Hi, here are my questions:

1. Can I play Parting blow (Response: After a character you control leaves play, choose and kneel 1 character controlled by an opponent. Then, draw 1 card) and draw a card in the following situations?:
   a) My opponent has not characters in play.
   b) My opponent has all his characters already knelt.
   
   
2. With the new Plot Fear of Winter (Each player cannot play or put into play more than 1 card from his or her hand until you reveal a new plot card) can I play to the shadows as many cards as I want or is considered to play a card from hand? Is there any action that I can do multiple times with this plot revealed?
   
   
3. If I have in play Maegi Crone (Response: After a character's STR is reduced to 0, draw 1 card) and Threat from the North (All characters get -1 STR and are discarded from play (cannot be saved) if their STR is 0) is revealed:
   a) Could I activate his response to draw a card when his STR is reduced to 0 even she is in the way to discard pile?
   b) If 2 characters other than Maegi Crone have their STR reduced to 0 and in the way to discard pile, could I activate his response 3 times to draw 3 cards?
   
4. If I have in play Maegi Crone (Response: After a character's STR is reduced to 0, draw 1 card) and The Dragonpit (If you have at least 1 card in Shadows, any characters controlled by opponents who do not have more cards in Shadows than you do get -1 STR) giving all my opponent's characters -1 STR:
   a) Could I activate his response as many times as I like (suposing The Dragonpit is continously reducing an opponent's Carrion Bird STR to 0)?
   b) If I can activate his response just one time, can I do for each character whom STR is reduced to 0?
   c) If I can activate his response just one time, when could I use again? Once per phase? Once per turn?
   

Thank you and sorry for so much questions.

zarius said:

Well, in a), you could not play it because there are no legal targets to choose. If there are no targets available to choose, you are not allowed to trigger an effect. In b), you could technically play the event (there are legal targets to choose because the event does not say to choose a standing character controlled by an opponent), but there would be no point in it. Since the chosen character would already have been knelt, the event would not successfully kneel the chosen character and so the "then draw a card" part would be unsuccessful, too.

zarius said:

That might be kind of a fine point. Technically, putting cards into Shadows is not "playing" a card or "putting it into play" from your hand. So from a straight read, you could play multiple cards into Shadows. You may want to check that with Nate just to be sure, though.

What's more, you could bring multiple cards out of Shadows while the plot is revealed, too, because you are not putting cards into play from your hand. Any action that is already on the table (or does not require a card to move from your hand to the table - including events) could be used multiple times.

zarius said:

Yes. Check out the rules for moribund and for multiple Response opportunities in the FAQ.

zarius said:

The location does not "continually" lower the character's STR. It applies a modifier one time, which stays applied. So you can only activate the Response and draw the card 1 time per character, and only when the -1 modifier (that takes the STR to 0) is first applied. After that, the character's STR is not reduced to 0; it's already there.

This means that with The Dragon Pit, you can: #1: Activate the Response 1 time for each 1-STR character when the location is in play (and you have a card in Shadows), #2: Activate the Response 1 time when an opponent with fewer Shadows cards puts a 1-STR character into play, or #3: 1 time for each 1-STR character when your use of Shadows cards turns the location off-and-on-again because of the Shadow card count in relation to your opponent.

Short answer: You can only use the Response 1 time per character right after the -X modifier that makes the character go to 0 STR is applied.

Ok, thank you for your quick answer!!!

ktom said:

Putting a card into Shadows is playing a card (Shadows rules name it as playing/marshalling). So the question is what was the designers intend: into play or anywhere.

From the FAQ:

(4.4) "Play" and "Put into Play"
Character, Location, and Attachment cards are
“played” from the hand during the marshalling
phase, by taking a player action and paying
their gold cost.

Event cards are “played” by placing the card
on the table, paying the specified cost, and
triggering the effect.

"Put into play" effects are not considered to be
"played." Similarly, when a card is "put into
play," it does not trigger any "when played"
effects, and vice versa. Both, however, would
trigger effects that occur when a card "comes
into play” or “enters play.”

Taken together, this says that "playing a card from your hand" involves the card actually ending up in play. Shadow cards do not do that. So I would argue that you are "playing cards into Shadows" as opposed to "playing" them by the definition in the FAQ. (Similar to how playing a dupe is playing a dupe, not a character card.)

Let's ask it this way: If I'm playing a Bara Shadows deck and I play Tyrion (a Lord) into Shadows, can I then trigger the effect of Royal Entourage (Response: After you play a Lord or Lady character from your hand, put Royal Entourage into play from your hand or discard pile.). If I have "played" Tyrion from my hand when I put him into Shadows, I should be able to Respond to "playing" the card, right?

ktom said:

I have two last questions concerning this (I don't understand well her use):

a) If I have The Dragon Pit in play (applying -1 STR to my opponent's chars, who has 2 Carrion Birds in play), and then I play Maegi Crone from my hand, could I draw 2 cards or not (always if i have not draw the turn limit)?

b) If my opponent has The Dragon Pit in play (applying -1 STR to all my chars, I have 1 Carrion Bird in play), and then I play Maegi Crone from my hand, hoy many cards could I draw? 2 (for reducing the bird and the maegi STR to 0), 1 (just for the maegi as she enters and her STR is reduced) or none?.

zarius said:

No. She triggers off of the characters being reduced to 0. Since they were already 0 when she was played, her Response becomes available to you too late. It would be like playing Xaro's Home and trying to immediately use its Response for attachments that are already in play.

