Hey guys,

Just checking in here to be absolutely sure (and to have something concrete other than a few threads and an entry in the FAQ). I was playing as Greyjoy against Lanni and Stark. Stark had whichever direwolf attached to his character that can be knelt to kill a character STR 1 or lower. He did so to take out my Maester Wendamyr (kneel to save a Greyjoy character from kill/discard). Wendamyr was standing, so in my understanding, the wolf makes him moribund, I can kneel him to save him, bring him back on to the table, and then kneel 2 influence to stand him (the second part of his effect). Is this the right way to play it? My roommate thinks it's ridiculous because it's nearly impossible to kill him (and I think it's ridiculous he gets 2 power for military challenges, has 2 claim all the time, and has multiple copies of the plot that lets him launch multiple military challenges, but that's a different issue!).

On a related note, after he kneels the wolf, can I kneel a Longbow (+2 STR) or the location that gives me +1 STR for each Warship I kneel to save him? My understanding of the rules is that, once the wolf targets him, he's moribund, so if I kneel anything that gives him +STR, that's great and all, he can go to the grave at 3 STR instead of 1. The answer to this is more to make sure I understand the crazy flowcharts that are in the FAQ (and by crazy, I mean initially daunting but ultimately straight-forward and helpful).

Well, the only mistake I see you making here is that saves happen before the character ever becomes moribund.

Once a card is moribund, there is no coming back. It can take part in the Responses before it physically leaves the table (in this game's version of "on the way out"), but nothing is going to stop it from leaving play.

Save and cancel effects are the only true interrupt effects in this game. They take place between the initiation and resolution of other effects. So since it is the resolution (ie, completion) of a kill effect that makes a card moribund (and on the way to the dead pile), the save effect actually steps in between the initiation and resolution of the kill effect, preventing the card from ever becoming moribund in the first place. Said another way, since a card that is saved from being killed is considered to have never been killed in the first place, it is also considered to never have become moribund, either.

So the kill effect is initiated, gunning for Wendamyr. He kneels to save himself, then uses the second part of his save ability to stand himself. Then, the kill effect resolves - unsuccessfully. Your end result is the same, you just need to clean up the explanation of it to talk about the save "interrupting" the kill instead of "bringing him back" from the dead/moribund.

(Oh, and tell you're friend all he has to do to kill Wendamyr is have more kill effects than you have influence; no sweat. )

On the "can I bump his STR?" question, you are correct that it becomes a question of timing. Once Grey Wind is triggered to kill the 1 STR character, you run into two separate problems. The first is that you're going to need to interrupt the initiation and the resolution of Grey Wind's effect if you want to change the STR before the kill. Since only save and cancel effects can interrupt an effect, there really isn't an effect out there that can interrupt Grey Wind's kill and raise the STR without also saving/canceling the effect (which means you don't need the STR increase). The other issue is that even if there was a "get's +1 STR" interrupt out there, the "1 STR" requirement in Grey Wind's effect is a target requirement. Even if you could bump the STR between choosing the target and killing the target (which you can't; as mentioned, there is no effect in the game that can do that), the target has already been legally chosen. You can't "undo" a target choice once it is made.

So raising the STR of the character after it has been targeted/chosen by Grey Wind isn't going to help because it will not undo the choice of target - even if the effect timing could be worked out.

Lethuin said:

just a quick note Storm of Swords and After the Mummer's Ford are the 2 plots which allow multiple military challenges and neither can be ran in multiples (Core Rulebook pg 24). You might have meant that he was running 1 of each but I wanted to be sure.

Thanks for the replies, ktom and Darksbane. ktom, that cleared everything up. Darksbane, you just made my day by pointing that out. However, why are there other cards that say 'Limit one per plot deck' (such as Valar), if there's a rule against having more than one per plot deck in general?

Probably a difference in when the rules were being made about limits in the plot deck and when the plot was actually written.