Player 1 is playing greyjoy and has two wintertime marauders out (one knelt). Player 2 has Arianne Martell (prince of the sun) out, and Darkstar. Player 1 initiates a power challenge, and kneels the marauder. Prior to declaring defenders, player 2 tries to play game of cyvasse and bounce the marauder in the challenge back to player 1's hand. Is this possible?

At first, we all agreed that it was probably possible, but seemed like it really shouldn't be. Our take at the end was that there was a place to play the event after attackers were declared, but before defenders were formalized, so we let it stand. Is this the correct ruling?

FuriousG said:

The thing to notice, though, is that if you DO remove the Marauders, the only participating character in that challenge, from play, the challenge ends immediately. So by removing the Marauders before defenders are declared, you make it unnecessary - even impossible - to declare defenders.

Thanks for the quick response.

Re: Why shouldn't it be possible--

The simplest answer is "table climate", hehe. Player 1's challenge was the last chance anyone had of stopping player 2 from winning, so opinions were kinda skewed. Plus you'd have to know the guy trying to play the cyvasse; he isn't exactly reliable when it comes to rules rulings.

Had stealth been declared yet?

According to the timing structure, there is no Player Action between declaring stealth and declaring defenders unless the FAQ has it wrong(since I used to think there was a player action between those two FW actions).

Bomb said:

There's no player action window between declaring stealth targets and declaring defenders. There is, however, a player action window between declaring attackers and declaring stealth targets.

Correct. That's the point I was trying to make because perhaps the situation wasn't fully explained. If stealth had been declared, then Games of Cyvasse is not possible to play until after defenders are declared.

Bomb said:

As we didn't get any additional information to the contrary, I don't see why we should assume the event wasn't played at a time when it was legal to do so.

I assume that when a post is asking the legality of playing a player action between declaring attackers and declaring defenders that we should note that it is only legal to do so before stealth targets are declared as that is not entirely obvious if you are not familiar with the timing structure.

Now maybe he explained fully and maybe he did not, but the entire purpose of the post is asking about timing, and can't assume Stealth is impossible or not used.

Either way, his question was answered so everything is good.

Well, since the Marauders don't have Stealth, it's quite possible the additional aspect of Stealth never entered into the picture.

There's also the consideration that people have the tendency to jump the gun with Stealth. "I do a power attack with Arienne, stealthing the Marauders" is a very common thing to hear. So in practice, you usually do see a lot of "going backwards" to do stuff after the attacker has prematurely declared stealth.

Ktom has it. We never even got to stealth because the marauders don't have it.