Ok... so here is another rules question:

The text on Khal dorgo (core) states:

Response: After you win a challenge, put Khal Drogo into play from your hand. At the end of the phase, return Khal Drogo to his owner's hand.

So we were wondering, what if he is already on the table and a challenge is won. Could we trigger the response? Sure, we cant put him into play, he's already in play. But, could we return him to our hand at the end of the phase?

We are thinking of it in terms of a strange mechanic to eventually bring back attachments via a location card in play.

You only have to follow the rest of that text if you choose to use the ability. Anything that starts with "Phase:" or "Response:" is optional to the player who controls that card. Therefore, the only way you need to bring Khal Drogo back into your hand is if you put him into play by using his ability.

It is true that you do not have to trigger the response, but the question being asked here is can you if you want to. I don't see any reason why you couldn't. The card should say something like "trigger this effect only while Khal Drogo is in your hand" if it were not supposed to be actionable while Khal Drago was in play. There is no "then" or "if you do" linking the two effects, so they should both work independently.

Exactly. I know it's my option to use the response. We wondered if he HAD to be in hand in order to remove him from play later. Again, it more about if he's already in play and we choose to use the response. Does he go into our hand at the end of the phase? I think so, as there is no "If so then..." bewteen the two conclusions of the response.

We know that card abilities cannot be triggered from an out of play unless the ability specifically allows you to. I'm not sure that this implies such an ability can only be triggered while they are in that out-of-play area, but that's how I would play it. To me, the effect cannot only not resolve successfully, but it cannot even initiate successfully. But I'm curious to hear ktom on this.

While we are talking about Khal Drogo and out-of-play states, what happens if you put Khal Drogo into play from your hand using his ability, but he gets killed or discarded during the phase. Is the lasting effect created by his ability able to "find" him while he's in an out-of-play area, returning him to my hand from the dead or discard pile, or does the effect just fizzle out?

Saturnine, that is good question. Cards like The Wall and Mammoth Riders from the Defenders cycle have similar abilities to Khal Drogo but specify that the card must still be in play in order to be returned to hand. It seems like it is implied that Khal Drogo should be returned to hand from play since he is put into play from hand, but I am not sure since the "if he is still in play" text is not present.

While we're discussing weird Khal Drogo corner cases, I'll quote another ruling from Rogue30's site:

You can use "put into play" effect to put a second copy of a unique card that you already have in play as a dupe on the first. At the end of the phase, the dupe would be discarded and the "original" would go back to your hand. The dupe would not go back to your hand because when it became a dupe, it stopped being "Khal Drogo" and became a traitless, titleless, textless dupe - so a second copy of "Khal Drogo" was not in play. And you could not use the dupe to save Khal Drogo from being returned to your hand at the end of the phase because you are not allowed to trigger any Response effects at the end of the phase.

schrecklich said:

That's odd, because I seem to remember a discussion on this with a different ruling, in which the Khal-Drogo-turned-dupe stays in play as well as the "original" copy of Khal Drogo. The reasoning was that the ability on Khal Drogo is self-referential and cannot apply to any other card (even with the same title). The dupe does not qualify for the lasting to return Khal Drogo to hand, because as you said, it is titleless. But that does not "transfer" the effect onto the proper Khal Drogo in play (otherwise, what would stop me from returning an opponent's Khal Drogo to hand, for example).

Note that above "ruling" is to answer typical question when you put both Khals using it's response (playing Drogo is rare thing).

Saturnine said:

Yes, I believe that's correct.

Saturnine said:

Lasting effects end when card leaves play. It is not necessary for a card to say "if it is in play".

Rogue30 said:

Ah, I see. That bit of information was missing in the quote.

OK. You guys may be getting pretty far afield on some questions that actually have some pretty simple answers.

klye said:

klye said:

schrecklich said:

schrecklich said:

The "if still in play" text was added to those other cards as a clarifying text because so many people keep asking this question.

Saturnine said:

Thanks for clarifying, ktom

So how do you distinguish between a play restriction and the effect of an ability? The "after" clauses on most Response effects are pretty clearly play restrictions. So is any explicit condition such as that on Trident Reinforcements ("Use this ability if there are at least 3 characters in your dead pile.") or an "if" clause like that on Varys ("If you have more than one opponent,") or a timing word like "Dominance." These are the kinds of things given as examples in the FAQ. You could also call the existence of valid targets a play restriction since that is also mentioned in the FAQ as being necessary for an ability with a target to initiate. I assume save/cancel responses must have a valid target even though they do not use the word choose.

The wording on Khal Drog is less clear to me:

"After you win a challenge, put Khal Drogo into play from your hand. At the end of the phase, return Khal Drogo to his owner's hand."

"After you win a challenge" is clearly a play restriction. Why is "from your hand?" Is there a general rule that whenever something says "from X" where X is some zone other than in play that the card must be in that zone for the ability to be actionable? That seems like the most plausible argument. I could also see some sort of argument involving the effect needing to be able to resolve successfully in order for it to be initiated, but I don't think that that is a general principle since I think some effects with two parts can be initiated even if only one part can resolve successfully.

Also, sorry about the confusion with the other quote. I was just quoting from Rogue30's site. He tends to save tricky rulings in the comments section of each card entry, so I usually look there first when trying to interpret a puzzling card interaction.

schrecklich said:

I think the best counter argument for this instance would be the fact that it's not split up into two different "Response:"'s. You cannot split up the text of a response like that. Some cards have two abilities that are independent of each other.

If you could choose which one to do, then the card would read:

"Response: After you win a challenge, put Khal Drogo into play from your hand."
"Response: At the end of the phase, return Khal Drogo to his owner's hand."

Each ability has a different trigger here.
Ability 1 has "After you win a challenge... do something."
Ability 2 has "At the end of the phase... do something."

You could trigger ability 2 if it's reached "At the end of the phase."

There is currently only one trigger for the ability on the card for "Response: After you win a challenge, put Khal Drogo into play from your hand. At the end of the phase, return Khal Drogo to his owner's hand." and that is "After you win a challenge... do something.". You can't trigger this ability without winning a challenge, but you also can't trigger this ability without having Khal Drogo in your hand and putting him into play. You need to fulfill the conditions of that entire sentence in order for this entire ability to be triggered.

"Then, " is used as a "when" to act on the next part of the ability. "At the end of the phase, " is the "when" for acting on this part of Khal Drogo's ability in particular. That is why "Then, " is not used. "Then, " means "do this next". "At the end of the phase, " can't possibly be next, so it's telling you when to finish using this ability.

schrecklich said:

schrecklich said:

Bomb said:

Small caveat: The end-of-the-phase framework action window does not allow for any responses to be triggered.

Saturnine said:

No problem - I was simply trying to make a point.