Like all red blooded males of our species, I still struggle with the timing methods are character abilities and event cards, etc.

My question is whether or not a player can take away a characters icons who is defending a challenge (or even lower their strength to 0) to make them unable to defend.

Example, because those are always the best.

Martell player attacks Stark player. Stark player defends with a single character, and the Martell character then, after defenders have been declared, uses an event card, or discards the Orphan of the Greenblood, or kneels influence to trigger a Locked Away on the Stark character or--- you get the picture, to jack the Stark characters icons.

The Stark character no longer has icons. Is he no longer a defender? Is the challenge undefended? Does he stand out of the challenge or is he hanging in the wind? Or... is what I did above not even remotely legal?

Other examples might be Greyjoy using things like Scouting Vessels, or Targaryen using cards to lower strength on a character to zero. Forever Burning and the like. If you defend, and I lower your strength to zero, are you just sitting there now while I collect undefended?

Thanks.

MechaJeff said:

These are two completely different things.

The first is in the rules, but not necessarily obvious to everyone, so it has been clarified in the FAQ:

" If my character loses a military icon in the
middle of a military challenge, is that character
removed from the challenge?

No. Once a character is in a challenge, it can
only be removed from that challenge by an
effect that specifically removes the character
from a challenge, an effect that removes the
character from play, or by an effect that changes
control of that character. Gaining or losing
icons mid-challenge does not affect the attacking
or defending status of that character."

The second is covered pretty succinctly in the rules:

"( A challenge may not be won by an
attacker or defender whose total STR is less than
1 , or who has no participating characters when
the challenge is resolved.)

...

During the “Resolve” step of any challenge, if
the attacker wins the challenge, and the defender
had a total STR of 0 (or no defending characters),
then the attacker claims 1 bonus power for his
or her House from the power pool."

So removing an icon from a character that is already participating doesn't do anything, but reducing the total defending STR makes the challenge unopposed (without actually removing any characters form the challenge).

Cool, thanks.

That will definitely affect how one of the Martell decks in our meta operates.

MechaJeff said:

Yeah, icon manipulation is pretty cool, but you have to do it before declaring characters as attackers/defenders in order to stop them from being declared in the first place. The Martell player has to anticipate which characters to keep out of the challenge through icon manipulation - s/he does not get the benefit of seeing the opponent's decision of who to declare before deciding whose icons to remove.

Icon manipulation is a preemptive measure that is all about taking choices away before an opponent makes them. It cannot be used to counter a choice that has already been made.

Oh, just remembered another question we had last night.

Someone threw together an all Nights Watch deck to check it out, using all the agendas.

Because those are a passive effect, your Nights Watch gain "X," can they be removed by icon removal cards? Are they are "aura" that are constantly reapplying the gain an icon effect? Or if you remove them with an event card, do they not have that icon for the challenge/phase?

It's a 1-1=0 kind of thing.

Each time you go to look for the icon, the Agenda only counts for "+1." If there is an active "-1" effect on the character as well, the icon is effectively not there (1-1=0). The Agendas aren't treated any differently than any other "character gains an icon" effect.

It's really no different than any other character, except that most other characters come with a printed icon as a "base" +1.

Maybe this is obvious from ktom's last post, but just for further clarification.... If the Night's Watch player is running all three agendas and The Prince's Wrath is played on his Qhorin Halfhand, the end result will be that Qhorin has a M icon (1+1-1=1) and no I or P icons (1-1=0).