wanted to double check that cannot be bribed (the stand from kneel claim power and draw) works off of the kneel from lost oasis

also the new loyal guard, to attach him as a dupe do you have to pay 2 gold?

Lars said:

Yes. Remember that Lost Oasis actually gives the chosen Martell character the kneeling text along with the Stealth. That means the kneel effect is not only a card ability, but a character ability of the attacking character. It works passively, but you can Respond to passive effects.

Lars said:

No, you do not have to pay the 2 gold. This is because the text says you may play him from your hand as a dupe . When you play it as a dupe, you are not playing the character so you don't have to pay his 2-gold - just like you would not have to pay the printed gold cost of a second copy of the unique character you were duping.

thanks, re loyal guard, someone remember about an old card that was 1 gold and worked like a dupe maybe. we just wanted to clarify.

Lars said:

The old Hatchlings, probably. They could not be played as dupes. They had a passive effect that turned them into dupes on the corresponding adult dragon once they entered play.

The difference is that Royal Guard specifically says that it works from your hand while the Hatchlings only became dupes after they were in play. So the Guard can be played from your hand as a dupe (and thus for no gold), but the Hatchlings could only be played from your hand as characters (and thus had a cost) - immediately transforming into dupes once they entered play and their text became active.

i am quite comfused about the royal guard. Why would some one put a character card under control by other players?? How is this gonna benefit him?? The only situation i will put it under other's control is the other player is my ally. Is that what they want this card to do?? to help ally??

xqg - There may be some confusion here. You do not play Loyal Guard on other players' characters; it can only be attached to your unique characters.

I think you are talking about the *Honor Guard* card. And you're right that you might not want to give opponents a character for free. You would (pretty much) never want to do in a two-player game; but you might in a multiplayer game. The text says you get control of it after it participates in a challenge. So, it is a cheap way to get an army for yourself (eventually). Also, I find them a great negotiating tool in multiplayer games: I can ask to get the bonus of a plot like Summoning Season in exchange for the loan of an Honor Guard. Use them to help out your opponents as Littlefinger would use them. ;-)

Winter said:

Well, don't forget that you can just play them as characters instead of using them as dupes.

Yea, i was to say honor guard. What confuses me is " to get control of it after wins a chanllenge it participates". What does this exactly mean?? How can this ability benefit me anyhow???

In a multiplayer game a player who is supporting you that phase may not have any defenders left. If they lose the next challenge a third player may reap a large benefit (anything from standing his vigilant characters, to winning the game with unopposed), placing the Honor Guard under that person's control allows them to defend that challenge, because they support you, they can't then use that character (at least that round) to attack you either.

Another use for them is to shut off a Stark players Bear Island. He then has to either kill off that character (giving you a round of respite) or win a challenge using it and give you a nice sized defender until he can kill it off with said Bear Island.

It is a situational ability, but the Army itself even without that ability isn't to bad.

Good catch, KTom. I was imprecise in describing how the Guard could be played *as a dupe*.

xqg - As dormouse suggests, you often want to stop your most dangerous opponents from beating a weaker rival in a multiplayer game. Also, as I say, I find any cards that create "favours" for other players to be good bargaining chips. For example, last weekend we played two multiplayer games where deals were cut to give reciprocal help from plots or cards that assist the person who plays them and one opponent.

Winter said:

(Well, if you want to get really technical, the Royal Guard could end up as a dupe on a non-unique character with the Noble crest, too.)

ktom said:

Really? That seems wrong. What about this in rulebook?

Duplicates
may only be played on unique cards that
you control and own.

Rogue30 said:

Directly contradicted, and therefore superseded, by the text on Loyal Guard that says it can be played from your hand as a duplicate on a Noble character. If you are using the text on Loyal Guard to play him as a duplicate (because the rules wouldn't let you do it!), the only limitation specified in that text on which character he duplicates is "Noble," not "Noble and unique."

i think we need a "You've been Ktomed" icon. i know it would be on a number of my posts

ktom said:

So I can play it on opponent's noble character, right?

Sure...in the very limited situations where you'd want to.

I don't feel ktomed enough

My thinking is that "Loyal guard" allows you to dupe noble, but it only changes the requirement-definition of duplicate: another card of the same name .

So it doesn't contradict "may only be played on unique cards that you control and own."

How it is different from: "While The Fox's Teeth is attacking, knelt characters may be declared as defenders."

As ktom said above: the only limitation specified in that text on which character can defend is "knelt," not "knelt and for any challenge in which it could normally participate".

Or maybe "The Fox's Teeth" is poor written?

In that situation, would the opponent controlling the character choose whether to discard the Loyal Guard dupe to save his character?

Winter said:

That's good reason to not allow playing duplicates on opponent's characters.

Also this:

Any time control of a card switches via a card
effect during a game, the new controlling player
gains control of said card and all duplicates.

Winter said:

Actually, in this situation, no one could discard the duplicate to save the character.

The FAQ details that the save "Response" effect is considered a gained character ability. That means the save is a specific ability of the character , not the dupe, and thus can only be triggered by the controller of the character , not the controller of the dupe. However, the cost of that save effect is to discard the dupe - and you cannot pay the costs of an effect with a card you do not control.

So, if you do not control both the character (allowing you to trigger the save) and the dupe (allowing you to use it to pay a cost), you cannot activate the effect.

Rogue30 said:

Here's the difference:

The text on Fox's Teeth redefines the eligibility of characters that can be declared as defenders. It does not redefine the process of declaring defenders. So all other aspects of declaring defenders (appropriate icons, who controls the characters, etc.) are not a part of the redefinition. Essentially, Fox's Teeth says "when this card is attacking, these additional factors are added to the process of declaring defenders." Adding those additional factors does not supersede the rest of the process.

But the text on Loyal Guard, by saying that it can be played as a dupe in the first place, redefined everything about playing a dupe - as it applies to this card only. While I understand the instinct to read it essentially as "this card can be played from your hand as a dupe as if it were a copy of any unique card you control," it is really saying something more like "this card can be played from your hand and enter play as a duplicate on a character with the Noble crest." By specifying that the card can be "played" as a dupe, it redefines the entire process of playing a dupe.

But I could be wrong. Feel free to send it into FFG. They may have a better - or different - explanation.

Of course, it's not that big of an issue at the moment because all the characters with printed Noble crests in the LCG are unique. It's only likely to become an issue with the very few cards that grant the Noble crest right now.

Confirmed by Nate French: "Yes, you can use Loyal Guard to dupe a non-unique Noble."

I think xqg's original question was mostly answered by "yes, the Honor Guards are mostly used as bargaining tools in melee" (with messing up Bear Island being the only reasonable use I can think of in joust). The problem with most of the Honor Guards though is that they are MP characters. Often in melee the hit of losing a power challenge is not detrimental enough to get people to defend with the Honor Guards and give them away. What I often see people do is just let the challenge go undefended and kill the Honor Guard the next time a military claim needs to be satisfied. I think the Lannister guard might have the most chance of being used as intended - I could see a player being interested enough in his hand to use the Honor Guard to defend an intrigue challenge to give his opponent a free army.

schrecklich said:

Of course, the person you give him to could always win on attack....

I suppose. I haven't seen that situation come up so far. Mostly I have just seen the honor guards offered to a weak player by powerful player #2 after powerful player #1 initiates a challenge against the weak player. Usually the weak player just holds onto the honor guard and uses it as claim soak. There are certainly other possible ways of bargaining with them though.