If an opponent moves first and declares all their characters as attacking, can I attack on the next round? What I have tentatively gathered from the rules book i that once a character is kneeled you can no longer attack/defend with that character.

If you have a character with, say, intrigue, but your opponent does not, can you declare an intrigue challenge against them and have it go as unopposed?

I am absolutely 100% brand new to these types of games so the fact that there are soooo many little rules is a bit overwhelming and makes my head hurt!

Daenerys said:

The cost of attacking and defending is kneeling. If you cannot kneel (in this case, you can't because you already are kneeling), then you cannot attack or defend.

Daenerys said:

Yes, you can. And in addition to the effects of a successful challenge, the attacker also receives one power token from the bank to be placed on his house card for the attack being undefended.

Daenerys said:

Characters must be standing in order to be declared as an attack or defender. So if your opponent is going first and ends up kneeling all of their characters attacking you, they are going to be in trouble when it is your turn (in the same Challenge Phase) to attack because they will have no characters available to defend. Assuming you didn't kneel all of your characters defending, you are essentially going to walk all over them.

The terminology I need to make sure of is that you ask "can I attack in the next round." If your opponent is going first, when you get to attack, it is your turn, but the same phase and the same round. The "next round" would come after the Dominance, Standing, and Taxation phase - back to when you choose your next plots. So "next round" is something completely separate, and you both will have a chance to attack "next round," after all of your characters stand in the Standing Phase.

Daenerys said:

In short, challenges can go unopposed either because the defender chooses not to declare defenders, or because they are forced not to declare defenders because they haven't got any characters to legally declare.

Or, yeah. What ktom said.

Yeah, because we are new at this we have had trouble understanding the rules and the finer parts of the strategy involved with such a game. We read that part that said that once you kneel your character can't attack or defend against anything else that that meant that another opponent couldn't attack our characters either, which I suppose is true but we never really understood the whole "unopposed" thing, either. I dunno, I just get confused easily with things like this that have sooo much detail in how it has to be done especially with nobody to clarify! Its gonna take a lot of practice to get used to! Also, sorry about confusing the terms, I knew what I meant but obviously that is no help when trying to ask others questions!

It sounds to me as if you think of attack as attacking another player's characters. But you are attacking the player, not his characters, so his characters don't factor into your ability to attack.