1. Ser IIyn Payne (House Lannister) says "kill a character with STR 2 or lower.

Question: Do you count any attachments or locations that add to the STR. or just the character?

2. Grand Master Pycelle (House Lannister) says "After an opponent's effect reveals one or more cards, reveal the top card of your dect and put it into your hand.

Question: Does this mean for example when a player plays a plot card and says search your deck for a location, reveal it and put it into your hand. Can I then draw a card when Grand Master Pycelle is in play?

3. What is the Lord trait, Dragon and Bastard trait?

4. When counting STR. during dominance phase do you also include any bonuses like locations and attachments?

5. Can a player have more then one attachments on his character?

6. The plot card (Snowed under) from house Stark, does the person who played the card also choose one of his kneeling characters?

7. I need explaining how attachments work. I understand you attach them to your character but when it says kneel to save a character, does this mean the attachment is kneeled but not the character? Also when it says to kneel and discard, why doesn't it just say discard?

8. One more question. All the cards have some kinda trait on them like stealth, deadly and renown, but many others have winterfell, small councel, army, conditon and so on. Is there any cards in the LCG core set that uses these or are they there for future expansions.

Sorry for all the questions, but I really enjoy this game and I know I will enjoy it even more when I play it correctly. Thank-you all who take the time to answer my questions. And keep on gaming!!!!

1. A character's STR is, at all times, the total of it's base (printed) STR and all applicable modifiers. Since Ilyn Payne simply looks at a character's STR, you must consider all modifiers on him when determining the characters STR; attachments, locations, events, whatever

2. Yes. Whenever the word "reveal" is used in an opponent's effect - plot, event, character, whatever - you may use Pycelle. Note that you do not technically "draw" the card with Pycelle - you reveal it and put into your hand.

3. See the bold, italic words right under the picture at the top of the text box on most cards? Those are traits. They allow for additional interactions between cards through effects. They really don't mean anything except when a card effect refers to a trait. Traits beyond the written ones can be gained, just like icons or STR, as well.

4. See the answer to #1. Whenever you look at a card's STR, you include all bonuses (and penalties) unless something specifically says to only look at the card's printed STR.

5. Sure. Why not?

6. Yup. The card says "At the beginning of the standing phase, choose one kneeling character or location controlled by each player . Return all chosen cards to their owner's hands." The Stark player is a player, too, right? Of course, he's going to choose his worst and everyone else's best to bounce back to hand, so he's still in better position. The plot would say something like "...controlled by each opponent ..." if it didn't include the guy who revealed the plot. And just in case there is some confusion, if you choose one of my characters to return to my hand, all of its attachments would be discarded since the plot doesn't say to return attachments to hand along with the character.

7. Attachments kneel separately from whatever they are attached to. So when you kneel a character (to attack, defend, use an ability, whatever), you do not kneel any of the attachments on it. Same with kneeling the attachments for an effect; it does not kneel the character automatically when you kneel an attachment on it.

Many card costs will say "kneel and discard;" attachments, characters, locations, etc. When it says this, you have to be able to both kneel the card and discard it in order to pay the cost. There are effects that will kneel attachments and locations. So if you have a "kneel and discard" attachment that is already knelt, you would not be able to pay the cost. It's just a slightly "higher" cost than simply discarding a card to get an effect.

8. Stealth, Deadly, Renown and the like are NOT traits. They are keywords. There are two main differences that will help you tell the difference between traits and keywords:

A . Traits are written on cards in bold, italic type. Keywords are in regular text.

B . Traits mean nothing in and of themselves. There is no special "power" given to a card that has the "Dragon" trait, the "Winterfell" trait, etc. Traits only have meaning when they are referred to the effect spelled out in the text of a card. Keywords like Stealth, Deadly, Renown, etc., on the other hand, do grant a specific "power" to the card that has them. These "powers" are defined in the rules document.

So your question about whether or not there are cards that use these "traits" in the LCG Core Set has a two-fold answer the way you asked it. The cards that have keywords like Stealth, Renown, Deadly, etc. "use themselves." They don't need anything other than themselves to use their keywords (as specified in the rules). As for the actual traits, there are a lot of cards in the Core Set that refer to various traits. Ghost interacts with cards that have the Night's Watch trait. The event "Muster" from the Baratheon deck works with cards that have the Knight trait. But certainly not all of the traits you see on cards are used or referred to in card text or abilities. Sometimes, the traits are just for flavor or to recall the books on which the game is based. I mean, if you read the books, it's really kinda cool that "Lord Eddard's Chambers" has the Winterfell trait, but "Queen Cersei's Chambers" has the King's Landing trait, despite the fact that they are essentially the same card for different Houses.

Hope all that helps.

Thanks a million KTOM I feel like I'm one step closer to understanding this game. I can see there is a deep strategy to this game and thats what I like about it. You clarified everything for thanks again!!!!

