On Your Knees!

I will be interested in knowing how this goes for you, as I have found Lannister kneel a tough deck to play in melee, as there are too many characters to be concerned with. Granted, Queens Knight didn't exist then, so it may be easier now.

I would be concerned of Bay of Ice however, as it may work against you more than it works for you. We have enough in-house effects to enable card draw, without giving it to others for free some of the time.

I weighed the idea of it against putting it in, mainly because I had your same concern, but I may still end up removing them and then possibly reworking the plots a little to have slightly higher initiatives on them. I have found that if you are trying to control or dominate the board in melee, then winning initiative is very key, because you can generally control who gets what title and also you can make it so that you have more time to deal with an aggro deck or a rush deck.

If this is melee....you must have the melee version of Varys...that is such an UBER melee card...

and I understand the power behind that card, but it doesn't fit the general sort of theme I'm running with the deck. I would probably run it in a different deck, I just find that I wouldn't necessarily use him for this deck type.

Whilst it wouldn't allow you to go first, Retaliation! (ASoSilence) could be a worthwhile plot for you. You could make the person to your right be first player, allowing you to be second if that is what you wanted. There are not many cards and combinations (especially in melee) that would stop you winning Initiative with it.

Or, as you have no Shadows cards, perhaps The King's Law (KotStorm)? With Lannister you can get the gold production to make up for the paulty sum of three gold made by the plot, and also get rid of Shadows cards that could be a problem for you, either forcing them out early, or making them be discarded.

I was definitely thinking of retaliation, been a fan of that card recently, also king's law I don't own yet so I'll work on that. I've been tweaking some of the locations and events around to smooth things over and I still am trying to keep initiative on lockdown, because there are too many benefits not to do so in melee.