Penfold said:

Fair point.

rings said:

~I for one would be much more interested in your views on competitive melee. It's the true Game of Thrones, don't you think?

Tin Link would actually be a pretty neat card if it were a one-time effect...for example, if discarding it were part of the cost to trigger the response. In my opinion, permanent control cards (for any card type) really shouldn't exist as neutral cards anyway, and certainly shouldn't be as easy to use. On the other hand, I think this is a good example of how FFG/playtesters listen to the community. At the time of design, players on this forum were complaining loudly for easy/efficient mass-attachment removal. I guess we have to be more careful (or at least much more specific) in what we ask for.

I actually tend to agree with people that certain house-specific mechanics lose some of their luster with the existence of chains. Tin Link is a great example of design that begins to encroach upon Targ, and I was especially annoyed that the burn link was printed as neutral...but then I wasn't all that happy to see Shaggydog in Stark either, so I'm obviously biased.

The good news here is that it seems like FFG learned pretty quickly. We've already seen that at least one of the reprinted champion cards is no longer neutral (Bandit Lord).

Just for the record, although I believe every house's maester build feels unique, I agree that there are (of course) similarities. Using the Wildling, Night's Watch, and Brotherhood decks as a baseline, there's a lot more creativity and variety in the maester's cycle. For example, Targ can go without Tin Link and the Bronze Link (though I wouldn't) and takes better advantage of the burn link, whereas Martell/Lannister/Bara relies much more heavily on Tin and Bronze but may not play the burn link. The same can't be said for Wildlings or Brotherhood...there weren't all that many Brotherhood decks without Beric in them, or Wildlings without Mance/Skinchanger/etc. And even when the links are the same, the order they come off tends to change based on the in-game dynamics/situation...that's very different form Brotherhood or Wildlings, which tended to play out the same way pretty much every time. Overall though, I'd definitely like to see increasing variety and a great focus on in-house cards as well.

So what is my solution? Run nothing but hardcore attachment control/burn decks until people get so sick of it they stop playing maesters?

Fieras said:

It's funny but that was what I tried to do at the Iowa regional after all the Martell/Summer builds in the early events. I don't think I build it so well though... I didn't win enough other games to get to play the Martell decks.

Why not just ban this retarded agenda, which should have never been designed and should have never gone through testing (if any)?

Would it help if they made the Agenda+Links a Restricted List card group? In other words, if you used the Agenda and/or any of the Links you would NOT be able to use any other cards on the restricted list.

No, it wouldn't help.

Rogue30 said:

QFT

the links just give such an advantage over a normal run of the mill deck

I think it would help if you had to wear pink shirt that says "I play Maesters" every day until you stop playing them.

Fieras said:

"real men wear pink"

i just wish there was more of a downside to the Maester Agenda, the cannot win games with any chains still attached to the agenda just doesn't cut it for me

jack merridew said:

Sounds a little like wildlings, no?

jack merridew said:

Let's be honest, pretty much every deck runs an agenda. If everyone deck is going to run an agenda anyway, not not just make them all good? I'd rather we had more variety a la maesters or Kings of Summer than all the unplayed agendas that were overly nerfed...Kingsguard, treaties, Night's Watch, etc. Even agendas like KotHH are unplayable in most houses at the top competitive level. Why not just make all agendas decent so that more *real* choices exist?

Twn2dn said:

I'd like to reiterate that my issue is not really with the agenda, but with tin link.

Twn2dn said:

I agree with the idea of making better agendas but the issue with Maesters Path isn't the other agendas. the issue is that there is no downside to running Maesters Path and there should be. If your going to get a choice of links that can drastically improve upon any of your house weaknesses than you should have to suffer a downside of that, and right now you don't

Also would love to see an improved upon Kingsguard Agenda

Twn2dn said:

No, the problem is power creep. Maester's Path is like having up to 12 agendas. Because of this, the power creep after this set is so ridiculous, that I have doubts - should I teach new players? Besides, playing against this agenda is really tiresome.

Rogue30 said:

Totally agree. Search is hard to find (although getting easier), and this agenda is the biggest toolbox the game has probably ever seen *shrug*

Printing more agendas might help slightly, but it would result in serious power creep if they were as good as this one.

We could always boycott maesters by having everyone play reinforcement decks with 3x Men with No King.

Any takers? ...guys?

Rave said:

Can always start running Too Proud to Bow. I'm half-serious; no one seems to like this event, but it really hurts any sort of neutral-heavy build. And its not like there aren't neutral characters in most decks - Carrion Birds, Syrio, KL Varys, Sam, Gilly... I always get frowned upon for suggested use of this event, but its really not a bad card if you can fit 2x into a deck.

Rave said:

hell i'll do it just to harass people at Black Friday

Skowza said:

I played it at GenCon a couple years back to combat Wildlings, and it was never a completely useless card for me. People always wound up playing at least one neutral, in which case, it's useable removal, but once they start getting up to 2 or 3 (maybe 4) this card really starts to shine. Sure, it could scale past that for even larger CA, but the cost will also expand to difficult to manage levels. I'd say the ideal time to play it is when they have 2-3. Depending on the board state, just removing a couple like that is also less likely to convince your opponent to jump to their reset at the first opportunity.

Kennon said:

And it won't work with Leyton out.

Danigral said:

discarding Leyton for 1 influence still sounds like a good deal to me.

Doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

You still have to kneel 1 influence for each of the neutral characters on the board (i.e. 1 for Leyton, and 1 for each of his little Maestery chums). Just because TPTB will bounce right off half of the available targets doesn't mean you get a discount.

Maybe we're behind the times out here in Cali, but I haven't seen Maester decks playing Leyton.