Ice Fisherman

By Rozy, in 2. AGoT Rules Discussion

I was trying to find answer for this in these forums and on tzu website, but I never found the correct answer.

So here is the scenario. I have an Ice Fisherman in play and it is winter. I am the first player so I start during the Marshaling phase (first active player). From what I know players count gold on the beggining when they become active player so if i discard my opponents location or something like that he will not get the gold for marshalling this round. But can I use Ice Fishermans ability to steal some gold??? I dont know, since he is affecting gold pool, does player in marshaling phase has gold in the gold pool even though it was not his turn yet?If not then I would have to go always second to use his ability and this guy has a very limited use then.

Rozy said:

So here is the scenario. I have an Ice Fisherman in play and it is winter. I am the first player so I start during the Marshaling phase (first active player). From what I know players count gold on the beggining when they become active player so if i discard my opponents location or something like that he will not get the gold for marshalling this round. But can I use Ice Fishermans ability to steal some gold??? I dont know, since he is affecting gold pool, does player in marshaling phase has gold in the gold pool even though it was not his turn yet?If not then I would have to go always second to use his ability and this guy has a very limited use then.

Well, you are correct that players do not count gold until they become the active player in Marshaling. "Counting gold" means that you total up your plot income and all other gold modifiers, then take that many gold tokens from the treasury and put them in your gold pool. So again, you are correct that if you are the First Player, opponents are not likely to have gold in their gold pools during Marshaling for you to steal with the Ice Fisherman (there being very few effects that skip the "taxation drain" at the moment).

That doesn't necessarily mean that you "always" have to go second to use his ability. Granted, if your goal is to use him to steal gold and spend it right away to play your cards from your hand, he's going to look pretty limited. But think of this:

- If you are the First Player, you always have the first opportunity to take an action in any Player Action Window, including the Player Action window right after a new Active Player counts gold in Marshaling. If you are the First Player, you will always have the opportunity to use at least one Ice Fisherman after an opponent counts gold and before he/she spends any. So even though you won't be able to use the stolen gold to play characters, locations, etc., Ice Fisherman will always be good for essentially lowering your opponent's income.

- You spend gold on a lot of things other than playing cards from your hand. Think of Ice Fisherman in a Shadows deck; you can steal gold for Shadow cards, for KotS-Theon's ability, playing Reinforcement event cards, to "save" your Refugees or to just help you win Dominance. Point is, there are ways to leverage gold outside of the Marshaling phase if you look for them.

So in the end, I'd say your assessment of the timing of Ice Fisherman is correct, but I don't necessarily agree that his ability is "very limited" or necessitates avoiding First Player status.

Ice fisherman + price of war + winter raven + support of the kingdom = great fun

Sithlord Threadkiller said:

Ice fisherman + price of war + winter raven + support of the kingdom = great fun

Shouldn´t that read:

Ice fisherman + price of war + winter raven + support of the kingdom = NPE

?

Seriously, resource control has ever been a good game tactic, but i find it to be a very discouraging tactic, especially if you face new players who are not familiar with that sort of game play.

Well what you failed to calculate is that for Sithlord Great Fun = NPE