I was wondering how Narrow Escape (NE) worked with House Bolton characters changing control. Consider this scenario:

A military challenge is won against a player with The Bastard's Elite (TBE), who decides to use TBE as claim. TBE will flip control to the attacker, but is moribund, so it heads to a dead pile.

First question: Whose dead pile does TBE go int?

Later that phase, the House Bolton player (the owner of TBE), uses NE to restore all of his characters.

Second question: Who gets the restored TBE?

Thanks in advance!

When a card leaves play, it always goes to the owner's dead pile/discard pile/shadows/whereever.

A control change lasts until control changes again or the card leaves play. So it would come back under its owner's control.

The duration of control change is spelled out in the FAQ.

The logic can be followed without memorizing the individual entries, though. Whenever a card leaves play, all lasting effects (gets +2 STR, loses an intrigue icon, changes control, etc.) are lost as the card leaves play. That means the card will leave play under its owner's control - and therefore always go to its owner's out-of-play area. So The Bastard's Elite will always go to its owners dead pile when it is killed.

Narrow Escape does not restore the cards it returns to their "pre-death" state. Attachments remain lost, power remains lost, "until the end of the phase" STR increases do not apply. So there is no reason to think that the lost "take control" effect will reassert itself when NE is played. So NE will always return The Bastard's Elite to its owner's control, even if it was under someone else's control when it was killed.

Thanks for the clarification, guys. When you explain it, it sounds obvious, but I perused the FAQ to no avail. Must look harder next time, thanks!

so the defender can satisfy claim with TBE before control changes?

papalorax said:

Yes. Indeed he must do it before. Passive abilities resolve after the all the framework events have resolved (in this case, the framework events are 1) Determine winner, 2) implement challenge result 3) reward unopposed 4) award renown). See the FAQ flowchart for a detailed breakdown.