Ser Ilyn Payne's Marshalling Effect

By hpo357, in 2. AGoT Rules Discussion

So, I played my first game tonight and had a blast; however, I had one (probably stupid) question.

At one point, my opponent had Sansa Stark played (STR 2) as well as Winterfell Castle (+1 STR for Starks) and Summer (+2 STR) attached to Sansa.

Obviously, this totals 5 STR for resolving challenges. However, I was wondering about Ser Ilyn Payne's effect (kneel him during marshalling to kill a character with 2 STR or less). Would that effect have worked for Sansa?

I know that attachements can cancel each other out. For example, Summer gave +2 STR and Poisoned Wine would give -2 STR, leaving Sansa at her original 2 STR. I don't know, the wording on Payne's just confused me. Essentially, does Payne's effect refer to the face value on the card, or to its new strength after taking attachements and locations into effect?

Thanks for any help, and sorry if it's an exceedingly stupid question =/

Welcome to the game. Unless an ability specifically looks at the "printed strength" of a card, it will always check the current strength inclduing all modifiers.

There are strength modifiers which only apply in certain situations, e.g. while the character is participating in a challenge. Those modifiers would not affect the character during the marshalling phase, so Ser Ilyn would ignore those, but that was apparently not the case in the example you gave. So Sansa would be safe from Ser Ilyn's ability as long as the modifiers are in place.

The difference you are looking for is this:

- When a card refers to a character's "STR," it is looking for the current STR of that character - including all modifiers.

- When a card refers to a character's " printed STR," it is looking only at the ink on the character's card - ignoring all modifiers.

Got it, that makes perfect sense. Thanks very much to both of y'all for the help!