I've been looking around the boards and have seen many builds running Maesters from House Martell. However, when I look at where Maester's tend to be weakest (Military Challenges), it seems to me House Stark is a good base to build a Maester's deck from, particularly when paired with Tully.

Some key cards that I've been considering:

- Frozen Solid: locations and attachment control

- Lethal Counterattack - so we don't have to use too much by way of military characters to defend.

- Doran's Game - used with Maesters to stop key events like A Lannister always pays his debts

Is there something I'm missing which is why people don't run Maester's from Stark?

Doran's Game is House Martell only.

You will have to use more neutral characters (and less Stark) to have more maesters while a Lethal Counterattack needs a lot of Stark characters in play.

I have built a Stark Maester deck, and it cn be very strong. Stark is actually a very good house to run Maesters from, and has lots of cheap 1 cost attachments/locations that Stark can slip into play with a Pale Steel link/recur with a bronze link (Frozen Solid, Frozen Moat, Icy Catapult, Dubious Loyalties, Shaggydog etc.) - this combo also lets you solve's STark's draw problem by slipping a Pyromancer's Cahce (to solve Stark's draw problems) into play without paying the gold penalty. You also get lots of protection for Maesters - Widow's Watch gets you dupes, Rickon allows you to get multiple copies of Luwin from At the Gates, Vyman cancels effects directed at your Stark maesters and sticking chains on a King's Landing Eddard Stark protects you against most things. If you're going down the trait manipulation route, Stark also has Abandoned Fort (for house bolton hate) and Old Nan to improve reliability.

As you said, Maesters also complement Stark very well, becasue Stark is very good at Military but weak at Intrigue, and Maesters are the other way round. Also, Outwit partially solves the Stark problem of being valared once they get a dominant board position.

They'll be even stronger after Maester of Last Hearth is released, because it'll give Stark another in house character to stick the chains on, rather than relying on the (really really vulnerable) Oldtown Scholar. That, and Direwolves + Maesters?

I should also mention that an apprentice collar on a non-kneeling Blackfish can never go wrong

Thanks for the feedback guys. I didn't realise Doran's game was House Martell only.

I've also tried Stark Maesters with direwolves attachements and there are some good combinations. The most important is Lead Link (-X str) + Grey Wind, which have good sinergy.