Orphans seems like a very powerful card, but I'm not 100% clear on how this works. Some use cases:

- The Active Player declares a challenge and puts forward a character, I DO NOT put up a defender and for my action I sacrifice an Orphan to blank the attacker's icons.

- The Active Player declares a challenge and puts forward a character and I DO put up a defender and sacrifice Orphan to blank the attacker's icons.

In what case is the challenge considered resolved? Won by the defender?

As attacker, if I blank the icons of a single defender, is the struggle considered opposed?

Keep in mind that characters only need their icons in order to be declared as an attacker/defender in a challenge. Once the attacker/defender has be declared the icons no longer serve any purpose. So, getting rid of a character's icons AFTER it has been declared as an attacker/defender changes nothing. It is still participating, and it's STR still counts.

BrooklynMike said:

As far as I can tell, ignoring specific card abilities, the only time the rules care about a character's icons is when the character is declared as an attacker or defender. Once a character has already been successfully declared as a legal participant in particular challenge type, it does not matter what happens to that character's icons. So in your two examples, the challenge will resolve exactly the same as it would had the Orphan not been sacrificed.

For another example of this kind of thing, see the Walder Frey card from A Change of Seasons he is an iconless character that has 4 strength and an ability that lets him jump into a challenge. His strength will still count in the challenge despite the fact that he does not have the appropriate icon for the challenge.

So what Mike really needs here is an explanation of when to use the Orphan.

The anatomy of every challenge looks like this:

1. Player Actions

2. Active player announces challenge type and declares/kneels attackers

3. Player Actions

4. Active player assigns any Stealth targets/Defending player declares/kneels defenders

5. Player Actions

6. Resolve challenge

So before the First Player has a chance to declare any challenges, all players have an opportunity to trigger player actions (#1). Usually, the Orphan is used in the #1 before the first challenge of the phase is declared in order to remove the icons from a particularly strong character and essentially make it ineligible to participate in any challenges that phase.

Now, you can certainly try to be clever and use the Orphan in any #1, #3 or #5, but as has already been pointed out, the game only checks icons in #2 (for attackers) and #4 (for defenders) - and only for the process of declaring them in the challenge. The game does not care whether or not the corresponding icon is present in #6. So losing an icon mid-challenge neither removes the character from the challenge, not does it stop the character from counting its STR in #6.

Overall, the safest use of the Orphan is in that #1 before the first Challenge, essentially turning any one character into an icon-less Dominance engine that (barring other card effects) cannot be declared as an attacker or defender in any challenge.