Can the "stealth" trait be used to attack a character that doesn't have the same icon's as the character with stealth does?

I.E.

If player one uses stealth with Rhaegal to attack, can they choose who they attack, could they attack a character with only an intrigue icon while player 2 has another character with a military or power icon on the field, thus making it challenge, so that player one wins unopposed?

Or is it that when you use stealth, you choose one of the many characters that your opponent controls, and they cannot be used as defenders.

Oh, and another question. When you use stealth are you using when you attack,

I.E.

You attack a character when you have stealth, and that specific character you are attacking cannot defend.

Or is it that, the other player cannot use the character that you chose to defend with, but they can still defend with any of their other characters.

First of all, there seems to be a general misconception on how a challenge works. You do not attack individual characters. You attack a player.

This is how a challenge works in a simplified way -- for more details check the FAQ document (link in my signature).

1. First you declare what kind of challenge you want to make (military, intrigue, power) and against which opponent (in a multiplayer game).

2. Then you declare and kneel the character with which you want to attack during that challenge.

3. Then you may declare stealth on a number of your opponent's characters, depending on how many of your attacking characters have the stealth keyword (your opponent's characters with stealth cannot be chosen) -- the stealth targets cannot be declared as defenders by your opponent.

4. Your opponent declares and kneels the characters with which he would like to defend against your challenge.

5. You determine the challenge winner by comparing the total strength of the attacking characters against the total strength of the defending characters.

6. Settle claim, reward for unopposed, reward for renown, in this order.

I hope that helped. It's a bit more intricate than I presented it here, because it's missing all the opportunities for player actions, but I really recommend studying the FAQ document for that.

Yes, that cleared everything up greatly. It's odd, you play the game a certain way for a while, and it works fine, and then because you missed something you're sort of back to square one going nuts over the rules.

Thanks again for your help.

latarian said:

Yeah, that happened quite a bit in our group. It's amazing how much we did wrong in the beginning. I think most of it is just experiences and assumptions from playing other games bleeding into our understanding of the game, when we should have taken the time to really read the rules and comprehend what they're actually saying. But now, after over a year, I think I got most of it down -- now if only I could make my fellow players remember the darn rules

I have 2 follow up questions.

Can you declare stealth on a knelt character o a character that does not have the icon of the challenge??

I ask because the rules are not that clear about this. They just say that you declare stealth on a char and then he connot be declare as a def, it doesn't say that he has to be able to be declared as one. So for example a character that has a response that gives you an icon when a char is bypassed could be declare as a defender unless he was the char bypassed, or a char that can be declared as a defender while knelt.

I think you can get my point if not i can try to be more clear.

choco said:

The rules are clear about this in that they don't further restrict your choice of stealth targets; the only restrictions are, as outlined in the rule book, that they should be characters controlled by the defending player and that they don't have the stealth keyword. If there were additional restrictions, the rule book would tell you

In fact, you may wish to choose a defending character as your stealth target if your opponent has an ability in play that would allow them to stand that character.

radiskull said:

I assume you meant to say "choose a kneeling character as your stealth target."

But the defending player won't get to suddenly stand a character between the attacker declaring stealth targets and declaring defenders. Declaring stealth targets and declaring defenders is part of the same framework action window. There's no opportunity for player actions or even passives/responses between declaring stealth targets and declaring defenders.

Good point! And yeah, a kneeling character is what I meant.

Stealth is even more sneaky than "the chosen characters cannot be declared as defenders": it's "the chosen characters cannot defend", which prevents from suddenly jumping into the challenge (Greatjon Umber and Walder Frey are characters who can jump into a challenge from play - out of play characters cannot be chosen as stealth target because they're out of play).