1) What happens if we drew the westeros card that forbids RAID orders and a player places a raid order?

2) In the example above, if the player has the raven icon, can he change his misplaced icon?

3) In the example above, what happends to the special one-time orders (from Class of Kings expansion) that happen in the raid phase?

Thanks

we have always played that if you put an order that is forbidden by westeros cards, then that order is taken off the board and it is as if you did not put an order there.

Aegon_V said:

We did too, but I'm thinking that it's not really supported by the rules, then it happend when someone had the Raven icon so the player argued that he should be allowed to change it... arguments ensued. (probably because it was so late;))

dacloutier said:

What I mean by this is that the rules say something about the raid phase not happenning at all that turn.

Also, if a player plays too many special orders, does he choose which one he removes?

Anyone else?

we let the person highest on the iron throne, not that person, pick. it is not popular but it cuts down on it happening

and about the raven people wanting to change raid orders. "in" the game world some thing has happened to make raid orders not work so even if played then they just did not get to the troops. it just gives the person with the raven chances to play "bad" tokens and i say bad as in not allowed to see the game board and then make adjustments.

Playing an order that is forbidden by the Westeros cards is kinda like playing a 'consolidate power' order on a sea area. It has no effect and is removed, period. No penalty or harsh words.

I have actually witnessed games where a player deliberately placed an order token on an area where it could not have an effect (e.g. like consolidate power on sea) to bluff. If I remember correctly, he was out of move/attack, defend and support tokens and we were not allowed to place raid orders but he wanted everyone to think that he would attack somewhere where in fact he did not. That's not only in character of the books but also very much so for a strategy game.

So...technically, why not place a raid order and then remove it after all order tokens are revealed? It's not like that's cheating.

We flog the person that made the mistake.

Then they lose the order that they placed. But you bring up an interesting point -- if they can place two star orders, but place three, which gets removed? I like the idea that the Iron Throne holder gets to choose.

An even harsher punishment would be that they lose ALL star orders placed that round. Ouch.

I tell all players at the start of the game to keep their star orders separate from the other orders. That way, the chances of making the mistake drop to almost zero. I also tell them that if a card saying march +1 or raids cannot be played, they should immediately pull those tokens out of their stack. If they make the mistake later in the game, we can all say that they were fairly warned. This cuts down on complaining.

If the person places an illegal order, we just discard it when the orders are revealed.

This seems fair and increases the bluffing / diplomacy portion of the game.

If the person places too many star orders, we just let the Throne leader downgrade one of them to a normal version. If there is no normal version left unplaced, he loses it entirely. Likewise for supply errors. Let the Throne remove one piece of his choice to put the person back under supply limits when you notice the mistake - this cuts down on people deliberately violating supply for advantage. If it JUST happened, we often just let them roll back to the start of the round.

We play both these above (which should really have had an equivalent rule in the official book as it is such a common issue) and one additional house-rule: Contrary to both the rule book and the FAQ, we play that ALL armies and units MUST have an order, always. Even if it's illegal and must be removed on reveal.

This prevents 100% safe alliances, where you KNOW he is not going to attack you because his army has no order. Not having this too often led to ridiculous amounts of trust and unbreakable alliances, which made for a very short and boring games. ie Greyjoy and Lannister truce for 4-5 turns, whereon one of them wins immediately. In the spirit of one of the games inspirations; Diplomacy; you should never ever be PERFECTLY sure of your ally, as this is dull - and really, how could you ever know in real life with utter certainty that he did not give a secret contingency order to his troops?

If there's some doubt about your trustworthiness, your opponent will also play an order. And he may even place a just-in-case destructive or disruptive order. And sometimes they get turned over and these provide an opportunity too good to refuse, when one person has been trusting and the other suspicious - leaving the suspicious person in a position to utterly decimate the trusting person. It's then up to him whether he takes advantage of it.

IMO these should have been part of the core rules.

My advice is that prevention is better than cure. Rather than mess around with penalties, simply enforce a method of play that prevents the error occuring in the first place.

If an event disallowing the play of Raid orders is drawn, all players should immediately place their raid orders face up in front of them. Similarly if any other orders are disallowed.

The player who is not permitted to place special order tokens should also place all his special order tokens face up in front of him. Each other player should place 2, 3 or 4 special order tokens (depending on position on the King's Court track) face down in front of him. When everyone has placed their orders on the board, turn up the face-down order tokens to verify that they are special order tokens. Remember that any tokens already face-up count towards the requirement.

I made it even easier by building a set of racks for order tokens. First, this makes placing tokens easier, because you can see them all the same way you can see your tiles on a Scrabble rack. Secondly, with smaller secondary racks sized to hold 2, 3, 4 or 5 tokens, it becomes very easy to verify that everyone has the right number of tokens set aside.

It is still possible for someone to screw up by flipping a face-down token at the appropriate time only to reveal that it is not a special order token at all. It's a lot harder to do, though, and hard enough that I have no qualms about the player who does it getting disadvantaged by rectification. If this does happen, that player simply loses all special order tokens on the board.

Now, that's all about enforcing the rules as written. For anyone who wants to expand the game a little to allow devious not-quite-cheats(-in-your-book), this won't work so well.

However, if somebody does place illegal orders to bluff, whether explicitly allowed by your group or not, I see no reason for punishment beyond removing the orders immediately upon revelation. If you've been bluffed by that action, you really have no cause for complaint, as order token is theoretically simultaneous anyway.

Hmmm... FFG, I don't suppose you could be persuaded to include blank order tokens in the new edition? If there were sufficient blanks for each house, everyone could bluff to their hearts' content without needing to place illegal orders to do it.