Only Maesterly Dead (1st Place, Stockton Store Championship 2014)

Tourney Report linked here.

* I really like LanniMarg as a Lanni player but wouldn't BlankingMarg be excellent here?

* Did Marg+StinkingDrunk+Threat become useable often? Feels like a lot of cards that needs to click.

* What links do you prioritize getting out first(generally)?

* What are some bad matchups you think?

* Are there any changes you would do now? Any cards you want in but can´t find room for?

These are some questions I had after reading the report. Nice deck, looks like a lot of fun. Been really impressed by many recent Bara decks.

Blanking Marge and Kneeling Marge were a tough pairing to choose between, and honestly I'm not convinced there's a wrong answer. Between the Stinking Drunk you alluded to, the Brightwater Man-at-Arms and The Laughing Storm, I felt Kneeling Marge offered me enough character removal that she was worth choosing, and I also tend to prefer her for Maester decks because if you get her early on then she can be invaluable against aggro decks for forcing openings to win challenges and pick up chains. Blanking Marge certainly isn't a bad shout though, and being able to remove no attachments makes Greyscale a lot more effective as character removal.

I think I might've got that combo once, but it's not exactly something to rely on. Stinking Drunk's much more fun to drop in with Pale Steel Link in my mind, anyway!

Always tough to give a definitive order for the links. If I didn't have Jaime, Valyrian Steel Link is hard to pass up early. I also like grabbing Black Iron Link in the first round because it very often will let you immediately get a second link off in my experience. If I had Greyscale in hand then Pale Steel or Lead were good shouts, depending on the match-up, but otherwise I didn't prioritise Pale Steel or Lead until I had my attachments. Bronze Link last should be a given. So I guess a typical order would maybe be Black Iron -> VSL -> Collar -> PSL -> Lead -> Bronze? Sounds about right.

Bad match-ups would be decks that can remove cards from the board and hit me hard early. Something like Stark Aggro could prove tricky if I didn't see a Man-at-Arms or two early on. I could also see choke being a problem if you can't get multiple uses out of the resource locations early on, because the deck is at its best when you can dump characters out multiple times in a match. Lannister control can be a problem too, with the ever-necessary playing round of A House Divided compounded by some powerful locations, and Attack from the Sea only buying me one turn. Oakheart can be what I live or die by in that scenario. Finally voltron rush can be a problem, if they get the character to a high enough STR that I can't burn them away with Lead Link.

On changes, I don't know honestly. The plot deck feels like a weakness to me, but I'm not sure what I'd change about it. The biggest cards I was disappointed not to find room for were Nightmares or Milk of the Poppy. Milk is one I usually favour for Maester decks since you can recur it, but with me already running attachment-based control I opted to leave it out. Nightmares was poor for setup, something I was trying to optimise as much as possible since the first turn is very important for Maester decks, but I really wish I'd been able to add in at least a couple of copies. It shores up multiple weaknesses the deck has, from offering soft location control to allowing me to get the edge on voltron decks, to even something as simple as blanking a River Blockade in order to trigger a Seat of Power.

Were you using Cressen or Lomys as your core chain-heavy Maester? Surely Cressen had recursion work to do?

Lomys, for the reason you said along with having one more STR to begin with.

Lomys, for the reason you said along with having one more STR to begin with.

Just checking. I'm so **** playing Maesters I thought I may have been missing something obvious

Steel link and King Robert's Hammer is usually a staple in bara maesters. Is there a reason you chose not to run it? Even if seasons don't seem particularly popular now did you not want to risk the 2 dead cards?

Standing for standing's sake didn't really appeal to me. Valyrian Steel Link and Lead Link are the only two chains that were nice to trigger multiple times, and between recursion and Jaime the former wasn't too vital, and the latter was only worth using multiple times on Threat turns for the most part. Given that, King Robert's Hammer didn't seem worth it, especially given some of my bigger beatsticks were non-kneeling anyway. And without the Hammer Steel Link didn't do enough.

For standing, Marya and Oakheart were ultimately good enough for me. Oakheart in particular did more work, seeing as he was a Shadows card and Kingsguard besides. Marya was less important and had the downside of being discarded on Threat turns, but at the same time she was a warm body for the challenge phase if I was character-starved, and while she had her own vulnerabilities she couldn't get hit by the likes of Favorable Ground, Salladhor, Price of War, Newly Made Lord, etc., so ultimately I felt she did more for me.

That's not to say King Robert's Hammer and Steel Link wouldn't be good additions, incidentally. But for me that took it more in the direction of abusing stand effects, which wasn't the point of the deck - it takes you into the territory of Gold Link, Salladhor, etc., and I wanted to focus on the more direct aggro and recursion in this instance.

Not familiar with this kind of deck, or Bara at all for that matter, so what's the reasoning behind 3 x Cressen? Can you trigger his response every time a dupe of him comes out of shadows? Or are you just keen on getting that potentially crucial one time recursion readily available?

In short, if Cressen doesn't die multiple times then that's probably a sign I'm winning anyway . Between Asshai Initiate and Fiery Kiss it's very tough for characters to actually stay dead, so that one-time recursion will be triggered a fair few times in a close game.