I've played CCGs for a long time but I'm new to this particular game, so I've been making note of questions that come up when I'm playing or building decks and figured I'd just ask a bunch at once to avoid cluttering the board with questions.

1. I know you can only use any given response once in response to a certain trigger, but can you use the same response multiple times if multiple things happen simultaneously that could trigger it? For example, if you set off War Scorpion and several characters die at the same time, and you have a card in play with a non-limited response that responds to an opponent's character dying, can you trigger that response once per character that has died?

2. Are "playing" a card and "putting into play" considered totally different? For example, if I have Lady Daenerys' Chambers in play, am I unable to trigger its effect if I put a Targ character into play through some card effect rather than playing it? Also, if I play an ambush character using influence instead of gold, that's considered playing and not putting into play, right?

3. If a non-unique card has an effect that says "limit once per phase," does that mean that particular card can only use that effect once, or that it can only be used once by any copy of that card? Like if I have two Steel Links on two different maester characters and I kneel both of them in the same round, can I only trigger the effect on one of them? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes or else it wouldn't make sense for event cards to have the "once per phase" text ever, but I wanted to make sure.

4. If I trigger an effect on a card like Ghaston Grey, and the cost involves killing or discarding or returning to hand one of my characters, can I discard a duplicate or use a save response or whatever to save my character from the cost, and then still use the effect?

5. When I play Game of Cyvasse, who chooses which character to kneel first, or do we both choose simultaneously somehow? Also, if the two characters kneeled have the same strength, does that mean that nobody gets to return a character to hand, or does one player or the other win in the case of a tie?

6. If a bunch of characters are going to be killed by a sweeping effect like Valar, can I still trigger save effects on some of those characters before they die? So, for example, if Valar gets played, can I kneel Thoros to save another Brotherhood character even if Thoros is gonna die? If so, could I then kneel Inn of the Kneeling Man (or Marya Seaworth, or whatever) to stand Thoros and then kneel him again to save another Brotherhood character?

7. If a character is chosen for some effect that lasts "until the end of the phase," does that effect end when that character leaves play? Like if I use Copper Link to give a trait to some character, and then that character is discarded or killed, is that character still considered to have that trait while in the discard/dead pile (for purposes of a card that lets you pull a card with a certain trait out of your discard pile, for example)? I'm guessing not...

Thanks!

Welcome to the game! I highly recommend you download the FAQ from this website (link in my signature). It answers many questions that come up during play and contains a detailed breakdown of the timing structure. Understanding the timing structure makes everything so much easier. It takes a while to get the hang of it (at least it did for me, being wholly unexperienced with CCGs), but most beginner questions boil down to timing issues.

1. Yes, as long as the play restrictions are met and you can pay the cost for each initiation of the response.

2. That's exactly right. "Playing a card" only refers to a non-event card being played from your hand by paying its gold cost or to an event being played whenever. Bringing a card into play via Ambush, as the wording in the rule book clearly states, is a "put into play" effect.

3. The limit only refers to that particular card. You can still trigger the "same" effect on other copies of that card.

4. No. Because in those cases, removing the character from play is a cost for the effect, and the cost is part of the initiation of the effect, there's no place in the timing structure to save a card from being removed from play. If you could, it would create the paradoxical situation that you saved a card in response to something that never actually initiated because you didn't successfully pay the cost.

5. The initiator of the effect always goes first, with the other player following in clockwise order.

6. No. This is because save responses and standard responses (or player actions in the case of Marya) are played at two different points in the timing structure. For more details, have a look at the FAQ.

7. Unless an effect specifically says otherwise, it can only affect cards in play. It's the same with lasting effects. Once the card leaves play, any lasting effects acting on it end.

3. It only applies to the card itself when a character/location/attachment is concerned, but if an event has a limit like this it refers to all cards with that name. Obviously, it wouldn't make much sense to put limits on individual event cards since you typically never play the same one twice.

Saturnine said:

Are you sure, Saturnine? If Roose takes "back" 3 strong bolton characters, I can trigger the Dreadfort 3 times? I always thought that "simultaneous" effects created one response opportunity...

Edit: Now that I think of it, I guess it makes sense timing-wise. It's just one of those odd cases where intuition told me it was all one effect and so I didn't bother to think of the timing structure. There's no reason the response window would "close" before I could use the same response again...

-Istaril said:

Think of Anguy the Archer: "Response: After an opponent's character is killed, Anguy the Archer claims 1 power (limit 3 per phase)."

One of the favorite moves with him when you're close to winning the game is to play Valar Morghulis and have him claim 3 power in the plot phase. He responds to the result of an effect, not the effect itself, and so he can respond to each result individually.

Thanks for the responses, very helpful.

On the topic of multiple responses, I take it that when Shadow Parasite is in play and a card effect lowers the strength of multiple characters, the Parasite can increase its strength by the sum total of all STR lowered? So playing Hatchlings' Feast gives the Parasite +6 Str, and even just to be fanciful, playing Threat from the North would give it +1 STR for each character in play?

King of Thorns said:

Yes. Just be aware that you initiate and resolve Shadow Parasite's response individually for each character that had its strength lowered. And Shadow Parasite would be discarded by Threat from the North, because the discard effect kicks in before you can boost its strength via its response. So you can boost it up, but it goes to the discard pile the very next step when the action window closes.