My friends and I have started getting into AGOT, and been playing one another getting a hang of the game.

I settled on Lannister, partly because of the show, and partly because I love the idea of having all the money.

I have been reading the forums for ideas, and after reading the discussion on should decks run agendas I began running The Maester's Path which has made my deck more effective. Then once King's Landing was re-released I loved the Shadows mechanic and the cards that Lannister have to go with it.

Collection wise I have two copies of the core set, Kings of the Storm, Lords of Winter, Queen of Dragons, all of King's Landing, all of Brotherhood Without Banners but Rituals of R'hllor, all of Secrets of Oldtown but Called by the Conclave and Tourney for the Hand. However I have Kings of the Sea, Princes of the Sun, Rituals of R'hllor, Called by the Conclave and The Grand Melee shipping to me this week. As such, suggestions from those sets are viable and the deck will liely be tweaked once they arrive [mainly cards from Kings of the Sea].

House
Lannister

Agenda [1]
The Maester's Path

Plots [7]
At the Gates
City of Lies
City of Secrets
City of Sin
City of Soldiers
City of Spiders
City of Spies

Characters [30]
2x Cersei's Attendant
2x Lannisport Weaponsmith
3x Syrio Forel
3x Tribeless Vagabond
3x House Payne Enforcer
2x Lannisport Steward
1x Varys [s&S]
1x Qyburn
1x Maester Creylen
1x Grand Maester Pycelle [Core]
3x Cersei Lannister [AToT]
1x Ser Mandon Moore
1x Ser Jaime Lannister [TftH]
2x Tyrion Lannister [CoS]
2x Qyburn's Informers
1x Littlefinger [s&S]
1x Tywin Lannister [Core]

Locations [18]
1x Shadowblack Lane
1x River Row
2x Sunset Sea
3x the Goldroad
3x Twilight Market
1x Lannisport Brothel
2x Golden Tooth Mines
3x Alchemist's Guild Hall
1x Tunnels of the Red Keep
1x King's Landing

Events [8]
3x Condemned by the Council
3x A Fistful of Coppers
2x I'm You Writ Small

Attachments [3]
1x Black Iron Link
1x Iron Link
1x Valyrian Steel Link

15 cards within the deck have the Shadow Trait, so there is often something in the shadows for either Tunnels or Cersei, with one of them ideally being Syrio so he can bounce back to keep the shadow count high,
I have debated switching to the alternate version of Tywin, to recycle cards such as Qyburn or Varys, depending on the board situation to abuse their abilities more often and save them from a counter-offensive. However his cost of 5 bothers me, as I feel like I could be placing more cards on the table for the same price.
I am only running three links due to only having three Maesters, although they are normally off by turn 2 at the latest. I intend to include Tin Link and gamble going up to four chains, which I feel is still viable.
I also haven't been too impressed with Tyrion Lannister. I'm not certain what it is exactly, as having Stealth and generally Strength 5 due to something coming out of the shadows each challenge phase sounds great on paper, but in practice hasn't been living up to his potential.

We mainly play Melee, which I do badly at, no matter what deck I build or how I try to play. But when we do Joust, I do pretty well. I will be at a tournament this Sunday where it is three rounds of Joust followed by two rounds of Melee, and you can use different decks between the two types but must stick with the same house. I can't decide if I can make a solid melee deck however, or if I should just stick to this and try to tune it as much as possible.

If you have any questions as to why something is in my deck, feel free to ask and I will try to justify why I have picked it. On a similar note, if there is something I have access to and feel I should be running it, if there is a reason why I have decided against it I will say. If there is something I have completely overlooked however, all the better!

Thank you in advance for reading all of this and any suggestions or comments you decide to leave

You might want to switch one or two plots out. Some of the City plots aren't really very good (Spies) and you don't need to run them all; I suggest a reset instead, Valar or Wildfire.

When I started the game I ran Valar, but have leaned more towards Wildfire instead. It means I can still keep some board presence, but means if they have lots of duplicates or saves they can't keep some whilst I end up with nobody.

Aside from plots, how does the rest of the deck seem?

3x Syrio could be risky. Despite his return to shadows ability his 2 strength makes him killable by many effects.

Alchemist guild hall was errata'd to be Limited Response: 1 limited response per round, so if you have more than one out you can still only activate it once. But you might want to keep 3 anyway to increase your chances or drawing it.

Do you use A Fistful of Coppers for anything except activating your other shadows cards? You could swap them out and some copies of Syrio for some neutral shadows cards like Shadowcat and Silent Sisters (both in Kings of the Sea).

In Melee decks which can grab power quickly tend to do better, wheras yours is more control-focused. So I would suggest making a seperate Melee deck.

Now that my cards have arrived, I have taken the feedback on board, and made some tweaks to the deck.

Syrio has been reduced to only 1 copy, with A Fistful of Coppers dropped, with Shadowcat and Silent Sisters added.

