As I said as a first plot you take Gates, you bring to play Initiate, get chains on it, put chains in hand. Next turn Robbie will get apprentice and lead link from hand for 2 gold. Show me where in this scenario u have to draw anything for combo except Robert which is the same as before errata.

berto said:

Obviously you have to draw something to protect this from your opponent othervice you are basicly giving your opponent the win if he manages to disturb your early combo piece which makes this into risk reward situation (which it wasn't much before). Also if this became the main strategy your opponent could easily fight back with plots like fear of winter, threat from the north and the likes to make the whole idea obsolete, by this I mean you have to build it to not be dependant on 1 turn at the gates to initiate. You have to draw other cards to win the challenges as you don't have the Robert with all the utility chains in play. Your initiate of the citadel can be kneeled by your opponent which will again slow your deck for one turn. What I mean is yes you do need more cards to make this combo run even if your opponent tries to disturb it with just that move it doesn't.

It really is a lot less efficient. Initiate of the citadel adds another variable to the combo, which means added vulnerability.

-You have to have Robert and the initiate early, which granted, is a lot easier in the 48-50 card maester. But if for whatever reason you don't have the initiate, you need to here to serve to grab it, which is a pretty weak first plot if you're trying to get things rolling (especially when you're searching for a maester that doesn't do anything until dominance)

-Since it's a dominance action, it is vulnerable to rule by decree, (and you might not be playing much first turn if you have to here to serve for a card.)

-Also just an all around weakness to venomous blade, or anything that kneels a character...

If the initiate is disrupted 1 turn, that's a blow. 2 or 3 turns, and that might be game.

~~

Or you just herp derp play Robert or Joffrey in setup or first turn, win a challenge, and you're done. Absolutely zero risk in the old maester decks.

Edit: My bad Ire, I pretty much posted the exact same thing you did.

berto said:

Sorry to say so, but this chain of argumentation is just ridiculous. You could also have said, i built a deck with one Robert and 12 chains and in round 20 i will have them all together and ready to utilize.

About your original idea of dealing with Robert. It´s also plain useless, becaus eit looks like you haven´t played against an original build. The first round you have a decent chance to bounce the chains. But your opponent will only play the 1 cost chains and it´s not a big deal to replay them in round 2. The second plot is usually threat from the north which actually means your strength 1 guy is gone and the rest of yur charachters too once the -x str chain is played. By the third round you would have usually lost the game in dominance.

Also there wasn´t just Robert, against Joffrey it won´t do a thing - "immune to triggered effect".

And i think it´s not surprising that you shouldn´t put your faith in a 1 str charachter while playing against Targaryen.

So i would really recommend to play a few rounds against a dedicated maester deck under the old circumstances before the FAQ.

I don't see why people say you "need to draw robert". summoning season gets around that if needed.

Fieras said:

Just adds another layer, and a two-sided search plot to try and find something that stops Robert/Joff.

It is 50%+ harder to get the combo to go off, and there is SO much more control for weenies that this line of logic isn't that great.