Aggro said: Is this legal? If so it seems that any character with Nymeria is invincible and the person can direct any lost Military challenge to whatever character Nymeria is attached to. We had similar issues when we started out with the core set decks, especially with this exact match up and scenario with nymeria letting the stark player (that would be me) soak up military claim without issue, this got turned around after a half dozen games or so when my opponent realised that Lannisport brothel and intrigue & power challenges where much more effective than military challenges. Then it was my turn to spen a half dozen games scratching my head on how to get around this. Some of the suggestions might not be viable for you, more so if your just starting up as 'assault on kings landing' and 'Brienne of trath' are both in other delux boxes which are quite pricey to get your hands on for a few cards (unless you plan on playing baratheon and martel at a later date) Although princes of the sun also has the plot 'let my porridge fly' (win an intrigue challenge to discard an attachment in play) which is, imo, a solid lannister plot especially if you need attachment removal. You may be better looking at using some of the chain attachments from the called by the conclave chapter pack, tin link being the one to look at, although you will need a maester character to play them on and grand maester Pycelle will be your only viable in house option atm although you get 2 neutral maester characters in the chapter pack, although gates of the citadel provides the apprentice collar which gives the attached character the maester trait. Hope some of this ramble helps

Mathias Fricot said: Mandon Moore and Guardian Wolf and Meera Reed are not lowered by Hidden Chambers. I see no reason that they are not, unless as we just discussed you are bringing them out via their own card ability and not 'standard' shadows. Just clarifying for my own sake as it wont be the first time i make a mess of interpreting messages on the forums. On that note, when you say "Their effects are thus not effected by the Agenda which increases the cost in the same way" Do you mean that if i play Meera OOH then she would only cost 1 gold to play from shadows via her any phase action and ignore the +1 penalty from city of shadows? Just that your example would indicate that the agenda, like black cells, dosent care how the card comes out of shadows, only that it does.

Saturnine said: Underworld40k said: Dominance i bring out venomous blade, hidden chambers applies, cost stays 0, OOH penalty is applied, cost is 1 response on venomous blade triggers. You were so close to getting everything right, but what the hell is this? Cost to bring VB out of Shadows (with Hidden Chambers in play while it is Winter): 0 + 1 (agenda) -1 (Hidden Chambers) = 0. Also, you make it sound as if the responses on those card trigger automatically, which is of course not true. You choose to trigger them, like any other response. But maybe that was just bad wording on your part. Ah, i had confused what you said about mechanism and effect. So as long as i bring the card out via the standard shadows timing at round start the gold penalty for city of shadows is negated by Hidden chamber? My wording for the responses part could have been better but as they are all 'good' effects im hard pressed to think of a time i wouldnt trigger them so i ran with it as an auto choice. Again wording, and laziness, are why i chose to use OOH for the shadows cost as it takes the place of it, however your quite right to call me on it as its a distinct and different penalty.

Right, lets see if ive got this. (play order will be picked for example only, so no laughing at thh woeful decision making Laughing if i get the scenario wrong is totally ok ) Set up is City of shadows agenda Guardian wolf, venomous blade tyrion lannister and meera reed in shadows. Hidden chambers in play. Marshalling i bring out Meera at start, hidden chambers reduces to 0, response triggers on Meera. Challenges i bring out tyrion at start, hidden chambers reduces to one, OOH penalty is applied, net result is tyrion plays for 2, response triggers on Tyrion. Challenges i bring out guardian wolf, hidden chambers does not apply as it is not out of shadows via standard mechanic, pay 1 gold, useful deadly for tyrion and tyrions response triggers again. Dominance i bring out venomous blade, hidden chambers applies, cost stays 0, OOH penalty is applied, cost is 1 response on venomous blade triggers. The example with Meera in marshalling can be swapped with guardian wolf for all intents and purposes. How close am i?

dh098017 said: ya, i think this is a very strange keyword in the sense that by definition, if they include to many characters with this word, any deck including them can become very powerful very quickly. unless most of the melee characters have low base strength this could get out of hand fast. imagine attacking simultaneously with 3 melee characters of 1 strength each. 1 blocker would mean that character would have to be 7 strength to beat the 6strength of melee. 2 blockers would have to be a combined 10 to win....and thats if the melee characters are all 1's. i certainly hope they were very careful when designing these cards. This was my thinking, presumably not to many characters will have it, or they will be house specific (and expensive) for the most part.

Good to know that my brain hasnt totally dissolved into a puddle of goo.

Idiot question but just for the sake of confirming my lack of intelligence Melee "When a character with the melee keyword is participating in a challenge, it gets +1 STR for each participating character controlled by an opponent." So that character will always be at least +1 in a challenge that is opposed? Just that melee implies a group/multiple combatants and i found it a little odd that it gives a straight buff in a 1v1 challenge.

The ability is very powerful no doubt but it relies heavily, imo, on targs ability to recycle various cards back into hand (other wise, congrats you killed my character at the expense of your hand, now you will struggle to adapt to what i play), particularly from our first few games, dannys chambers for attachment recycle, getting rid of it suddenly made my targ opponent less spam happy

For which we love it.

