Is anyone else sick and tired of playing against maesters? I have 2 metas that I play in. One plays almost entirely maesters, and in the other I feel like I play against it about half the time.

I just wish there was more variety again. Do you think its a phase people are going through? Or will I have to deal with this going forward?

I know there are answers to maesters. I just am annoyed that I either have to build a deck a very specific way, or I can't include attachments in any of my decks. A lot of the links are very annoying, but none more so than tin link. All these new, awesome attachments are coming out, but you can't hardly keep them in play for more than a turn.

Does anyone share my frustration? Once again, I said I know there are ways to deal with it, specifically character control and attachment control, but it just specifies so much of the deck you make in order to do so.

Fieras said:

I agree. I almost never play attachments any more because of tin link and because the best answer to a lot of maester attachments is targ with attachment hate. Attachments will never see play again until something changes with tin link.

I just said exactly this in another thread - that attachments have become completely unplayable, unless they are themselves chain attachments. All the more reason to play maesters: They have good counters against other maesters, and aren't weakened so horribly by Tin Link.

There are so many cool new attachments I don't even use because tin link will just get rid of them on demand.

I agree. The errata fixed uber-character chain builds but people just gravitated to playing real maesters in their decks. Maesters are still top tier right now and almost every deck I play against is still a maester deck.

Which meta plays all maesters? Is it ours?

WolfgangSenff said:

We need a new card: Forge at Oldtown 2 Gold Neutral Location Westeros. The Reach. All attachments in play have the Chain trait.

Time to go win GenCon, Kyle.

I'm not annoyed at the maesters, most of the time I'm dealing with them I don't find them too problematic (but then again I don't see that many maesters these days anymore... it's a meta thing, some like to play maesters others don't). I agree with everyone else thou that the maesters effect heavily on my deck building. It has made many attachments obsolete, it seems that the only ones I run these days are the ones that either deal with the chains aswell (frozen solid) or aren't usually touched by the chains (climbing spikes). I haven't run positive attachments nearly at all since the tin link was printed, they are now just too vulnerable and the spot is better used with another location/character.

I do think that the mass of maester decks is just a temporary thing. It's the newest cycle so people want to try the stuff first.

I agree that the tin link is very annoying and extremly powerful. I thought that this card would get an errata with the last FAQ.

Fieras said:

Yes. All maesters, all the time. it has been broing for months. Our last get together was the first time I started seeing non maester builds - but it wasn't really representative of the competitive local Long Island metagame.

There are several Maester builds around here too. (Targ being the most popular). However, this too will pass. With the reprint of Bastard in the Lanni box maesters will take a hit. People are starting to realize they can run the agenda with only having 5 or 6 maesters in their decks so it has swelled again around here.

Ahzrab said:

This isn't people just trying out a new thing. It's been out for quite some time, and has been the strongest build out of several houses for a long time (Bara, Targ, GJ probably, Stark search out of maesters is pretty dang sick, though not necessarily their best build).

Maester_LUke said:

Consider it done.

It seems like the ubiquity of maesters is a side effect of not having other competitive builds. We have competitive non-maester builds for Martell, Greyjoy, and Lanni(maybe?...or will soon when their box is released). Are all the competitive Stark decks maester these days? Even if they are, what type of decks would we have in Targ/Stark/Bara without maesters? My guess is they'd mostly be sub-par, so that the competitive environment would basically be Martell/Lanni/Greyjoy vs. crap.

I would rather have an environment where every house has at least one top-level deck, especially given that each house's use of maesters feels unique (at least to me). In some decks maesters supplement rush, in others they support control. Much more variety than the Defenders (or brotherhood) cycle, where it basically felt like every deck did the same thing. With maesters, the tools are the same (hammers, nails, chain saws), but the net result is that some people are building houses and others building hotels.

Ultimately this will change if those houses that currently rely on maesters for top-level decks (especially Targ and Bara) receive more cards that fill in their in-house gaps. For example, Targ could use some decent centerpiece characters (please print more cards like Selmy!), and also some more in-house draw/card advantage. It wouldn't hurt for one or both of these to be seasons, shadows, or trait-based (dothraki/dragon)...would supplement existing themes.

Twn2dn said:

To be fair, I don't think the strongest Stark deck is maesters, actually. I think with Targ, it's *definitely* the best. I'm not really sure that I agree with you in re: building up the houses that rely on maesters currently. You still have the issue of having incredible efficiency using maesters due to the reduced cards in the deck itself. If you give Targ better in-house characters and draw, their maester build will just be that much better, ya know?

The problem with maesters, as I see it, is that they too easily support building both a rush and a control deck within the same deck, making them incredibly hard to stop. Think if you combined Lannister kneel and draw with Bara power rush. It would just be invincible if you could do it as efficiently as maesters do stuff.

I wonder what would happen if you made it so the agenda forced you to detach a chain from a character you control and put it on the agenda if you *lose* a challenge. This was an idea I had floating around last FAQ time frame. I'm not sure it would help, because they still win challenges like mad.

