I'm having some trouble understanding the cadence of actions in the Marshaling phase. While playing last night, I had several locations with the text "Kneel this location to reduce the cost of the next [house symbol] character you play this phase by 1", or some such.

I tried to read the game's Errata & FAQ document to get a sense of how the timing of marshaling and player actions interact, but I came away more confused than when I arrived, with all this gibberish about framework actions, player actions, and these complex flowcharts.

SO I'll try asking here instead. Do you marshal your cards all at once, or one at a time so that you can take player actions in-between? How exactly am I supposed to use those location in accordance with the game's timing and action rules? Can someone explain all this stuff in layman's terms?

Thank you.

Venthrac said:

1. First Player takes an action or passes the opportunity to do so.
2. Next player (clockwise) takes an action or passes the opportunity to do so
3. Next player (clockwise) takes an action or passes the opportunity to do so
4. And so on, until you get back to the First Player again.

Playing cards from your hand during Marshaling is just another player action (that only the "Active Player" is allowed to take).

So, assuming that you were the First Player and you had only one opponent, your use of those locations would have looked like this:

1. You take an action, triggering the first location allowing you to reduce the cost of the next card you play from your hand
2. Your opponent passes
3. You take another action, triggering the second location allowing you to reduce the cost of the next card you play from your hand
4. Your opponent passes
5. You take another action, playing some character from your hand at a cost reduced by those two locations you triggered
6. Your opponent passes
7. You take another action, triggering a third location allowing you to reduce the cost of the next card you play from your hand
8. And so on...

In reality, it goes very quickly because your opponent does all that passing pretty much by assumption. Although it is important to remember that your opponent has the chance to take an action of their own ("Marshalling" or "Any Phase," but not playing a character/location/attachment from hand) between each thing they do.

The real key to this timing in Marshaling is that spending gold to play a character/location/attachment from your hand is a player action the same as any other "Marshalling" or "Any Phase" effect on any other card.

Thank you Klom, the way you just explained it was far clearer to me than the FAQ document.

Maybe they'll let you write it next time :-)

So let's assume this example (this is a question by the way):

"You have Hall of heroes already in play, you kneel it to lower the cost of the next lion character you play this phase by 2"

"You pay 1 gold and play western fiefdoms, you kneel it to lower the cost of the next lion card you play this phase by 1"

"You play shadowblack lane, you kneel if to plower the cost of the next intrigue character you play this phase by 1" - this is not a house card

"You play Sunset Sea (kraken+lion)" - it has 0 cost but you have lowered its cost to -1 and round it to 0 innadvertedly from western fiefdoms. "You discard it from play to reduce the cost of next lion character you play by 2"

So now you play Jaime Lannister, because he is a lion character he will be cost reduced by 5 (2 from hall of heroes kneeling, 1 from shadowblack lane, 2 from discarding sunset sea, you've already spent western fiefdoms). So his cost will be reduced to -1 rounded to 0.

Next lannister character you play will have to be payed full gold.

It this sequence right? I know it's not the brightest play of the world, but is it how it works? (actions results will be pending until condition is met, no matter what?)

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

Can someone explain why this marshaling action resolves stay pending while Val's condition must be met on the next action opportunity.

sandokas said:

The thing you may be missing here is that all of the "reduce the cost of the next card/character you play this phase by X" effects are lasting effects. It isn't that the "action results will be pending" so much as the effect of the action is to place a certain condition on the player for a duration (this phase) specified by the card.

sandokas said:

Thank you ktom, you are the master. :-)