Sooo.....Let's say that my opponent plays an event to kneel my character during the marshalling phase. Is it possible for me to use To Be A Kraken to stand the character that was just knelt to cancel the event?

No, that´s not possible.

1. Kneel event is played.

2. Save/cancel/ resposes. <- At this point you could play "To Be a kraken". But you can´t pay the additional cost "stand a Greyjoy charachter" of "To be kraken".

3. Kneel effect resolves.

The question is a dejavu for me, exactly that questionwas asked in our local play group this week. ;-)

Thank you good sir. I was pretty positive it couldnt work, but it doesnt hurt to ask.

So does the second part of the To be a Kraken event must resolve succesfully here?

If he kneels on of my characters, can I just later during challanges just stand him without canceling anything?

No when I see it I would say no, since it is Response:

Rozy said:

Interesting question. To be honest, i´m not sure. Responses however can only be triggered when responses are allowed. So it´s safe to assume that "to be a kraken" can´t be played as an "Any phase:" effect. However we know that e.g. "to be a dragon" can be played without having a charchter in the dead pile. That´s because "to be a dragon" isn´t lloking for a target- the word "choose" isn´t used.

Well "to be a kraken" also doesn´t use the word choose, but it seems to be somehow general logic that a cancel card needs a target to be played. But i can also see the argument that you would e.g. play "to be a kraken" as a response to a won/lost challenge, pay the cost (stand a Greyjoy charachter) and let the effect fizzle.

Old Ben said:

No, you cannot just play the cancel. You need whatever the Response is responding to before you can trigger it.

Let me give you a scenario: I have an effect that says "Response: Save a character you control from being killed. That character claims 2 power." The only character I have is a "cannot be killed" character. I have 13 power. Can I reveal Valar and save my CBK character to claim the 2 power and win the game?

In that scenario, no I cannot. The mechanics of a save are to interrupt an effect that would kill a character and stop the resolution of the kill. Despite the global kill effect from Valar, as far as my CBK character is concerned, there is no effect that would kill it at this time. So there is nothing to interrupt - meaning that the play restrictions are not met and I cannot trigger the save effect.

Cancels are the same way. After an effect initiates, they interrupt it and prevent it from resolving. So unless a triggered effect is initiated, there is nothing for To Be a Kraken's cancel Response to interrupt and the play restrictions for triggering it have not been met. It's the basic timing of cancel Responses that require the initiation of whatever they cancel before they themselves can be triggered. This means you cannot pay the cost for the Response on "To Be a Kraken" just because you feel like it. You have to have the initiation of a triggered effect to Respond to.

Ultimately, that's not so hard to do (there are a LOT of triggered effects). You could always cancel one of your own if you really needed to.

Thank you for the detailled explanation Ktom. So it works like that what i called general logic - "A cancel card needs a target". ~But as we all know, sometimes card games won´t follow that logic. ;-)

Old Ben said:

If you want to get really technical, the general logic for this game would be "a cancel card needs something to cancel."

~I always get picky about the use of the word "target" because it has a narrower definition than logic would necessarily dictate in this game.