three copies could come from the agenda, but there is nothing stopping me from having 3 copies of the card and leaving 2 in my deck, right?

I guess my question is whether the (Limit once per phase) is once per card per phase or once per phase shared among all copies of the card?

And secondly, I have a question about the mechanics of the chain attachments as it appears on all of the versions revealed so far. Assume I have a Maester with a chain attachment. It seems to me that the effect of the chain cannot be used at any time, but rather only when my character is going to kneel anyway. It doesn't say I can kneel the character to produce the desired effect. To have the effect take place, I need to perform an action that would cause me to kneel, such as attacking or defending. I sort of see this as a double edged sword. It preseves your ability to participate in challenges and to use your action for other things, but it also seems to me that there are times you might desperately want to use the ability on the chain attachment and have no way to kneel the character, or when choosing to attack or defend with the character would be a bad choice.

On a side note, I did not realize at first that the apprentice collar is a chain attachment and so works with the Maester agenda. Between that and the maester plot, it seems that it would be easy to pump up a character right from the getgo. Win one challenge and, with the help of Apprentice Collar, Eddard Stark or Robert Baratheon or [insert any character here] is now a maester and +1 power. Every subsequent challenge won (either attacking or defending) and he is an addition +1, plus has all sorts of cool bonuses when he kneels.

And since the Maester cards let you pull out up to 12 cards before the game starts, do you think people will run 72 card decks so that they still have 60-ish cards? Or do you think people will run 60, pull out 12 attachments and then be happy that they now have a 1/48 chance of pulling the card they need rather then 1/60? (Not that I mean to imply that people will always run 12 chain attachments on the agenda - I'm sure there will be a consensus about what a safe number is that we will determine through playtesting. I only use the 12 card figure b/c it is the most dramatic example.)

Robb G said:

Actually, in the official article introducing the maester agenda they said there will be chain attachments that kneel your character to produce an effect, so as more chapter packs come out you should be able to find combinations of chain attachments that complement each other in that regard.

Saturnine said:

Very good. So that takes away some of the uncertainty.

Also, I realized that the "At The Gates" plot card in the Gates of the Citadel chapter pack will allow you to play even out of house Maester cards as long as they are 3 or less. Seems to me like a great way to squeeze an out of house maester you want in the deck.

Also, this plot seems a great way to get some early influence for sure in a Targ deck with "Advisor to the Crown" from the Queen of Dragons set.

I definitely saw that At the Gates would let you easily get out of house Maesters in play. Based on what has been released and previewed so far, it looks like the best target for that is Maester Luwin out of Stark while running Martell. Martell obviously runs a lot of events and being able to search the top 5 cards and grab one each time you win a challenge with him is very nice.

I don't think people would want to run 72 cards with 12 chains. The agenda states that you can't win the game until there are no more chains on it. Since you can only kneel it and remove one per turn it would take 12 turns to win the game like that. I'm pretty new to the game, but I've played about a dozen times so far. I have never played a game that came remotely close to 12 turns, in fact, the longest game I've had is 6 turns and it was tonight.

I think the agenda will be used for certain key attachments. I don't know an exact number of what will be regularly used, but I can't see anyone attaching more than 7 or so chains to it. This is all my opinion based on my limited experience and speculating when only one chapter pack is out. There might be some kind of shenanigans that will let you attach them faster than once per turn, but I doubt it.

Stasis said:

There's no kneeling involved. You can use the response on the agenda any time you win a challenge. So it won't take 12 rounds. So I think attaching 3 chains per round will be common, and even more is feasible. Even so, I don't know that many people will go with all 12 attachments on the agenda. Then again, a control deck that will take a bit longer to win anyways might just go for it. Like you said, it'll depend on the kinds of attachments we'll get. Anyhow, I'm sure most people will try and thin their deck via the agenda, so go for 60 card decks before setup.

My mistake, I haven't read the agenda in a while. I thought it was once per turn for some reason, you're totally right. Being per successful challenge it's feasible to get them off fairly quickly.

I agree that it will probably not be the norm to run 12 chain attachments on the agenda, but it seems that all your wins, both attacking and defending, allow you to play a chain attachment from the agenda.

Regardless of how many you chose, do you think you will build your decks aiming for 60 after removing the attachments, or will you try and be right at the minimum, and value the fact that you are in essence able to run fewer cards in the deck?

Now that I've been corrected and know it's once per successful challenge, I think I would run all 12 copies on it. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume you could clear your agenda off with 6 or so turns.

