Just to be sure that I read english correctly here: "their owner's" means that if I play this event, then my characters are put into play and my opponent's characters also are put into play, right?

Yes. Well, based on the text of Narrow Escape there are two interpretations I see.

Narrow Escape reads "Any Phase: Put into play from their owner's dead piles or discard piles all characters that were killed or discarded this phase. Blah Blah Blah to cancel this effect."

The first interpretation I got was this:

If you have a board consisting of Wharf Rats (given to you by me), a Wintertime Marauder (which you took from me through Seductive Promise or the like), lets say Robb Stark (Core) and War Host of the North (I decided you play Stark) and my board consists of a Wex Pyke. Now, I was afraid of the pounding I was about to receive and needed a reset - so I used Westeros Bleeds. You respond by playing Narrow Escape, I do not discard my hand of 17 cards.

Option 1 (what I hope happens): First everything gets discarded, then Narrow Escape happens. You get your Robb Stark and your War Host of the North back in play, I get my Wex Pyke, but I also get Wintertime Marauders and Wharf Rats (lucky me). So each person gets under their control the cards that were put into their discard/dead piles.

The problem is that it doesn't say where in play you are putting the cards. For example, Catelyn Stark from the Stark deluxe expansion reads "Challenges: Put Catelyn Stark into play from your hand, knelt as a defender during an I or P challenge initiated against you. At the end of the phase, if Catelyn Stark is still in play, return her to your hand." So you know that she is coming into play under your control, because you have to be defending. The Honor Guards of the core set read "Challenges: You may put X Honor Guard into play from your hand, under the control of any opponent."

Option 2 (Which I fear): You get everything, including my Wex Pyke. It doesn't say that you put cards into play under an opponent's control (as the Honor Guard specifies), it just says put them into play. The same way Catelyn Stark says to put her into play (but from their owner's dead piles or discard piles instead of your hand).

I am operating under the conclusion it is Option 1, it makes the most sense. But it does only say 'put into play' and when you 'put (something) into play' its under your control, you own it, unless it states otherwise. So I would ask ktom's opinion on this one. I am a newb, after all.

Mathias Fricot said:

So, the characters have always left play completely before Narrow Escape can be played. That means all "take control" effects are ended. And since cards always come into play under their owner's control - unless otherwise specified, which Narrow Escape does not - you will get all the cards you own that left play that phase, regardless of who controlled them when they left play or who played Narrow Escape.

When I used 'respond' I did not mean in the game terms, I meant as the immediate player action being taken after mine.

Mathias Fricot said:

I find it quite useful against almost every reset. If it gets used a lot in multiplayer the ability for Targ Burn to globally wipe the board may be called into question. If there were more abilities that activated when characters entered play (such as Practical Believers) it would be an interesting way to trigger off your own effects.

Another question about "Narrow scape". Are the cards discarded from hand also affected for this event? I think the card refers just to characters discarded from play, if cards discarded from hand also return to play it could open the posibility of some dirty tricks, like playing Rule by decree when you have more cards, and then put into play three or four characters you have discarded this way.

LordBeric said:

ktom said:

My concern with this argument that it is, as you say, relatively weak. I don't see how it explains why character cards are considered "characters" in hand for the purposes of agendas' (i.e. Blood of the First Men), locations' (i.e. Aegon's Hill I know its effect doesn't actually kill or discard characters, but it still identifies character cards), events' (i.e. Fallen and Reborn), and even characters' (i.e. Jon Arryn) effects but not for Narrow Escape.

Suppose a character I control has the ability, "Response: After an opponent plays a character, discard a character from your hand to discard the last character your opponent played from play." I trigger this ability. There are no cancels. Then my opponent plays Narrow Escape. Again, there are no cancels.

I don't see why only my opponent's character would be put into play (that's what Narrow Escape says), and not the character I discarded from my hand to pay the cost of my triggered effect. The way I see it, both characters were discarded. The card from my hand had to be a "character" as it was part of the cost of the effect I triggered. I don't see how the fact that the character in my hand was never in play is an issue. If Narrow Escape said, " Return to play..." or, "...all characters killed or discarded from play this phase" then I would agree that it would be an issue, and would not be put into play; however, Narrow Escape it not phrased in this fashion. I don't see how "Return to play..." and "Put into play..." are the same, and I don't think people should be thinking of them as equivalent phrases.

In the CCG era, didn't Narrow Escape have to receive errata that specified that it does only put into play characters that had been in play that phase? While that points to the card being intended to work that way, if it has not received that errata in LCG form, then it really should work the way that it technically reads. This might be something that needs addressed before the Days of Ice and Fire event.

According to AGOT Dabbler (I bolded and italicized the differences):

LCG Version:

"Any Phase: Put into play from their owner's dead piles or discard piles all characters that were killed or discarded this phase. Any opponent may discard his or her hand of at least 1 card to cancel this effect."

