Hi.

I would like to have some confirmations about how Mountain Pass and Desert Assassin interact.

Mountain Pass : "After a challenge resolves, discard from play each character that attacked or defended alone".

Desert Assassin : " Response : after you loose a challenge in wich Desert Assassin partecipated as a defender, return both Desert Assassin and an attacking character to their owner's hands".

The main question here is: when do " After a challenge resolves " applies?
Case A : Step 4 (passive abilities are resolved) or
Case B : Step 6 (action is resolved) ?

Let's make an example with Guy1 and Guy2 attacking and Desert Assassin defending alone and loosing the challenge.

In Case A , Desert Assassin ability is quite useless. She will be moribund by the time she could activate her response (step 5). So she can't activate her response because a moribund card cannot be targeted to be removed from play again by any effect (Moribund - Rules exception in faq 7.1)

In Case B , Desert Assassin could activate his respone at Step 5, making herself and Guy1 to return to their owner's hand. Then, at Step 6, Mountain Pass activates, and Guy2 is discarded from play, since he's now attacking alone.
We do not have to remember that Guy2 attacked togheter with Guy1 by now, right?

Thanks a lot.

Ikaros said:

The last framework action window within a challenge is referred to as the "challenge resolution framework" action window. Any passives or responses that initiate based on the challenge resolution happen in the common steps 4 and 5 to this action window (along with those that key off of unopposed, renown, winning the challenge, etc. and keywords like Deadly). So your Case A is the correct one. Also, my understanding is that participating characters in a challenge are locked in during the challenge resolution framework action window, so in your case B Guy2 will not have attacked alone if Guy1 is removed from play by a passive or response triggered after the challenge resolution framework action window.

Just two doubts.

As you say, the last framework is "the challenge resolution framework" and Pass says after resolution .

FAQ 3.31: " a character is only considered to have participate if they remain in the challenge through its resolution ". So, if one is removed during resolution, seems to me that it has to be considered not partecipating.

Ikaros said:

You're being too literal and not thinking about the larger timing flow.

On the "too literal" front, the resolution of the challenge is really the process of determining the winner, settling claim and awarding unopposed/Renown. Any passive effect or Response to any of those things happens as part of the same window - and is technically all part of challenge resolution - but the requirements for challenge resolution are done by the time they activate/are played. Look at it this way; if there were no passives or Responses, would the challenge still resolve? So the "after resolution" trigger that you're looking for is actually created in Step 3 of the framework action window because at that point, all the things that are actually required to resolve the challenge have happened. Mountain Pass activates in Step 4 and the Assassin's ability cannot be used in Step 5 if she went moribund in Step 4.

Along the same lines, your quote from the FAQ would follow the same logic. If a character maintains its "attacking" or "defending" status through Step 3 of the challenge resolution framework action window without being removed, it is considered to have participated in the challenge. It doesn't lose the status of attacking/defending/participating character until the end of the window, but as far as having a "this character participated in a challenge this phase" (which is what the FAQ entry is defining, BTW), Step 3 is the cutoff.

On the "larger timing flow" front, if you wait until the window closes and all the other passives and Responses that technically happens as part of challenge resolution to be done for your "after resolution" opportunity, there is no place for Mountain Pass to actually activate at all. The only thing that happens in Step 6 is removing moribund cards from the table. No effects can be resolved. You cannot resolve effects between action windows, either. And if you wait until the next action window, you are too late for Mountain Pass (you've gone too far in the game for its play restrictions). The only place it does fit into the timing structure is in Step 4 of the "resolve challenge" framework window.

Ok!

Regarding the step when Mountain Pass activates... we always played as it activates in step 4, but I wanted to dissolve any doubt, just to be sure.

Regarding participating in a challenge... I now assume that, if a character successfully counts its strength (even zero) toward the total, then that character participated in the challenge. Seems also logical, by now. My confusion was due to the "blindness principle" of the game: it has no memory, just checks whatever happens when it's required.

Thanks.

Ikaros said:

That's actually what the bit in the FAQ is there to define. See, there are some effects that trigger at the end of the Challenge Phase or even in the Dominance Phase that refer to characters that "did not participate in a challenge this round." So, because of the "blindness principle," it was easy to think that any character that was declared as an attacker or defender even once "had participated," even if it had been removed from a challenge. The FAQ is just saying that when you do go to check if a character participated in a challenge during the round (as opposed to during a challenge, when it is obvious because they either will or will not have a current status as "participating"), the character must have made it through a challenge resolution.