I believe so, changing from kneeling to standing does not remove the character from the challenge so the squire can stand him without issue. Ser Osmund would still be defending and his ability only checks that the character is defending. I await any of the far more knowledgeable people to correct my understanding of the rules

Which can allow a stark player to do evil and nasty things with core set Robb should your opponents get a little overconfident or forgetful.

As always Saturnine thank you for the detailed response, brain is starting to wake up and a lot of what was confusing last night is starting to make a great deal of sense.

Had a search for some likely answered questions (that i would swear i have read) and while i had some luck with one not so much with the others. When you play a card from an area (hand or shadows the likely ones) and the action allows for a triggered effect , say alchemist guildhall and shadows, is the response option created when a shadows card is played outside of the standard shadows mechanic of 1 card at the start of a phase? For example; guardian wolf. I assume yes but i know that the game can be picky about exact wording and timing conditions. The response per trigger question is mostly about multiple attachments being stacked on characters, i seem to remember reading that a character with several chains is unable to kneel to activate all chains at once as they resolve individually and require a kneel per chain but what about cards like 'pickpocket' "Response: After you win an Intrigue challenge in which attached character participated, you may choose to take 1 gold from the defending player or the treasury and add it to your gold pool." If a character has 2 attached pickpockets then i assume that the effect resolves twice, 1 for each card? Would it be the case that if kneeling is involved then the act of kneeling removes the ability to trigger multiple attachments to a response? Brain is yet to wake up properly yet so apologies if the questions are as idiotic as they seem.

Got to say that the wording is pretty ambiguous, all of my playgroup interpreted it as putting a gold token on every house dayne character as the response, ie the one response covers all characters involved in the challenge with the house dayne trait. Very little in the wording indicates that it will only give one token to one character, and even with ktoms explanation, which im sure is correct as its ktom, im struggling to see it. Presumably the bit of the text that defines that only 1 character gets the gold token is on 'that' character.

Excellent answers as always, cheers for clearing up the confusion

Ah. That would be where we are going wrong, been running an extra response/cancel window when one wouldn't be created. Looking at the player action window again i take it that the entirety of the event resolves then there are responses/cancels to the event as a whole and not any individual part of the event?

Pretty much, usually the cards specify if the attacker/defender is the specific target and this says an opponent so as far as i know feel free to steal Argentina, although the reprisals may be dire

Just a query on the timing Effect triggers and paying costs with saves. A card has a cost or discard X to do Y, if i save X via an ability or attachment does the effect resolve or does it fizzle. My group debated and decided that as the card has not been discarded the cost did not resolve so the effect was voided although i thought it was like military claim and saves, ie you have fulfilled the claim but the save has rendered it moot (its not like you save and then have to kill another character) as the effect itself is not cancelled (unless an effect states that it IS cancelled) We looked in the faq ,which we have improved in understanding for the most part, but couldnt find any passage that gave us a solid yes/no answer (although my shame curtain is waiting to be dropped when some helpful person points me to the exact paragrah that we missed that solves our problems.) Our specific issue arose with a nights watch deck and yorens task although im a little hazy on the exact set up it was something along the lines of a weird plan involving recruiter for the watch, akitn Stannis and bodyguard, if memory serves the proposed play was to give stannis nights watch trait via the recruiter, then go to discard stannis but use the bodyguard when yorens tak was played. I had to give the player credit for an inventive play (although i personally thought it was...strange to say the least).

While i assume that i will shortly be corrected i would assume that it DOES still apply, the effect from Pike Phalanx lasts till the end of the phase, most likely the challenge, so it is active till its end, if your plot is changed then the newly revealed plot card is your revealed plot card. and the effect still applies. I await to be slapped down and corrected with a wry grin of humble acceptance

No , just wanted conformation as it was out first game with threat form the north and we have never really had a constant kill/discard effect like it in play before. Apologies for hijack of thread

Ktom, could you flesh out the timing for me with the shaggy dog example Saturnine described? I only ask as Shaggy can only be used during a challenge and the timing of when a character left play arose due to threat from the north being a constant (although only slightly, we assumed and agreed that it would be at the end of the player action window in which shaggy was activated).

*looks abashed having reread the rules* Nothing to see here folks, move along

Came across a new scenario for my play group last night, my brotherhood deck against a house bolton themed stark deck. Reek made off with Beric who had dubious loyalty attached, so i played a new berric from my hand. My opponent then played imposter and winter cache on my berric that he controlled before i was able to use Reek to regain control of my beric him a turn later. (his plan was to use my berric to win challenges and then kill him for claim to leave me unable to replay him from my hand.) So what happens to my original Berric and the attachments that my opponent put on him. I know that attachments remain in play under the control of the original player who gets to trigger responses etc (although passive effects still apply all the time?). We figured that the returning Berric would become a duplicate and the attachments would remain in play.

From the rules book At the beginning of the dominance phase, all players count the total combined STR of all of their standing characters, and add 1 to this total for each gold token in their gold pool. The player with the highest value wins dominance and immediately claims 1 power for his or her House. I think you may be confusing it with winning a challenge.

Gotcha, there are times (lots of) that i feel FFG should be shipping the FAQ AND a terms dictionary with the core set.