LoneWanderer said:

Right, and you can't have your own. So it severely limits your deck-building in many decktypes.

Oh. I thought characters with immunity were invisible to any card types that they were immune to or something like that.

Men with no King to steal Leyton and Too Proud to Bow to discard?

doesnt work?

Yeah...

Once you've played your Reinforcements card, coughed up two gold for MWNK's effect, then knelt X influence to zap all of the neutrals (including Mr Leyton, who you just paid to steal); that 'works'.

if it means completely wiping the board of neutral maesters and their immunity blanket i dont think it being hard to do is a real issue

Hey, I'm no competitive AGOT guru. I couldn't build a Stahleck worthy deck if my life depended on it.

If anything, you should take the fact that I'm slightly sceptical about the viability of a three card combo as a ringing endorsement of its viability. Such is the extent of my tournamenting abilities.

hey i was fighting for the Sansa Stark award at NY regionals so im a horrible judge of something like this

LoneWanderer said:

That should go both ways. Not every maester deck is going to be running Leyton, even less decks will run him 3x, and there is no way to grab him besides Summoning Season.

What is worse? The viability of a 3 card combo, or the chance that 1 card out of 60 could pop up when you play a single event that has potential to clear your opponent's board of characters?

Rave said:

I don't really disagree with you.

Personally, I think that TPTB is a great piece of kit and I'm surprised that I don't see it more often (after all, with Wildlings, Brotherhood, then Maesters running rampant, it's not like metas are short of neutrals). I suspect that if we lived in MtG-Land and had 'sideboards' at tournaments, then it'd get played in almost every pairing at tournaments. It's a completely devastating silver bullet against some decks, and a cheap way of picking off journeyman neutrals (Hi Varys!) in others.

All I'm saying is that, if the deck that's bothering your meta is a Maesters build that features Leyton as its " Shields Up! " lynchpin (and which gets him into play early and often) then TPTB + MWNK + Reinforcements might not be a particularly efficient answer (given that it requires at least 9 deck slots, four gold, a significant influence investment, and the opportunity to play a Reinforcements card in an intelligent way, before it can do anything) and that you might be better served by another card/combo.

I guess it comes back to the old MtG adage of " Don't run answers for your opponent's answers ". Running TPTB because you think it's a solid answer to rampant neutrals is a good idea. As is running MWNK + Reinforcements for the same reason. But running them solely because you want to be able to dig out Leyton* (who is essentially being run as an answer to effects that remove Maesters) is probably going to leave you with inefficient junk cluttering up your hand in 90% of your games.

In other words: I'm not saying that TPTB + MWNK + Reinforcements isn't a game winning combination. I'm just saying that if you're running them all solely to deal with Leyton and then relying on other stuff to actually win the game for you, you're possibly batting a losing wicket.

*Rather than running cards that you regard as efficient threats / answers to threats in their own right, but which also deal with Leyton / your opponent's countermeasures.

LoneWanderer said:

Oh, yeah, I agree 100%

The idea of running TPTB+MWNK+Reinforcements was more in jest. Just complete overkill to get people to stop playing Maesters.

Realistically, I think just splashing in TPTB is an interesting idea, and I wonder what the effect would be if people started doing it.

Rave said:

Hmm isn't the main problem here that you need to kneel a lot of influence for it while apart from Targs or sometimes Martel most builds avoid it ?

michaelius said:

Hey, that's true. I play Lannister, and it seems like usually, there are just shy of enough useful influence effects to make a deck. But adding TPTB x3, i think depending on the build something like:

Dual house joff x1
-You've killed the wrong dwarf x3

Confession x3

King's Landing/Alchemist Guildhall xX
-Red Keep x1

Favorable Ground x1

TPTB x3

..Plus the seas and fiefdoms is a good enough basis for some kind of control deck. I don't really feel like Lannister needs to splash neutral in the character base all that much, so TPTB will put you in a much better position than say, westeros bleeds. Pyromancer's Apprentice and Varys? PA doesn't seem like a big deal to lose.

What about a Lanni/Targ treaty? Plaza of Purification + Dothraki + Clansmen sounds pretty efficient. Clansman claim and then dothraki screamers for a second challenge + Die by the Sword/The price of war (and you'll want them drawing cards, with the agenda)

MWNK isn't a useless card though, as long as Leyton isn't out you can steal one of their neutral Maesters like Embrose or Marwyn or a lesser guy they need for influence like Advisor to the crown

jack merridew said:

Actually Leyton being out doesn't stop MWNK. The event being played is the trigger, it's actually the character doing the stealing and Leyton protects maesters from events and attachments.

Layton problem can be solved with single playing of Nightmares.

And speaking about Nightmares - would this be a good counter to at least slow maesters a bit if I'm running Baratheon Power Rush deck without completely rebuilding deck to include influence and without loosing efficiency against other builds ?

michaelius said:

i was thinking Nightmares as well - it blanks traits correct? That would allow the 'fall-off' of the chains.

rings said:

Yeah, It does.

I've been using that too. They usually get all their chains back, but it does slow them down for a Round or two.