When a card prompts you to "discard an ally" can you discard an objective-ally? (I am assuming you are playing a scenario where an objective ally can be discarded without instantly losing the game).

I was playing The Road to Isengard last night, where the first stage allows you to "bid" for up to four Ent of Fanghorn objective-allies. I won all four, but if I hadn't I would have had to remove the rest from the game. Much later in the game I was forced to discard an ally, so I discarded one of these ents (the least valuable card in the game to me at that time), and placed it in the discard pile. I lost two more of these ents a little later, and again placed them in the discard pile. A while later I had to reshuffle the encounter deck, and a bit later drew an Ent of Fanghorn, which I placed in the staging area and immediately started "bidding" for it (thanks to a lot of readying and Eowyn I won it back the same turn I drew it!).

So did I play this correctly?

(I really hope so, as it took about 2.5 hours to play, and at one point I dumped 21 points of damage on Saruman in one go, so I could concentrate on questing to win the game, which I did! Though Pippin died, so I will have to replay, anyway.)

First, I believe you played correctly if the card making you discard was Plain of Isengard (through the Wizardry effect).

And that's because in Rules Reference:

Quote

"Objective Cards

Objective cards represent a range of different elements from the goal of a scenario, from allies who assist the players, to keys that allow the players to advance to the next stage of the quest, to artifacts that are necessary to overcome a particular challenge.

◊ After an objective is revealed, it is added to the staging area.

◊ Objective cards remain in play unless the game instructs the players to remove them from play.

◊ The encounter deck has control of the objective. If a player claims an objective, then that player gains control of that objective ." (my emphasis)

You are the controller of that card and as such you may choose to discard it.

Not to address the rules issues directly, but I'm fairly sure there has never been a non-asterisked win against Road to Isengard, anywhere. 😉

1 hour ago, CJMatos said:

And that's because in Rules Reference:

I saw that before I asked. I think my concern was whether an "objective ally" specifically counts as an "ally" (since the cards specifically have "objective ally" written on them). But thinking about it now, when an encounter card has you discard an attachment, it typically says something like "discard a non-objective attachment that you control", which implies that non-objective attachments count as attachments. I don't think the RR specifically says this, though.

I think I was making it out to be more complicated than it really was.

But thanks for quoting that for me, because reading it again, I see that it implies that the Ents are kept in play, and so can be won back again ("Objective cards remain in play unless the game instructs the players to remove them from play. " And I was only instructed to remove any during the first stage.).