CCG Version:

"Any phase: put into play from their owners' dead piles or discard piles all characters that were killed or discarded from play this phase. Any opponent may discard his or her hand to cancel this effect. Limit 1 per phase. "

This is what the most recent Legacy FAQ says on the CCG version:

(v3.14) Narrow Escape U118
When Narrow Escape is played, an opponent may choose to block its effect even if he has no cards in hand; he is considered to be discarding his hand, even though his hand size is zero. Only character cards that were in play during the phase in which Narrow Escape was triggered are put into play from its effects. Facedown attachments, characters attached to other cards, or any non-character cards (that may be treated as characters for the phase) do not count as character cards for the purposes of Narrow Escape.

Given the change in text from CCG to LCG, I'd say that the designers purposefully changed the "intent" of the card. Either that, or they made a serious error by not looking at the CCG version and it's clarification. Even if this was error, overall sentiment and consensus within the community seems to be that errata is only made when a card "breaks" the game. While different, the LCG version doesn't "break" the game as-is, despite being a potential game-swinger. I don't expect an errata. Perhaps a clarification, but that's it.

Rule by Decree myself, Narrow Escape myself, hilarious.

~Use Nute the Barber offensively. Nute becomes an intimidating beast and you put characters into play for free. Epic win.

Hahahaha, brilliant!

FATMOUSE said:

You haven't taken this to the next logical step yet. We discard from our decks, too, don't we? In my GJ deck, I'll be playing Priest of the Drowned God, Godswood Attendant, Wharf Rats (keeping control for myself) and Narrow Escape. Load the deck with characters and....

I expect errata.

ktom said:

I will admit that discarding from a deck did not come to mind. However, I stand by the notion that if this wasn't intentional, it's rather embarrassing that an errata is necessary, as the card once previously existed and had been clarified -- certainly a serious oversight by its designers.

That aside, I wonder how well that GJ discard deck would perform. Since GJ has no event search or event recursion, I'd imagine a rather high amount of inconsistency. I suppose you could use Regroup, maybe run some of the City Plots, Winterfell Reserves OOH, or perhaps run Summer and Open Market OOH.

FATMOUSE said:

Yeah. Maybe they think that opponent can always cancel this card - no problem. Did anyone send it to Nate?

Rogue30 said:

I did. Still waiting for the answer.

Even that deck, Ktom, I'm not sure reaches broken levels. Partially for reasons already listed that make it difficult to recurse or find the event in Greyjoy, partly because of the built in cancel, and partly because of the "this phase" restriction on Narrow Escape. Those discard effects that you mentioned generally don't all match up on their activation phase, so I wouldn't expect mass quantities of characters to be discarded in a single phase and then brought back cheaply. Certainly, it sounds like it takes equal or more work than running 5 or 6 agendas and playing massive armies for free. I honestly think that we ought to let it ride and see how it plays out. Why should we always errata every combo possibility in the game out of existence?

Kennon said:

In this case, I think it is because of potential design limitations. Essentially, every mass discard effect begs the question "what if they have Narrow Escape?"

Honestly, my concern is less about the GJ player who tries to discard his own deck before playing Narrow Escape himself; it's more about being the GJ player who is unlikely to ever try working out a serious mill strategy again because of the one card (the built-in cancel is not comforting because GJ tends to draw slowly). It could effectively function as a silver bullet for a strategy that didn't need the countermeasure.

Of course, Greyjoy also has its own cancels external of that built into Narrow Escape. Do we have any mass discard effects though? Or have we in the past that haven't been greatly neutered (Heads on Pikes)? I'm just uncertain of how strategy breaking of a silver bullet this would be compared to Reinforcements for any challenge type, Darkstar and that Martell Army for Intrigue, or Narrow Escape itself for resets. Another factor is actually the same as I mentioned for mass discarding yourself- many of those effects come in small bursts spread over several phases, so actually the odds of hitting many characters is lowered. Of course, it there is the 8 discard army, but it really just changes the strategic timing a little to make sure that you have some method of stopping the Narrow Escape (which is something Greyjoy has a lead on anyway).

So in my raid deck, where I can consistenly hit 5-10, and up to 16 cards in a single phase I should expect my opponent to play Narrow Escape and get all those characters I just discarded from their deck into play? Yeah, then I'll stop playing this deck.

JerusalemJones said:

OR, you discard your hand to stop him from doing that and keep on milling him for 5-16 cards a turn. I don't see the problem here.

He could have a second Narrow Escape on his hand. THAT would be a problem

Hmm... I dunno, JJ, that seems to be a pretty big if there. They've got to have it in hand rather than discarded by your 15 or so cards that turn. You have to have no useable chancels in your hand, and a bunch of other stuff that you do want to hang on to rather than using the built in cancel on Narrow Escape. Even if they successfully resolve Narrow Escape, you're still playing Greyjoy with a great deal of saves versus the deck that just blew the Narrow Escape and odds are awfully low that they've got a second in hand to recover from the Valar. Or even if they do, if you won't want to go ahead and cancel the Narrow Escape at that point. And of course, as we had spoiled today for the next chapter pack, it looks like there are some other nasty tools coming up for those discard decks.