We have just played our first attempt at Game of Thrones LCG and we have a couple of questions.

1- I understand in the cards text when it says "Any Phase" or "Challenge" but what does it mean when a card has "Resolve" at the beginning of the text?

2- When kneeling Influence in play am I correct in thinking that the card used for Influence must be placed in the discard pile at the end of the round?

3- We placed our cards during "Set Up" and it appears by the description that we are only allowed to place characters and locations at this point. We then are told to draw cards again until we have seven in our hand. We are only drawing new cards to replace the ones we laid down during "Set Up" right?

4- When playing cards during the "Marshalling" phase we are assuming that no more cards can be played to the active table during the "Challenge" phase unless a card says it can be played during any phase.

5- When challenging only the cards in play (laid face up) can be used right? No cards can be considered for that round out of the cards you hold in your hand?

That's all the really newb questions I have at the moment.

My bad, one more question,

Arya Stark is able to steal "Stealth" from another player and render them unable to defend a challenge for that round. She also gains the "Stealth" stolen for that round. She would appear to be a defensive card played in advance to bolster an upcoming challenge that you may be ready to initiate or simply as protection against a possible heavy attack from an opponent.

Can someone detail how a card like this is actually used.

#1 - The rules for "Response" effects can be found on Page 23 of the rule book.

#3 - The rules say "All players draw until they have 7 cards in hand once more." That means you draw as many as you need to have 7 total, not to draw 7 cards to add to whatever you had left over after setup.

#4 - Yes, you are not allowed to pay 3 gold and put a new character into play as an action during any phase other than Marshalling. You can use card effects that allow you to bring cards into play during other phases (and in Marshalling for that matter), but the basic "deployment" action of paying the printed gold cost to put the card into play from your hand can only happen when you are the active player in Marshalling.

#5 - -Istaril's answer is a reminder that this game is driven entirely by card text. So it is technically incorrect to say "the cards in your hand are not considered during Challenges." The specific text of a card can always say something that lets you consider it. But your basic understanding - that non-event cards in your hand are generally inactive during the Challenge phase - is true a large chunk of the time.

"Bonus" - Note that taking Stealth away from a character does not make them "unable to defend a challenge for that round." You can still declare the character as a defender the same as any other character (unless an attacker uses stealth against them, now that they are not protected by their own stealth). A defending player would use Arya after attackers are declared, but before the attacker chooses stealth targets, to make it easier to defend against that challenge by making sure as few of their characters are bypassed as possible. An attacker would use Ayra in roughly the same space to take stealth away from potential defenders (so you can bypass them with their own stealth) and to give an attacking Arya an edge against the possible defending characters.

Thanks to both of you for these helpful explanations. I overlooked the Expert Rules when we did our first play. I had done a read through but once we had cards on the table we were consumed with learning the flow of play and the immediate issues arising in each phase. Never looked past Keywords during play so missed some key information. Thanks again.

FFG also has some tutorials posted on Youtube you could check out.

When you're ready to look at even more advanced rules and concepts in this game, take a gander at the FAQ, found here .

It may be a daunting document and it may not answer all of your rules questions as they arise, but it provides a timing structure and does explain how a lot of the game effects work, especially those printed on several of the cards that may be confusing.

Thanks for the link Bomb and the heads up on You Tube Sloth. I have scanned the document and plan to print it off for my rulebook but I still have some precise questions that arose from our groups latest game. We had a group of four this time using the entire Core Set which was cool. Some items that we could not interpret accurately follow:

What does attaching a card to your House Card accomplish? EX - King Robert's Chambers B94

When a card says "choose and return a character you control to its owners hand" I assume that means take a card from your play pile and put it in your hand deck. EX - Xaro Xoan Daxos T116

If a defender has no power points on its house does the attacker then take one power from the bank after winning a power challenge?

In the event that a plot card or event card (or any other card for that matter) is played in which a certain amount of strength is reduced and it does not specify as being against an opponent I assume that this would clearly be against an opponent as I would not voluntarily play a card that would reduce my own strength?? EX - Forever Burning T147 under Any Phase

As I have read it an attacker can only attack someone who can defend that type of challenge and the defender is required to defend with at least one character. So what is an Undefended Challenge and how does that take place?

Thanks for all your help.

Yeah, the game would be pretty bad if all I had to do to make sure you could never initiate a military challenge was to not play characters with the military icon myself.

As -Istaril says, you can attack any player you want, assuming there isn't a card effect stopping you, whether they have characters to defend with or not. And that defender can choose to declare no defending characters, even if they have eligible characters available. This makes the game much more interesting (and faster).

Awesome, thanks so much for the responses all.

Me again, I must protest the explanation for "Unopposed Challenges" on page 15 of the rulebook.

The rulebook states that an attacker claims 1 bonus power from the power pool if the defender has an STR of 0 or no defending characters.

In a post above Istaril answers one of my concerns about this same issue saying that an attacker can attack anyone at anytime with any kind of attack regardless of the defender's ability to defend the attack at all.