Alchemist Guid Hall was at 3x to increase the chances that it turns up, however I have swapped out one copy for another Tunnels of the Red Keep, to increase the chance it turns up due to how powerful it is in within the deck.

Twilight Market has been replaced for Kingdom of Shadows, so whilst it raises the curve of my deck, I now only have three limited cards in the deck and will get use when I have those rare turns of no shadow cards in my hand.

There have been a few other tweaks, but I don't feel it is worth going over all of them, but instead better for others to have a look and see what they think.

So here is version 2 of my Shadow-Maester deck:

House
Lannister

Agenda [1]
The Maester's Path

Plots [7]
At the Gates
City of Lies
City of Sin
City of Soldiers
City of Spiders
Hear Me Roar
Wildfire Assault

Characters [33]
3x The Regent's Spy
2x Lannisport Weaponsmith
1x Syrio Forel
3x Shadowcat
2x Silent Sisters
3x Tribeless Vagabond
3x House Payne Enforcer
2x Lannisport Steward
1x Varys [s&S]
1x Qyburn
1x Maester Creylen
1x Grand Maester Pycelle [Core]
3x Cersei Lannister [AToT]
1x Ser Mandon Moore
1x Ser Jaime Lannister [TftH]
1x Tyrion Lannister [CoS]
2x Qyburn's Informers
1x Littlefinger [s&S]
1x Tywin Lannister [TTotH]

Locations [18]
1x Shadowblack Lane
1x River Row
2x Sunset Sea
3x the Goldroad
3x Kingdom of Shadows
1x Lannisport Brothel
2x Golden Tooth Mines
2x Alchemist's Guild Hall
2x Tunnels of the Red Keep
1x King's Landing

Events [5]
3x Condemned by the Council
2x I'm You Writ Small

Attachments [4]
1x Black Iron Link
1x Iron Link
1x Tin Link
1x Valyrian Steel Link

Watch out for King's Law. Its use varies from meta to meta, but that card will cause you serious problems if you don't expect it.

The first thing I would do is take out the shadowcats and the silent sisters. I agree with Alando in that it is important to have more shadows cards in your character base, but these two cards really don't do much. I would run 3x Pyromancer's Apprentice instead. They are solid location control, and harder to cancel than condemned by the council, while being a more efficient pick for your deck.

In Condemned by the Council's place, I would run You Killed the Wrong Dwarf. This is IMHO, the best Lannister event in the current environment. With it, you get a free kneel anytime, the ability to win the game at less than 15 power, and a killer combo with Rule by Decree: As a pre-plot action, play YKTWD and then flip Rule by Decree. Your opponent will then lose 3 cards in the first round.

Another thing, is that you should really take advantage of is the King's Landing location if you're running shadows as a main theme. I would run 2x or even 3x. At the very least, it's a free card every round. Since you're playing Lannister it should be easy for you to always have more king's landing locations than your opponent. I would also run Queen Cersei's Chambers for this reason.

Also, your mileage may vary, but I love tossing in Slander and Lies x1, just for the threat of it. This card reams any deck that relies on power on characters. But I think it's too narrow in it's use to run more than 1.

Well, I am a bit late in typing this up, but I thought I would go over how the deck went in the tournament from Sunday.

My deck ended up being as wrote in my previous post. I never got the chance to read Rave's post until after the tournament. I tested it casually with friends the night before, as well as a couple of other decks, and felt confident with it.

I played three rounds, the first against my friend's Stark House Tully deck, the second against a Strak Siege deck, and finally a Martell Hollow Hill deck. Overall my deck gave me wins against all three, even though it was close against the Siege deck.

King's Law actually came up when I had two cards in the shadows. Thankfully it was one copy of Shadowcat and one copy of Silent Sisters, which meant I could bring one out in the Draw phase and another in the Marshalling phase. That is part of their appeal, in that I will always be able to bring them out of the shadows without concerning myself over gold.

Rule By Decree combined with You Killed the Wrong Dwarf is indeed an interesting combo, and one I may try out once LOTR is released and rebuild my deck yet again.

I do agree with King's Landing - There were times I needed card draw and it hasn't appeared.

Hey, I'm glad you did well! Your deck looks pretty good.

And, yeah, you're right. Draw is paramount, especially in decks like Lannister where you live or die by the effects you can trigger.

Fortunately, Lannister has the best draw of them all. Martell can potentially get more output with their reveal effects, but with Lannister you're almost always going to hit your draw cap every turn.

I would recommend picking up this pack:

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Card-Kings-Chapter/dp/1589943759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324680917&sr=8-1

You get pyromancer's cache, which is the best card draw card in the game, and a good choice for your restricted card.

With this 3x, and 2x king's landing, you'll never have to worry about draw again.

I also noticed you're running wildfire assault, which is definitely the safe choice. Once you get some solid draw going however, I would look into Valar Morghulis.

If you're hitting your cap every turn, and your opponent is drawing off the deck, and you reset the board, you've probably won.