I am very new to the game, having been introduced to it about a month ago by some coworkers. I watched a few games they played, and liked the look of it enough to buy a core set of my own. I introduced the wife to the game as well, and she quickly took it up as well, and rarely a day has gone by the past week where we haven't jousted.

With that as the background info, Last night, I actually got a chance to play in a melee with the guys from work, but playing it brought up a couple of questions, as they did a couple of things differently from how my wife and I have played. I just want to know which way is correct, so we can adjust accordingly.

1)The Dead pile. My wife and I have been putting ALL of our dead characters, unique or not, into our dead pile. The guys were only placing unique characters into their dead pile, and placing non unique cards into discard. Everything I could possibly read seems to indicate all dead characters go into the dead pile.

2)Moving power off of characters that they have gained for renown. The way my wife and I have played, the power on the renown characters lives or dies with them, but in the melee, it was established that at the end of dominance, you could move the tokens from the characters to the house card. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me (As with a card like Tharle the Thrice Drowned, you could move tokens at the end of each round and have him live forever, basically. I've checked the FAQs and used the search, but the results always come back too broad to sift through everything, or too specific to yield any results.

Please excuse me if these are noobcake questions. But me and the missus really want to make sure we're learning to play the game the right way. Thanks.

Parker said:

All character that leave play by an effect that says "kill" go to the dead pile - whether they are unique or not. While being in the dead pile has the MOST impact on a unique card, there are effects that reference the number of characters in your dead pile. There are also effects that let you retrieve cards from your discard pile. So cards that were "killed" need to go to the dead pile, or else these various effects do not work properly.

Parker said:

Wow. The guys you were playing with were making up rules left and right!

You cannot move power off of characters unless an effect specifically tells you that you can do so. You are correct that power on characters lives or dies with the character - and if the character leaves play, all the power on it is discarded. Moving power from your characters to your House card at the end of Dominance shows up absolutely nowhere in the rules and is a genuinely invented thing by those guys since I can't think of anything in the rules that could even be mistaken for that!

The whole idea behind keeping power on characters is that while you gain power faster, it is inherently more fragile. Bypassing that fragility by arbitrarily moving power from character to House at the end of the Dominance phase is, quite honestly, a kind of cheating. Renown would be WAAAAY too powerful otherwise. (It's pretty darn good as it is....)

Ah, following up with some more questions. As the only person in our little melee group who seems to concern himself much with the rules, I was designated master of laws, and charged with trying to find clarification when anything ambiguous or questionable occurs over the course of a game.

Our last game brought up a couple of things. The first being Val, the Wildling. Her text reads:

"Any Phase:Reveal and draw the top card of your deck. Play that card as your next response or action, if able. Otherwise, discard it. "

Now, the player who had this card seemed to be of a mind that he could use it to churn through his deck until he hit a useable card. I checked the FAQ, and the FAQ clarified that you have to play the card immediately if possible, but didn't really clear up my question, which at it's base is, how many times could a player trigger this ability? Over and over and over until he/she get's a playable card, or should it be limited in some way? I didn't see any errata on this card either, unless I just blindly glazed over it.

Secondly, we had a player using a Martell deck, and he played Valar Morghulis, killing the Red Viper, followed up by No use for Grief. The issue that arose was he used the influence from a Starfall Merchant, who would also have died from VM. Seeing as the merchant and Red Viper would die at the same time, it stands to my reason that you could not use her influence "on the way out" so to speak, to pay for the event, and she would be dead simultaneously with The Red Viper. I didn't protest it at the time, as I was hopelessly out of the game (playing a Greyjoy deck, and I went 3 rounds without a character draw.) But I would like to be assured I'm in the right, in case the situation arises again.

Also, I'd like to give a sincere thanks to ktom and the rest of the folks on here who answer the questions so quickly. The community that h as sprung up with this game is terrific, and I have had nothing but good experiences with my noobishness on these boards. Cheers to that.

Not sure on No Use For Grief, but Val is easy enough to resolve. Her ability reads: "Reveal and draw..." It's a draw effect (a bit of an unusual one, as it requires revealing as well, but that's to ensure you honestly play it when you have to). The draw cap is in effect, so there's the limit on her ability.

Parker said:

As your fellow co-players seem rather oblivious to the rules of the game, I'm sure they didn't know why they could do this, but indeed they could. Characters that are killed, discarded or otherwise removed from play by an effect become moribund and don't actually leave play until the action window in which they became moribund closes. No Use For Grief is a response, so it is played in response to an action during the same action window (see FAQ timing flowcharts for more details and an explanation of "moribund"). So while Starfall Merchant has been killed, it is still on the table in its moribund state when the opportunity to play No Use For Grief comes around. Note that Starfall Merchant would not be discarded as the passive ability asks, because it has technically already been removed from play (by Valar's kill effect) and thus cannot be removed from play a second time; it goes to the dead pile.

Saturnine said:

So, the shorthand for "on the way out" in this game is "only Responses, and only if it doesn't involve removing the card from play (a second time) as a cost." Using Starfall Merchant to pay for NUFG meets both of those: it's a Response and you do not remove the Merchant from play as a cost (just as a result).