So I just got the Tourney for the Hand chapter pack. And added the 3 Barristan Selmys into my targaryen deck that my friend uses when we play. This has raised a couple questions.

Can he discard multiple cards to reduce one enemy character's strength multiple times at once?

If he's defending in a challenge vs 3 attackers, can he drop 3 cards and reduce the strength of each by 2?

Also, if you equip Aegon's Blade to him, does he have renown twice?

Kingsguard said:

1) No, not "at once". But you can use his ability multiple times, consecutively, in the same action window, with your opponent having the opportunity for a player action between each use of Barristan.

2) See 1)

3) Yes and no. He has Renown twice if you need to calculate whether he has Renown or not should other effects steal his Renown. So 1 Renown + 1 Renown - 1 Renown = Renown. But if you look at the wording in the rules, once you have determined that he has Renown, additional instances of the same keyword are irrelevant, as the resolution of the keyword only looks whether the keyword is present on a card, not how many instances of it there are. Same with Deadly or Stealth - the number of the characters with those keywords matter, not the number of the keywords.

It is important to know that you don't drop all 3 cards at once to make a character -6. If you did this, then only one cancel ability would need to be used to eliminate the -6 STR. If you did them separately, then 3 cancels would need to be performed to eliminate the -6 STR.

In addition to the above as protection to you, it is important to know that using the ability 3 times opens 3 windows of opportunity for Responses which may make a large difference depending on the Responses that may trigger.

One more thought. The Player Action window being available to an opponent is also very important since it's possible that the opponent will know that you are trying to kill a character and should have a chance to play an Action that boosts STR.

Wow, that Barristan Selmy seems kinda crazy powrfull then. At least as long as his owner keeps a full hand.

How does that work with Unique characters who have a copy attached to them? If he lowers their strength to 0, can you still discard the copy to save the unique character?

Is yes, does ther strength reset to the normal amount? Or does it remain at 0?

Kingsguard said:

No. For brevity's sake I'll just refer you to FAQ (3.20) Terminal Effects. If you still have any questions after reading that, we'll be happy to answer them

If someone is going to die because of having 0 STR, you are not allowed to attempt to save them unless that save would also remove them from the terminal state. Saving someone does not reset their strength, so if you saved them, they'd still be at 0 STR and then would immediately die again - the rules state that you cannot even attempt the save in this situation.

radiskull said:

Ah thanks for the info. Wow, that's really powerfull then. I fear the Targaryen deck now. *shiver.

The ability is very powerful no doubt but it relies heavily, imo, on targs ability to recycle various cards back into hand (other wise, congrats you killed my character at the expense of your hand, now you will struggle to adapt to what i play), particularly from our first few games, dannys chambers for attachment recycle, getting rid of it suddenly made my targ opponent less spam happy

Yeah, it is a great card, but there is a fair amount of expense that goes into using it, and if you abuse it you really put yourself against the wall later... especially if your opponent manages to get rid of him. A deck with a heavy intrigue component could completely dismantle you if you depend on Selmy alone.

Strong, not broken (yet...) and if you ask me, the best Selmy we've ever seen. Someone worthy of the name Barristan the Bold.

Saturnine said:

hehe because you posted that i just noticed that there is actually 2 sections in the FAQ labeled 3.20. Bad QA job FFG.

dh098017 said:

Oh, wow. I never noticed that before. Tsk tsk, FFG