I played my first 4 player game (what a blast!) and some of the timing issues become more important when there are a lot of players. Please confirm the following:

In the Marshalling phase, each player, starting with the First player takes one Action. So, if I have a card that I kneel to reduce the cost of another card, my action would be to kneel the card. Then everyone else goes, then my next action might be to play a card from my hand and take the discount ... I wouldn't kneel and play the discounted card in one go.

And, if I wanted to stack a few such cards to kneel and discount cost, I would kneel the first, wait for my turn to come around, kneel the next, and so on until I had kneeled all the cards I wanted to and then play the discounted card from my hand.

The point is everyone gets to do one thing; this leaves the possibility that someone will play something that will screw up your plans as you assemble your actions.

I'm still encountering cards that puzzle me as to how they are used or why they are good. If you don't mind I'd like to put a few out here in hopes someone could enlighten me:

Xaro Xoan Daxos T116: This seems to just force you put one of your own characters back into your hand. Is there a circumstance where you control other players' characters?

Snowed Under S199: Is it true that the player who plays the plot chooses all the kneeling cards that are to be returned to the hands?

Attaching a Location to your House card: What's the advantage? Is it that if you are called upon to discard a location you don't have to discard one that is attached to your House?

Bran Stark S13: Can you choose and reveal one of your opponent's plot cards when you kneel Bran?

Thanks!

BrooklynMike said:

Correct. But keep in mind that only the Active Player during Marshaling can actually pay gold to play a character, location or attachment from his/her hand. So while you are entirely correct that every other player has the opportunity to take an action between your kneeling that reducer and playing a card from your hand, their actions cannot be to spend gold and play a card from their hand while you are the Active Player.

BrooklynMike said:

Correct. It's easy to forget that each reducer is an entirely separate action, especially in a 2-player game, because the other players don't often have a ton of stuff to do between your use of each reducer. But that is the way it works.

BrooklynMike said:

It's possible, but it doesn't really happen that often. Remember that whatever they want to use to screw up your plans has to be a "Marshaling" or "Any Phase" action that they can pay for.

BrooklynMike said:

Well, there are circumstances where you might control a character that is owned by another player (look at the card Seductive Promise, for example), but you are not likely to want to put that back in an opponent's hand. Xaro tends to work best with characters that do something after they come into play. You're still working primarily with Core Set cards, but take a look at the card Dragon Thief from the "Ancient Enemies" Chapter Pack. See how there might be some advantage in using Xaro to return him to your hand after playing him once? Xaro becomes more useful as you start including new cards. In the meantime, 3 gold for a 3-STR tricon is a good deal, even if you do have to return Brown Ben Plumm to your hand when you play him.

BrooklynMike said:

Yes. All cards are read with "you" pertaining to the controller of the card unless otherwise noted. The card would specifically say that each player chooses one of their own kneeling cards to return to hand if that's how the card worked.

BrooklynMike said:

When a card is attached to another card, it becomes an attachment and only an attachment . So yes, unless you are playing against Targ, your location is probably safer from being discarded (like by Fleeing to the Wall) as an attachment than as a location. Of course, it is probably safer as a location if you are playing against Targ.

BrooklynMike said:

No. If you revealed one of your opponent's plot cards as your own revealed plot, you would be taking control of it for all practical purposes. You cannot take control of any cards you do not own unless an effect specifically says you can.