Ambush: You may put a card with the "Ambush" keyword into play from your hand as an "Any Phase:" action, by paying its gold cost with influence.

The word "paying" is throwing me off. I'm a bit confused as to whether or not there is a limited "pool" of influence like there is gold? If I have three influence and two Queen's Knight in my hand could I play them both with the three influence? The way it Ambush reads it sounds like I can. If that's the case Ambush seems very powerful, or am my missing something?

PSXfile said:

Technically, there isn't a limited "pool" of influence the way that there is a limited "pool" of gold that is counted at the beginning of each player's turn in Marshaling. What you seem to be missing, though, is that (as sort of described on pg. 7 of the Core Rules book) in order to "pay" influence, you have to kneel an influence-providing card. If it's already knelt, you cannot pay the cost. So if you have 3 standing influence and 3 Queen's Knights in your hand, after kneeling the 3 influence to Ambush in the first, you have 0 standing influence available to you in order to pay to Ambush in the second.

So in practice, influence is limited by the stand/kneel mechanic, not by a counted resource pool.

I couldn´t follow your thoughts about influence being somehow like the gold pool. However if you kneel three influence providing cards and play a Queens knight you spend the 3 influence to put the Queens knight into play. So you can´t play two Queens knight with 3 influence.

Also it´s worth to mention that there reall isn´t an influence pool. Influence can´t be stored like gold in a pool. Let´s assume you knelt two fallow fields (each provides 2 influence) to put the Queens knight into play, the overpaid influence (1) is lost an can´t be used for other cards that ask you to pay influence. Long story short, influences can´t be accumulated in a pool.

ktom said:

Ah okay. I remember reading that, but I wasn't sure if Ambush fell under that rule. Thanks for the help!

PSXfile said:

Yeah, it's not real clear from just that entry, but "kneeling" influence and "paying" influence are the same thing. When it comes to using influence, the two terms are interchangeable.

Hi, there!

Bit of a noob add-on question here. When using ambush do you have to have the full gold cost in influence or can you split the cost between gold and influence? We have been playing the first way as that is what the rules seem to say, but I wanted to see if that's right.

Thanks!

CoalRabbits said:

Yes, you have the right of it.

There are a few cards that allow you to take the second option (only durig the Marshalling phase though). You can take a look at them to see the difference in wording. The cards I can remember off the top of my head are King Robb's Companions and Plaza of Purification