Here is the scenario I played Kings Landing Assassin which says after Kings Landing Assassin comes out of the shadows reduce a character's str by 2 and if it is reduced to zero it is killed. My friend had a loyal guard as a duplicate on a character with 2 str. He discarded the loyal guard to save his character. I had thought that even though he discarded the loyal guard for the save the characters str is still 0 and should still die. He insisted that it was saved and just had 0 str for the rest of the phase. I did try looking this up in the FAQ which i had on hand but could not find it. And i swore that i remember seeing somewhere that only way to save characters from str effects like that was to raise its str with a effect of your own. Can anyone confirm this for me?

Your friend is wrong. Here's what you're looking for (page nine of the FAQ):

(3.20) Terminal Effects
A "terminal effect" is any effect that would
cause a card to become Moribund and would
still cause that card to be Moribund even after
the card was saved.
A card cannot be saved from a terminal effect
unless that saving effect also removes it from
the terminal state.
For example: Flame-Kissed (CORE T103)
is played on Selyse Baratheon (CORE B70),
who has a STR of 2. Selyse cannot be saved
from the effect of Flame-Kissed unless the
save also removes her from the terminal state,
either by boosting her STR, discarding the
Flame-Kissed card, or removing Selyse from
the play area. Viserys Targaryen (CORE T108)
is an example of a card with a save effect that
would remove itself from the terminal effect of
Flame-Kissed.

Thanks for showing me where that was i can believe i missed that when i was looking through the FAQ last night

You're welcome.

BTW - how did your friend get Loyal Guard on a noble-crested character with STR 2? There's no Bara or Neutral one. Did he play CS Sansa, CS Robb or Doran OOH, or were there more reducers active at the time? Just curious.

Ratatoskr said:

Bastard in Hiding?

Rogue30 said:

Possible, but he said the char in question had STR 2 and the Bastard has STR 1. Maybe he was just not 100% exact, though. ~Besides, who's playing Bastard in Hiding, really?

Ratatoskr said:

Beginners? Most probably Threat from the north was revealed.

You know what I was thinking about that when i looked up loyal guard and saw the text. I think he played it on a wrong character and neither of us noticed. It was the knight that gave +1 str to all Lords IIRC.

So Ratatoskr's intuition was correct.

Yes yes it was. My friend just started playing and i have only been playing for a couple of months so we still have some of those Oh you shouldnt have been able to play that discoveries two rounds later moments.

Mortem_Angelis said:

Believe me, those don't go away.

Ratatoskr said:

Yeah, just wait until you find another friend or two and try to play melee with the Titles. When I first started playing, we'd do at least one illegal thing every round with all of the supports/opposes and extra strength bonuses to keep track of, plus four players' worth of cards in play.

schrecklich said:

I am normally very attentive in games like these and know exactly what's going on all the time, however in this game it's nearly impossible to keep track of everything in a melee game. I find myself forgetting about title bonuses sometimes. Some of us forget about Supports/Opposes often and then we catch ourselves undoing a challenge because of it. I find myself unable to track whose locations do what when they are out. If a player has 5 or more characters out, I find it difficult to keep track of all their abilities and unseen bonuses in strengths etc. Sometimes I can't tell how many cards are in peoples hands because they put them down and then I mix them up with the unused plots pile(which with all due respect, is retarded to not have distinguishable different backs since they are never mixed in with the regular decks!). Then I have an entire plan devised but get distracted by someone doing something. I forget to either play a card or use the Responses or abilities because it takes so long to get to the point that I can do stuff. One example of this would be when you have a response that allows you to draw a card if a specific condition arises. Sometimes this condition almost never happens and when it finally does, I completely forget.

Either I'm terrible at this game or it's really too much stuff to follow. Now maybe the more competitive players will go through each timing window down to the tee just to make sure they are giving everyone a chance to do things when the timing window arises, but my friends and I just don't do that yet and it would probably slow our game down a lot at this point.

schrecklich said:

Ya this actually happened in our earlier melee that day where i attacked the title i was supposed to support and we didnt realize untill dominance that round. But its good to know other people forget too.

Bomb said:

Like anything with a lot of moving parts, you learn to follow it all as you gain experience, and the things that fall into the background noise, you ultimately don't worry about.