A simple question here:

In french, we have a translation mistake on High ground, the card says: challenges: kneel High ground to choose and stand an in-House Army character.

Does it mean I can stand an in-House army I control, or may I stand an opponent in-House Army he controls

hope it's clear, and please don't ask why this question.. mmm (Valar Dohaeris maybe) ^^

K.

Kordovan said:

Ok that makes sense. Thx

ktom said:

Does it mean that if *I* play The Battle of the Blackwater (I'm triggering the plot: effect) and my opponent wins a challenge, then the character or location he can play must be of my house?

The Battle of the Blackwater
Type: Event House: Lannister
Epic Battle.
House Lannister only.
Plot: After the dominance phase this round, there is an epic phase during which each player may initiate a single Intrigue challenge with normal claim. The winner of each challenge may put into play an in-House character or location from his or her hand. (Place this card next to your plot deck until the end of this epic phase.)

Plus, it doesn't sound very logic to me. Replace "in-house" by "Dragon", "unique" or what else, the keyword applies to the character. "in-house" on the other hand would be the only keyword that doesn't?

Ankha said:

Not at all. Hight Ground refers to the Controller of the card. Battle of the Blackwater refers to the winner of the challenge. There's the difference.

Ankha said:

You are overgeneralizing here in a big way.

When I said that you always read the effect from the point of view of the person triggering it, that doesn't mean that everything becomes a default to that person. The effect can specify a shift in the perspective of an effect - particularly when Player A's effect requires Player B to make some sort of choice. That's what is happening with the Battle of the Blackwater.

Here's how High Ground works: the player triggers it and chooses an "in-House Army character," meaning that the target restrictions for the effect are "character with the Army trait" and "character from your House." But for "character from your House," whose House are we talking about? The logic of my earlier answer is that it is the House of the person doing the choosing. That should make sense, right?

So, do you why it works exactly the same way for Battle of the Blackwater? The Plot effect is not putting the character/location into play when it is triggered. Rather, it creates the lasting effect that creates the Epic phase and its consequences. When you get to those actual consequences, the cards says the winner of the challenge resolves the "put into play an in-House character or location" effect. So who is putting that character/location into play? The person who triggered the event and created the Epic phase? No, the winner of the challenges is putting the character/location into play. So the "from your in-House" restriction on the character/location is read from the point of view of the winner of the challenge - whomever that may be - instead of the person who triggered the plot.

So that's the overgeneralization. When a card says "in-House," or creates any other condition, the condition must be read from the point of view of the person triggering the card - unless the effect says otherwise. Battle of the Blackwater says otherwise. Essentially, it comes down to the fact that "in-House" is take from the point of view of the person doing the choosing/resolving the effect.

Ankha said:

"In-House" is not a keyword. It is a card characteristic, like "with an INT icon" or "printed STR 2 or lower."

Logically speaking, you cannot replace "in-House" with a trait in your thinking because the two are not equivalent. Reason being because traits are independent characteristics - the card either has it or it doesn't. "In-House," however, is a dependent characteristic. It only has meaning as a comparison to something else - namely the House card of some player. So you cannot apply the same logic to "a character with X trait" that you would to "a character with a characteristic that matches something else."

ktom said:

If the game was using a sideboard deck, a sideboarded character could be a character coming from the sideboard of his or her controller (not from yours, reader). I don't know if the example is good, but I couldn't find something better, you get the idea.

Anyway, I guess this could be clarified in the rulebook since both explanations are intuitive.

Ankha said: