3 Questions of contention

[Pappystein 0]

Have been trolling the forums for a while now.    My Play group is semi experienced.   IE we play against each other all the time but none of us have attended any tournaments or play outside of our small but growing group.      Anyway with the pre-amble out of the way I have seen this 1st question answered before but for the life of me I can not find now when I have searched for it or any iteration of it I can think of.

 

1) Any Conditional Kill statement like "is killed if strength is reduced to 0," on an attachment would kill ALL copies of said card?

For example my opponent has Say Arya Stark with 2 Duplicate copies of her in play.  I place Sun Stroke on her as a legal attachment, it says If I loose by 4 or more in a challenge she takes -4 strength and is killed if her strength is 0.   My opponent Discards one duplicate to save her but there is an issue here.   The attachment is still in play, and we are in the same phase so her strength is STILL 0.   Does she continue to die unless my opponent can find some way to increase her strength above 0?  My argument is her strength is 0 and the card says until the end of the phase, attached character gets -4 strength and is killed if their strength is 0, thus all copies die because the phase hasn't ended and the strength never goes back up IN THE PHASE.

On that line, lets say a card takes the strength below 0, do you in-fact get negative strength you have to fight your way out of or do you just bottom out at 0 strength?

 

2) Stealth:   Can you declare stealth against a character not currently on the table.  EG can I declare stealth against Caitlyn Stark that I KNOW from the previous turn my opponent has in his hand, thus preventing him from putting said card into play as part of it's unique special ability?

 

3) Let us say I am playing a Night's Watch deck with all three north Agendas that I am currently erratta allowed to play.   I have the Core set Jon Snow in play and my opponent removes 1 Military Icon from Jon Snow.   The Agendas grant a Military, an Intrigue and a power Icon.   Does that mean Jon Snow has completely lost the military icon (as in unable to have it,) or because he has if you will TWO military icons (printed on the card + Granted by the Agenda) he still has the military Icon?

 

TIA for answers and if they have all been answered before sorry that I didn't find them when I searched for them this afternoon.

 

Pappystein

[ktom 598]

Pappystein said:

1) Any Conditional Kill statement like "is killed if strength is reduced to 0," on an attachment would kill ALL copies of said card?

For example my opponent has Say Arya Stark with 2 Duplicate copies of her in play.  I place Sun Stroke on her as a legal attachment, it says If I loose by 4 or more in a challenge she takes -4 strength and is killed if her strength is 0.   My opponent Discards one duplicate to save her but there is an issue here.   The attachment is still in play, and we are in the same phase so her strength is STILL 0.   Does she continue to die unless my opponent can find some way to increase her strength above 0?  My argument is her strength is 0 and the card says until the end of the phase, attached character gets -4 strength and is killed if their strength is 0, thus all copies die because the phase hasn't ended and the strength never goes back up IN THE PHASE.

Just to nit-pick on some terminology here: you are talking about "duplicates" here, not "copies." When you talk about "copies" of a card being in play, in this game, it is assumed that you have two or more non-unique cards with the same title in play. So here, you are talking about one copy (Arya) with two dupes. They are treated as one character. I know that's what you were thinking, but the original question ("would kill ALL copies of said card") brought an entirely different situation to mind.

What you are dealing with here is not a "conditional kill." Instead, you are looking at a "terminal effect." Terminal effects are game situations that, when applied to remove a card from play, don't change and continue to apply to the card after it is saved. So you are totally correct that in your scenario, Arya's STR becomes 0 and would still be 0 (killing her) if she is saved. When a character is in a terminal state like this, you are not even allowed to try to save it, unless that save effect both saves and removes the character from the terminal state. Effectively, unless you have an effect that saves Arya and raises her STR above 0 at the same time, you cannot even try to save her. You cannot split that into 2 effects (one that saves her, then a second to raise her STR) because she's just going to die again between playing those two effects.

Discarding a duplicate to save her will not remove her from the terminal state (ie, raise her STR), so you cannot even try to discard the duplicate here. Arya will die and her duplicates, along with Sun Stroke and any other attachments on her, will be discarded. (Another reason to stay away from the "all copies die" terminology.)

Pappystein said:

On that line, lets say a card takes the strength below 0, do you in-fact get negative strength you have to fight your way out of or do you just bottom out at 0 strength?

Yes and no. A character's effective STR is never considered to be less than 1. So, for example, if you have a 1 STR character and a 3 STR character attacking in a challenge and someone moves Poison Wine to the 1 STR character to give it -2 STR, that character's effective STR is considered to be 0, not -1, so the total challenge STR will be 3 (0+3=3) instead of 2 (-1+3=2).

However, when you look at any character's STR, you always calculate it by adding all the applicable modifiers together, then applying the result. So is you play a "gains +1 STR" effect on that same 1 STR character with Poison Wine, you don't get to start from the effective STR (and get 0+1=1); you have to start the calculation from scratch (1-2+1=0).

In short, the order of STR modifiers never matters because you start fresh each time you calculate the character's STR, but if the end total is ever a negative number, you just treat it as 0. (So don't let anyone ever say "the effect says the character is killed if its STR is 0, but its real STR is -1, so it doesn't die;" the game makes no distinction between 0 and anything lower for the purpose of such effects.)

Pappystein said:

2) Stealth:   Can you declare stealth against a character not currently on the table.  EG can I declare stealth against Caitlyn Stark that I KNOW from the previous turn my opponent has in his hand, thus preventing him from putting said card into play as part of it's unique special ability?

No. Unless the text of a card or effect specifically says so, cards and effects can only interact with cards that are in play. You cannot choose to bypass cards that are not in play, anymore that an effect that says "choose a character you control and return it to its owner's hand" lets you choose a character you know is somewhere in your deck and "return" it to your hand.

Pappystein said:

3) Let us say I am playing a Night's Watch deck with all three north Agendas that I am currently erratta allowed to play.   I have the Core set Jon Snow in play and my opponent removes 1 Military Icon from Jon Snow.   The Agendas grant a Military, an Intrigue and a power Icon.   Does that mean Jon Snow has completely lost the military icon (as in unable to have it,) or because he has if you will TWO military icons (printed on the card + Granted by the Agenda) he still has the military Icon?

You treat icons the same way you treat STR. You add all the modifiers together and go with the result. So if Jon has 1 military icon on his card, plus 1 military icon from the Agenda, but loses one to something like The Broken Spear, you end up with 1+1-1=1. So he still has access to/use of a military icon.

Pappystein said:

TIA for answers and if they have all been answered before sorry that I didn't find them when I searched for them this afternoon.

It's not so much that they have been answered on the boards before as it is that the answers to these (and many more) questions can be found in various forms in the game's FAQ. If you haven't looked at that yet, you may want to check it out in the "Support" section of the game's mini-site on the main (non-discussion board) section of fantasyflightgames.com