As for whether you'd run 72 cards in the deck or 60... I always have trouble trimming decks down to 60 cards, personally. I don't think I would be able to run a deck that was only 48 cards without attachments. That's just me though. You'll want a more experienced player to comment on these sorts of things to take it as any sort of credible advice. I'm just sharing my opinion.

Viserys Targaryen KotS reduces the amount of power you need to win the game by 1 for each attachment on him.

Anyone think it might work to try and rush to victory by making him a maester and putting all your chains on him?

I don't know how quickly you could get to victory. If you had a super weenie deck, a few attachments on your maester agenda and a bunch in your deck, you could put em down pretty quick, I imagine. Then it seems like figuring how many chain attachments to put on the agenda.

This seems like a case where you would certainly want to use the maester agenda to thin out your deck as many below 60 as you can, as you will need copies of him to keep him alive, and you will either win or die way before you draw out your deck.

You guys are forgetting how devistating the Targ decks can be with their amount of attachment control. So don't put all your eggs in one basket. Otherwise, it looks like building a maester deck will be a lot of fun!

Well, I wouldn't say that I underestimated Targaryens ability to control attachments. I am just trying tio figure out what will work with Maesters. I'm not going to give up on running a maester deck just because I may have to play Targaryens sometimes.

Just trying to figure out potentially useful combos and how best to use the maesters... And what cards to look out for any possible counters for them would certainly add to the discussion.

For example, Initiate of the Citadel will be a very annoying issue for any maester with multiple attachments... Leighton Hightower can be useful in preventing attachment control in the form of Events and attachments, but doesn't help against abilities. Maybe there will be an answer, possibly even a chain attachment to help in this regard...

Ok, so I ran my maester deck yesterday with Targaryen. It went 1 and 1, beating a Targ deck designed to be played against newer players and losing to a tournament level Summer Martel deck.

I enjoyed the way it played in both games, but now I know first hand why people complain about Martell. He really used his events to great effect.

My thoughts - Carrion Birds will be incredible in this deck. I don't have them, but they will be super duper useful. Pale steel link can play the birds whenever the card is knelt and copper chain can make anything a raven... talk about shaking up the game board, especially if you go second. People will have to get used to these annoying birds coming out during challenge phase. I also ran the horn of dragons out of house and it was wonderful.

I also found that Valar is a huge weakness of the maesters.

We have great startup cards. At the gates helps get a maester out. And you can have one apprentice collar on your agenda, but if you use both, then you are really dependant on drawing more maesters to use the agenda properly once you've been Valar'd. (Granted, you can still play the chain attachments on non-maester characters, but they will be discarded immediately. Not very efficient, but better than losing the game). However, I spent a long time building up my characters. In both games I got valar'd just as I was getting up and running. Narrow escape can help a little, but is not a cure, as all my wonderful attachments go bye bye. I don't really know what to do to stop this, except be judicious in how I play attachments from my agenda.

In case anyone is curious, the deck I ran was this one: www.agotcards.org/deck/v/824

Well, so I start to complain about Valar and the havoc it reeks on my maesters, they go and preview a plot that helps a lot in this department.

Forging the Chain lets you more than double the effectiveness of your agenda by a turn by allowing an extra chain attachment deployment from your discard pile or hand whenever you deploy one from your agenda.

If you're running the Maesters out of Targ you could get some discard pile recursion going with Street Waifs and Lady Daenery's chambers. You could use To Be A Dragon to get Targ characters under 3 cost back into play from your dead pile, but unfortunately there's only one Targ Maester, and he's no attachments. :-( Narrow Escape is probably going to be your best bet to protect against resets when using the Maester's Path Agenda.

I've been thinking of running the same deck. Targ's attachment control is excellent, and Lady Daenery's chambers should make getting attachments into play a little easier.

Good point. Narrow escape won't save my attachments tho, will it?

And with the Oldtown raven, and at the gates, getting maesters in house isn't crucial..

3 new cards were spoiled by the Chinese community on AGOTCards.org. One is:

(4) Archmaester Ebrose (N) (Character)
4 STR, I, P
Maester.
Limited Response: After you win a challenge in which Archmaester Ebrose participated, he claims 1 power for each Chain attachment on him.

He's significantly tougher than Viserys with 4 STR, and he can claim power multiple times. Also, he has the Maester trait printed on him, so no need for Apprentice Collar.

I would say that the best house to run out of would be Targ on account of Dany's Chambers. Use a few Targ characters that return to your hand (Core Set Viserys, Queen's Knight, The Titan's Bastard) to recur all your Chain attachments. Second best would be Martell due to all the in-House Maesters, though 3x Oldtown Raven should allow you to ignore gold penalties often enough that running them OOH won't be too much of a drawback.