I have to say that this could be extremely abused if what I am reading is correct. If an attacker can make a power challenge against a defender who has no character that can defend a power attack nor any other card that nullifies the attack then quite honestly all one has to do is commit challenges against opponents who can not defend against the attack on every single round and the game will be over in a minimum of 7.5 rounds making all other mechanics of the game pointless unless we are solely depending on every players decency and honesty, and being that this is based on the Houses of Westeros that in itself seems absurd.

Just saying that it seems to me that there would have to be some sort of solid buffer to prevent this from happening besides player honesty and/or the cards falling just the right way to get effects on the board to prevent it or simply relying on everyone to place power defenders when they may want to play a different hand; for example - only being able to challenge other players who have characters with that challenge icon (besides, in a world like Westeros I doubt any of the major Houses would be completely defenseless against any sort of threat) OR giving the attacker some lesser award instead of more power which is more incentive to seek out this type of attack.

The only way this rule makes sense for me is that the attack can be initiated against any opponent who can defend that type of attack but simply chooses not to.

Well, you're kind of arguing against 10 years worth of game play there.

Let me try to explain it with a scenario. Let's say you and I are playing a 2-player game. I win initiative and make myself the First Player. At the end of Marshalling, I have 6 characters on the board with all 3 icons represented. You have 4 characters on the board, again, all 3 icons represented. I do my challenges, in the process kneeling all 6 of my characters. Let's say you let all 3 go undefended, so that you still have all 3 icons represented and standing on your 3 remaining characters (one died when I won my military challenge).

Now, at this point, it's your turn to attack. If I'm reading your objection properly, you seem to be saying that because I have no characters who can defend (they're all knelt), you don't get to attack me at all . You'll win Dominance, but that means we come out of that round with me killing one of your characters, discarding a card from your hand, and up 4 power (one from winning the Power challenge and 3 for unopposed since you simply chose not to defend). You get 1 power from Dominance. Doesn't THAT (i.e., the First Player kneeling all of his characters when attacking in order to avoid having to defend anything ) seem more abusive than being able to get an extra power for attacking someone who cannot defend?

Even if I'm reading your objection wrong and you're saying that you could attack me in that situation, but not collect any bonus power for those challenges being unopposed, I still come out ahead for getting the 3 power since you simply chose not to defend, but I "had no choice" but to not defend because all my characters were already knelt. And honestly, it gets even worse if you DO defend because you end up getting nothing, just because you aren't First Player.

That's a very long way of saying that the "unopposed" rule doesn't inspire abuse by encouraging you to attack people who can't fight back. Rather, it encourages you to think about your own defense, especially if you are First Player, by creating a penalty for over-extending your attack.

I guess that makes sense, on the surface, but without much experience in the game it seems a bit odd. In the event that you attack me and I am able to defend but choose not to is not really the scenario I am shooting at. If you win because I choose not to kneel my cards is one thing, you winning with a bonus for making that military attack against me in the event that I do not have any characters with a military icon is another thing altogether as I never got the option to defend the attack. In the case of a power attack this is not fair in my opinion. Your response assumes that I am able to defend your challenge which is not what my original objection is aimed at.

In either case the ability to initiate an undefendable attack exists if a player chooses to play that way. It has not arose in our games as a problem and I agree that ten years seems to say that it is not a problem. I will have to monitor this more as I get more play time with the game.

Well, ok. Let's turn it around a little bit. Let's say that I build a deck that concentrates solely on military challenges. As a result, I build a deck that has no characters with power or intrigue icons at all (this is possible). You, on the other hand, build a deck that concentrates solely on the intrigue challenge and has no characters with military or power icons at all (also possible).

So, if we go with the option that you are not allowed to initiate challenges unless the opponent has the option to defend, there will be no challenges declared in that game ever (because I can only initiate military that you will never be able to defend, and you can only initiate intrigue that I can never defend). If we go with the option that the challenges can be initiated, but "unopposed" cannot be claimed, then we are both effectively being rewarded for ignoring two-thirds of the game. That seems counterintuitive to me.

When you look at it that way, the fact that your opponent can get "unopposed" encourages you to approach the game looking for a balance of the three challenge types. If you think of "unopposed" as a penalty on the defender for unbalanced game play related to the way they build their deck and deploy their characters, instead of as a reward for the attacker for exploiting a "chance" lack of potential defenders, it starts to make more sense.

Very cool, I appreciate the discussion. You make good and valid arguments for game form. It makes perfect sense that one would try to build balance into their deck taking into consideration both offense and defense as well as neutral or passive behaviors that enhance the decks abilities. Thanks for helping me to see this from the proper perspective.

No problem. Thank you as well. It's important for us old-timers to question the things we have started to take for granted every now and again.

You mentioned that with claiming for unopposed the game could be over in 7.5 plot cards ... that would be considered a long game ... often a game will be won by plot card 5 or so

In keeping with AGOT, if an opponent is defenceless then you just kick them harder ... it's people who can fight back that you have to be wary off