This is a very interesting question, and tough for me to answer. I'm torn, because I just won the Vegas tournament using Targ Maesters (thank you Twn2dn for the initial inspiration, btw), and it was really really fun. BUT I also certainly can feel the effects of maesters on someone's local meta becoming overbearing. I happened to be playing a house that has some easy answers (Dragon Thief & Brothel for the chains you don't like, starting with the attachment chain itself, and the attachment-from-discard chain), but outside of that, I definitely agree with the assessment that it is difficult to justify running attachments that don't directly affect or completely ignore chains. And for that matter, I'm not even certain that we have seen the 'best' post-errata maester builds yet.

I don't feel like maesters are different out of different houses. The maesters are 95% the same maesters and the chains drive the deck and do the same thing in every deck. The difference that is felt is due to the house-specific cards. Maesters shore up every weakness that the houses have and make your deck good at everything possible. That's homogenization, not differentiation.

Targ is going to need some more 3 strength characters. Up until now there has been some serious apprehension on the part of the designers to give them characters with 3 strength. I imagine it's due to forever burning and them assuming that you have that most of the time to compensate for it. However, going forward I think that needs to change. Paper Shield makes Forever Burning much much less reliable and First Snow of Winter is going to DECIMATE Targ if they don't get a steady diet of solid 3 strength guys.

Targ also struggles with draw, which is why you're forced to run maesters for the chain or maybe Summer to try and get it that way. Summer is really dangerous right now as the drawback is so huge when it's Winter and Winter builds are good and popular. Xaro's home is just not a good solution at all. You can't afford the influence the vast majority of the time and having to play attachments to trigger it on top of that is just prohibitive.

Rave, yes. Our meta has been nothing but maester decks for like 3-4 weeks straight.

As for the rest. I am prefectly okay with people playing maesters out of houses where they are the only competitive build. The thing is. I am just sick of SO MANY maester decks.

I know people say that each house has its specific theme and can run the decks differently. I disagree. I don't care what house it is. Maesters is maesters. They are (in my opinion) starting to be a NPE. I don't like restrictive deck building conditions. I can easily build a deck that can beat Maesters. I just feel limited in that one of the 4 major cards types in the game is essentially useless.

I feel like asking for an errata or restriction on tin link is not necessarily the best choice, but I do feel that attachment control is a targ thing and its stupid that every other house has it on demand. Most of my complaints of the maester theme are directed towards this one card.

Fieras said:

Remember, though, that before the Tin Link came out, what people wanted was better attachment control in the other houses, because certain houses would just crush you with attachments. That said, I'm pretty sure the solution is not to make an attachment that lets you kneel a character to get +3-5 gold every phase, and then discard an attachment without batting an eyelash and do a whole mess of other tricksies to boot. Just sayin'.

Stasis said:

This is another side effect (or perhaps the SAME side effect, since Ravens are also attachments)- with the Tin/Copper combo, season decks are far less able to rely on their cards that reference the season, especially if they do not have an easy way to remove chains.

The problem is that it is SO easy to use. Even other decks still have 5% of their deck as a Maester deck. Is that really a Maester deck...yes and no I guess.

I haven't really picked up a deck in a month or more, and I would have to blame this as much as anything. Wildlings were the same way. At least Brotherhood had enough of a drawback (and now a huge drawback being Ghaston Grey and other played cards) that it wasn't just splashed in every deck.

*insert normal 'Rings Agenda Rant here' (available on demand)...*

rings said:

*insert normal 'Rings Agenda Rant here' (available on demand)...*

I've not been around long enough to hear it before, so I wouldn't mind reading it (although I'd feel bad DEMANDING it).

Don't we have this issue with virtually every cycle though? Everyone plays the builds from the newest cycle because they either think it is the most powerful or because they are tired of their old builds. It also doesn't help that so many people were playing Maester builds at Gen Con.
I bet the Maester decks will dry up a bit when we get a few more packs from the new cycle. Given how strong the cards from the first CP are, this cycle will probably be more game-changing than any of the previous ones. Regardless of whether you feel all Maester builds are the same or not, with the focus on in-House cards, this cycle should lead to House-specific builds that feel different (no more Wildlings, cause those builds were all the same).

Twn2dn said:

+1000 to this. And also to everyone who is hating on the Tin Link... though my main objection to it is that they took a Targ mechanic and gave it any house that wants it. Designers didn't put out a "Lanni" link that allows you to kneel opponents' characters, or a "Martell" link with some kind of vengeance effect, so why the "Targ" attachment control link? And if players wanted better attachment control, how about just a little bit of in-House attachment control for Lanni and GJ, the two Houses that have essentially none.

Skowza said:

My main objection to tin link is that it is ON DEMAND attachment control. If I play a single attachment, it won't last till the end of that turn.

Skowza said:

They should didn't, instead they gave every other House card draw and gold generation...