Does kneeling Northern Fiefdoms reduce the cost of King Robb's Companions by 2?

Nope. You either kneel the location for a reducer, or for influence. Not both.

Either you trigger fiefdoms' marshalling effect (you don't pay influence then) or you pay/kneel influence (you don't trigger fiefdoms' marshalling effect). Moreover it seems like you want to play two actions at once (playing Companions and triggering fiefdoms) - you must trigger fiefdoms before you play Companions or left it standing for their effect.

Keep in mind that reducers are not resource generators (e.g. lands in MtG). They are used as actions in their own right, with their own cancel and response opportunities.

For your example, you will be looking at something like:

1 You kneel Northern Fiefdoms to reduce the cost of the next Stark card by 1 gold
1.1 All players pass on cancels
1.2 All players pass on Responses

2 You play Robb's Companions
...

Even kneeling influence to pay for cards/effects is not the same as using resource generators. Influence is knelt as part of the cost of cards/effects due to card text (Ambush being an exception since it is in the rules), similar to kneeling two Stark characters as a cost to playing Lethal Counterattack.

So as you realise that there is no "As I play Robb's Companions, I kneel Northern Fiefdoms to reduce Robb's Companions cost by one", you are set.

What you could do, though, is the following: kneel the Fiefdoms for the reducer, then stand them with Steel Link, then play Robb's Companions and use the Influence of the Fiefdoms.

What about narrow sea? Can you kneel for influence, and then, with narrow seas own text, discard it from play to reduce cost by a further 2? As you dont have to kneel narrow sea (?) for its effect, as opposed to say, ice which clearly states that it must be knelt.

Underworld40k said:

The timing doesn't work. Discarding Narrow Sea to lower the cost of your next Stark character is a player action. Marshalling Robb's Companions is another player action. Each player action has to resolve completely before the next one can be initiated. If you use Narrow Sea first, then it's not on the table anymore when you play the Companions, so you can't use the Influence. If you play the Companions first, they're already in play before you've got a chance to discard Narrow Sea.

What you can do is kneel NS to use its influence for lowering the cost of the companions, then discard it to reduce the cost of another character. As you noticed, NS doesn't need to be knelt to use its effect.

Ooooooo, that could mean we have been making a fundamental mistake with how we have played the game since day 1 (although its not been that long).

Would that apply to Fiefdoms and 2 gold reducing locations like godswoods? We read the cards as giving a cumulative effect (kneel a Godswood and a Northern Fiefdom to reduce by 3 ) as they state the next 'house' character played so we reasoned that until a character is played the effect is still active. Or is the narrow sea a different example as it is being used to create influence and then reduce cost?

Underworld40k said:

That is correct. You can kneel two or more reducers before you play a card. But the issue above was about using influence to pay for King's Robb Companions, which you don't do before you play the card but as you play the card. So you cannot use the influence on a Narrow Sea to pay for King's Robb Companions and simultaneously discard it to reduce their cost; it just doesn't work timing-wise.

Saturnine said:

Phew, thank the Seven for that!

Underworld40k said:

Sorry, obviously I didn't express myself clearly.

Of course you can kneel a Fiefdom, then kneel Godswood, then discard Narrow Sea, then kneel another Fiefdom to reduce the cost of a character by, in this case, 6.

The interaction between NS and Robb's Companions is different, though. It works like this:

King Robb's Companions says:

During the marshalling phase, you may pay any amount of King Robb's Companions' cost by kneeling that amount of influence.

Let's say you have a Godswood and a Narrow Sea in play, four Gold in your Gold Pool and King Robb's Companions in Hand.

You could do the following.

Scenario A:

You kneel the Godswood to reduce the cost of the next House Stark character to play this phase by 2. That's one player action.

Then you discard Narrow Sea to reduce the cost of the next House Stark character to play this phase by 2. That's another player action. Narrow Sea is in your discard pile.

Then you play King Robb's Companions from your hand. That's another player action. It costs you one gold to do so. You could kneel one influence instead of paying one gold, because the ability of King Robb's Companions allows you to do so. But you don't have any Influence left. Narrow Sea is in your discard pile, and you can't use it no more.

Scenario B:

You kneel the Godswood to reduce the cost of the next House Stark character to play this phase by 2. That's one player action.

Then you play King Robb's Companions from your hand. That's another player action. It costs you three gold to do so. You can pay any amount of the cost by kneeling influence instead, so you could kneel Narrow Sea and pay two more gold. King Robb's Companions hit the table and are in play now.

You can now discard Narrow Sea to reduce the cost of your next Stark (or Bara) character. But for the companions it's too late, they're in play already.

Does that make it clear?

Starblayde said:

The old gods more like it!

Right, so for me to fix this in my head, because narrow sea would have to be triggered twice (once for influence then for the discard) its incompatible with king robbs companions from

the perspective of being used for both effects because the influence has to be triggered when KRC is played and the cost reduction need to come before which is impossible as it would be discarded and thus unable to produce influence?.

However what if i kneel a godswood, a crossroad and hand of the king, in that order for the companions? Looking at the flow chart, and combined with my rather obvious iffy understanding of the timing, i get

Player action > kneel godswood > response/saves > effect (next character -2 cost) > player action kneel crossroads > response/save > effect reduce KRC by 1 > player action kneel hand of king > response/save > effect reduce KRC by 2 > player action play KRC for 0 > response/save.

Or does the kneel influence of KRC get paid as a single player action (kneel any amount of influence from KRC text)?

Apparently ninja'ed, assuming my run through in this post is correct i believe i have it down now, thanks for clearing it up

Underworld40k said:

This is where you're going astray. You do not kneel the influence to reduce the cost of KRC. You kneel to pay the cost -- simultaneously to spending any gold to pay for them -- during the initiation of your player action "play KRC". Kneeling the influence to pay for a cost is not a separate player action, it is part of the same action you are paying for.

Underworld40k said:

That's right so far.

Underworld40k said:

No. Nonononono.

See, kneeling the influence is not a player action at all. It's paying a cost, which is part of the initiation of the action "Play KRC from hand".

It's more like this:

Player action #1: Initiate Action: kneel godswood > response/cancel > effect (next character -2 cost)

Player action #2: Initiate Action: play KRC/pay costs/kneel Hand of the King - cost equivalent to two gold paid/kneel crossroads - cost equivalent to one more gold paid = all costs paid > response/cancel > effect (KRC in play).

@Ratatoskr: Time for a shot

Saturnine said:

If you don't mind, I'll grab a coffee instead...

Right, got it!

I think.

It boils down to KRC making the influence a part of the cost and thus makes it all one action to play KRC rather then a series of individual player actions.

Its much easier for me to do this with the cards in front of me!

Underworld40k said:

Basically, yes, although if you want to get the terminology exactly right, you'd have to say something like KRC allows you to replace any amount of the gold cost to play it with kneeling that amount of influence. Which is, incidentally, pretty much what the card does say. But I'm nitpicking.

Indeed it does, and the nitpicking is welcome as im the sort that wants to have the rules down and sorted in his head to avoid situations like this at the table.