Remember that you can only use the Crone one time - at the point when the -X STR modifier that makes a character 0 STR is first applied. If the Crone comes into play after this point, you have missed your one and only chance (unless the character's STR goes above 0 and comes back down again for some reason).

zarius said:

Just one for the Crone. The Bird, already in play at STR 0, is like the question you asked in a). Now, if you have a Crone and a Bird in your hand, you could play the Crone (and draw a card) and then the bird (to draw another). Note that if you did that the other way around (played the Bird, then the Crone), you'd only get the card for the Crone.

Hrmm, sorry for the lack of quote boxes, the board is being finicky with me....

"zarius said:
With the new Plot Fear of Winter (Each player cannot play or put into play more than 1 card from his or her hand until you reveal a new plot card) can I play to the shadows as many cards as I want or is considered to play a card from hand? Is there any action that I can do multiple times with this plot revealed?"

ktom said:

"That might be kind of a fine point. Technically, putting cards into Shadows is not "playing" a card or "putting it into play" from your hand. So from a straight read, you could play multiple cards into Shadows. You may want to check that with Nate just to be sure, though.

What's more, you could bring multiple cards out of Shadows while the plot is revealed, too, because you are not putting cards into play from your hand. Any action that is already on the table (or does not require a card to move from your hand to the table - including events) could be used multiple times."

We should definitely check this with Nate. I would read "playing a card into Shadows" as one way of "playing a card" and thus only allowed once each turn. Likewise, "playing" a character and "playing" an event would both be ways of "playing a card" and so I would say you could only play one event while this card was revealed (and no other characters, locations, etc if you did play an event). This seems to contradict what you say in your parantheses, ktom.

(EDIT: errr, ktom posted while I was posting, but I'll leave this part in any way).

Zarius, I think you're making this harder than it needs to be. Just follow the strength of the character as a function of time. Note when it becomes zero. Was Maegi Crone already in play when this happened? If yes, then you can activate the response. If no, then you can't.

So for your two questions here:

a) You could not draw any cards.

b) You could draw 1 card (for the maegi).

ktom said:

Ha, you can't prove to opponent that it is a lord, so you can't

You are probably right though. **** that rules of Shadows (they are rules also right? ) it is confusing if they name it as marshalling.

schrecklich said:

Ok, I understand

Thank you all!!

Rogue30 said:

Ha, you can't prove to opponent that it is a lord, so you can't

What if I'm willing to say "I'm playing Tyrion into Shadows - here, look"? Nothing in the Shadows rules preventing you from volunteering the information....

schrecklich said:

You are correct. Playing an event is a way of playing a card from your hand. When I said "including events" in the part in parentheses, I was trying to include playing events as playing card from hand with everything else. Remember that playing an event from your hand does put it through a moribund state, so there in an "in play" component of some sort.

ktom said:

I checked with Nate. Playing a card into Shadows counts as your one played card from your hand for Fear of Winter. The rebuttal to your question about Tyrion, ktom, is that, although Shadows cards count as played, they go straight from hand to Shadows when played and cards like Royal Entourage which key off of traits interact only with cards that are in play (unless they specify otherwise).

schrecklich said:

Nope. Don't buy it. If playing a card into Shadows meets the definition of being played from hand (which it must by Nate's ruling for Fear of Winter) and therefore counts as being "played from hand," why does something that says "after a card is played from hand" not interact with a card being played into Shadows, but a card that says "after a card is discarded from your hand" would?

Tyrion/Royal Entourage is not the best example of what I'm getting at here because the play restriction depends on the general knowledge of hidden information (the Lord trait). So let's go with something hypothetical. Can a card that says "Response: after you pay 2 or more gold to play a card from your hand, put this card into play from your hand or discard pile" be triggered after playing a card into Shadows? By your argument, it cannot because the card that went into Shadows is not in play and thus this card would have no interaction with it. But by Nate's clarification that playing a card into Shadows counts for Fear of Winter, you could because playing a card into Shadows counts as playing a card from your hand.

(The real rebuttal to the Tyrion/Entourage thing is exactly what Rogue30 said the first time: because the identity of the card played into Shadows - along with all its characteristics - is hidden, you cannot meet play restrictions that look at specific characteristics of the card just played.)

End result of all this is that by Nate's ruling, Marshalling a card into Shadows counts as playing a card from your hand even though no card enters play. So "playing" a card does not necessarily mean a card "enters play." I'm perfectly happy to accept the ruling, but THAT needs some official clarification/errata in the FAQ.

Sorry, ktom, you're right (and Rogue30 is right). I tried to summarize Nate's email and so fouled up its content. I should have said something like cards in shadows do not have characteristics. Here is Nate's reply without edit:

"If the card played into Shadows does originate in the player's hand, yes, it is restricted by Fear of Winter.

Shadows is not, however, an in play state, so card characteristics do not interact with other cards unless that card specifically interacts with the Shadows area. (For instance, Melisandre does not give Asshai characters in your discard pile +1 STR, and she would not give Asshai characters in Shadows +1 STR either.) So you could not respond to a Lord character just played into Shadows with the Royal Entourage."

I think a good way to think about it is "playing a card from hand into Shadows" is a subset of "Playing a card from Hand" the same way Limited Response is a subset of Response. With the obvious consideration that it's not _in play_. I'm not sure how many interactions we have that recognize the difference besides this plot. And the real issue to notice is... you can bring as many cards _out_ of shadows while this plot is revealed.

Maester_LUke said:

That's kind of my point. The plot feels like an exception because of the major difference that nothing comes into play.