Playing more, really enjoying, have more questions:

1) In a challenge, if the defending player doesn't put up any defending characters does s/he still lose the challenge and suffer the consequences (ie if they don't put up a defending character for a military challenge do they still kill characters)r? The rules say the 'defending player" and I'm not sure you are a 'defending player' if you don't put up defending characters.

2) What is the point of Greatjon Umbar? It reads to the newbie that you kneel him to participate in challenges he could participate in anyway. I'm sure I'm missing something.

3) Is not opposing a challenge considered 'losing' from the perspective of card events?

4) If a character with a Power on it gets returned to the owner's hand does the Power get discarded?

5) If all defending characters are eliminated in a military challenge, does the attacker get the Unopposed benefit because at the end of the challenge the defender's STR was 0?

5) How does Winterfall Honor Guard work? It seems to say that during the Challenge phase you can play it from your hand for no gold cost and give it to an opponent, then next phase take it yourself. Is that the intention or do I misread it?

Thanks

BrooklynMike said:

So, by this reasoning, if you attack me and I don't want to suffer the consequences of the challenge, all I have to do is not declare a defender? You attack with 5000STR in a military challenge and all I have to do to not kill anyone is say "unopposed"? Said another way, if you take a swing at me and I just stand there and let it come without defending myself, I won't get hit?

You become the "defending player" as soon as the attacking player says "I'm attacking you." With the exception of some card effect that stop a player from declaring a challenge against you, you have no control whatsoever over whether you will be the "defending player" or not. Not declaring any defending characters pretty much hands the (unopposed) win to your opponent. You do lose the challenge and you do have to deal with claim. The game really wouldn't work too well if I could refuse to accept your challenge - or the consequences of it - by simply not defending myself.

BrooklynMike said:

You're missing two things. First, timing. You can attack with a 1STR character hoping that your opponent will let it go unopposed. If they do, you win and still have Greatjon standing for other things. If they defend with, say, a 3STR character, you can use his ability to jump him into the challenge and still win it. Or if your opponent attacks with 1STR, you defend with a 2STR character, and they play some sort of +2STR event, you can jump him in as a defender and win the challenge after you see the pump event. Essentially, his ability lets you wait to commit him as an attacker or defender until after you see if you really need him to win the challenge.

The second thing you are missing is that he doesn't have to jump into a challenge on YOUR side. So in a multiplayer game, if Opponent #1 attacks Opponent #2 and you really want Opponent #2 to win (or if Opponent #2 will give you something for it), you can jump Greatjon into the challenge that you yourself have no part in. A very handy negotiating tool in Melee games.

BrooklynMike said:

If you are the defending play and you count less total STR in the challenge than your attacker, you lose. Doesn't matter whether you actually opposed or not. If the attacker wins, you lose. Period.

BrooklynMike said:

Yes. Any time a card with power on it leaves play for any reason, the power is lost completely.

BrooklynMike said:

Yes. You determine if a challenge is opposed or not at the time of challenge resolution. I know that other games do it differently, but in in this game, only challenge resolution counts for determining if a challenge is opposed.

BrooklynMike said:

Actually, what you're missing is that you cannot "take it yourself" until the person you gave it to wins a challenge using the Honor Guard. If you give the character to an opponent who never declares it as an attacker or defender, you're not getting it back. Or the opponent you gave it to might choose to kill the Honor Guard instead of one of his own characters when he loses a military challenge - in which case you're never going to get it back because it's dead.

So to answer the question "how does Winterfell Honor Guard work, the answer is "not particularly well." It's a highly situational card that is more likely to turn into a gift for your opponent than anything beneficial to you.

1) when someone has declared an attack against you, you becoming the defending player, whether you want to or not. If you choose to not to have any characters defend the challenge you are not opposing the attack, but still have to fulfill claim.

2) He gets around stealth for 1 thing, for another you can declare an attack with 1 character for 2 STR, defender uses 1 character with 3 STR, you can choose to kneel or not kneel Greatjon then to have him in the challenge after you know what the other player will do. Plus he is a nasty variable in multiplayer.

3) yup, see #1.

4) Yes, but officially it returns to the power pool.

5) its a bit more complicated. you do indeed put in the HG in play on your opponents side, then if they win a challenge in which HG participated you get him back. He is never played in joust (1v1) and rarely in multiplayer

edit: ktom beat me to the punch, but i'll leave it up for shorthand reference.

Lars said:

Note that a bunch of people have proposed ways to make him work in Joust, but they were all needlessly situational and complicated for a character that doesn't really add that much, anyway (there are easier and more certain ways to get a 4-STR Army on the cheap).

Thanks, this is very helpful. At some point soon I'll be linking up with a local aGoT play group. I'm a member of a very active club www.nycwargames.com in Brooklyn NY where we got hooked on Call of Cthulhu and are just getting hooked on aGoT. But we are figuring it out on our own for now: we've made contact with a local play group www.agotny.com and I'm sure will get a lot more clarifications as they kick our butts, but until they your help is very very useful.

And, of course, my 15 year old daughter who is a wicked sharp CoCLCG player is now also ruling over me in aGoT. If only they played this is Vegas!

Hi, man! ;-)

5) If all defending characters are eliminated in a military challenge, does the attacker get the Unopposed benefit because at the end of the challenge the defender's STR was 0?

Just to be clear...If the meaning here is: "Do I get the power for unopposed if I kill all chars after the claim is satisfied for the military challenge?" the answer is NO.

UNOPPOSED is a condition that has to be met during the resolution, not after that.

And remember that when the defending player chooses the chars to kill for military claim, HE DOESn'T HAVE to choose partecipating character.

Enjoy!