For all the veterans out there --

In the month or so that I've been following these discussion boards, I've seen a fair number of threads such as this, that say "Hey, I'm new, and here are a bunch of questions..." I've started a few of those threads myself. We're very lucky that ktom (and others) are so patient.

So here's my question: Since the release of the LCG Core Set, has there been an increase in these newbie threads? If so, that might be anecdotal evidence that the LCG format has attracted players who would otherwise not have bought the game. (I'm one of those...)

hard to say. I think the types of questions that are popping up are more newbie orientied but i do not think there are more questions (even 'older' players didn't liek to use the search feature and just post a new thread )

Speaking of the search feature -- has anyone found a way to search just the AGOT forums? When I do a search, I get results from all the FFG forums, which is sometimes a pain.

Rather than start a new thread, I hope no one minds if I take this question on here.

Had my first game last night (4 players), and we had a small issue with the wording on one of the plots, Holding the Trident. It gives a bonus to your characters if any of your opponents have more characters than you. Now I read that as if any opponents have more than, but the other players read it as you effectively nominate / choose an opponent and if they have more than you then you get the bonus.

How does this work? Thanks.

"While you control fewer characters than any opponent, each character you control gets +2 STR."

The keyword there is "any." You look at all of your opponents and if you have fewer characters that any one of them, your characters get the bonus.

In this game, there is no "effectively." If the card doesn't specify it, you don't do it. If you (or another player) were supposed to choose just one of your opponents to compare character number with (and ignore the number of characters held by the others), the card would say to make such a choice. Since Holding the Trident doesn't tell anyone to choose just one opponent for the comparison, you look at everyone that meets the definition of "opponent."

ktom said:

So my interpretation was correct? Thank you very much for responding.

Sorry to bug, but we had another query pop up today in game that we couldn't find an answer for in the rules.

Robert's Bedchamber (I don't have the cards at hand to check, but its in the core starter), says that it can be attached to your house card instead. Whats the benefits and disadvantages of doing this?

Thanks.

The_Big_Show said:

If you attach the card to the house card it counts for all purposes as an attachment. It depends on the play situation if this turns out to be a benefit or a disadvantage, e.g. assume you already have 3 locations in play and you want or must play fleeing to the wall (discard down to 3 locations) as your next plot, it would be smart to play Robert´s chambers as an attachment and not as a location.

The_Big_Show said:

If you play the Chambers as an attachment, it doesn't count as a location. So opponents could only go after it with anti-attachment effects; anti-location effects couldn't touch it. So it all comes down to whether you think you're going to see more anti-attachment or anti-location effects. Then you play the Chambers as the opposite so that your opponent is less likely to get rid of it, letting you keep your resources on the table longer.

In the pre-LCG days, you could usually trust your opponent to be playing more anti-location effects than anti-attachment effects. So it was usually safer to play the Chambers as an attachment (unless your opponent was Targ; they have a lot of anti-attachment stuff). In the LCG environment, there isn't a lot of either, yet, so the benefits of playing it as a location or an attachment may generally be a wash (again, unless you're playing against Targ or someone already Chella on the table, that sort of thing).

We didn't think of that, but it makes sense. Thanks very much for the help.

I maybe need to rephrase question number 4 from the beging of this form.

Question: When you kneel a character the attachment does not kneel correct? During the dominance phase it says to count all standing characters str. plus gold. If one of my characters are knelt but the attachment titled LORDSHIP that says (During dominance phase attached character gets +4 str.) do I get to count the +4 str. even thought my character is knelt?

kingsoyboy said:

That´s correct.

kingsoyboy said:

The charachter will get the +4 strength in the dominance phase, however that won´t help you winning dominance because the charachter is knelt and so doesnt count for dominance.

Non- charachter cards usually don´t count strength for the dominance phase, but there have been some exceptions in the past which specifically said that they count additional strength for the dominance phase.

Example for such a card, see: www.tzumainn.com/agot/cards/card.php

The overall point is that the sword cannot wield itself. The attachment grants STR to the character, but it has no STR of its own. The bonus is part of the character's total STR, so to be counted in Dominance, you have to be able to count that character's total STR. If the character is kneeling, you can't do that, whether the attachment is standing or not.

"And just in case there is some confusion, if you choose one of my characters to return to my hand, all of its attachments would be discarded since the plot doesn't say to return attachments to hand along with the character."

Does this included duplicates on the selected character? Are they discarded or returned to your hand?

If a card leaves play, all of its attachments and duplicates are discarded (technically, they become moribund as a passive effects after the card becomes moribund itself). Note however that duplicates are NOT attachments (so an effect that looks for a card without attachments will find a card with duplicates but no attachments). Also note that you can discard a duplicate from a card to save it from leaving play (which means its attachments won't be discarded).