Good morning,

this situation has presented itself a couple times when fighting with my targaryen and someone pointed me to some inconsistencies on the way i was playing. i've been pointed that if you don't have any characters with military icons at that point you can't initiate a military chalenge with them becouse you need a character with that icon in order to initiate a chalenge. that has been established and accepted.

the issue comes at another point. when you have indeed a character with a military crest on the table you can initiate the chalenge, then you should kneel any character you want to attack with (and here's the real issue) do you need to kneel anyone or you can wait till the next player action window and play horseback archers basicaly making him attack alone or he can only be played as a boost to a military chalenge? (preaty much as a +3 str to a military chalenge making him much less interesting than making him able to attack alone).

hopefully you can shed some light on this issue.

You cannot initiate a challenge without declaring at least 1 attacker and, if at any time between attackers are declared and stealth targets are declared (stealth is declared just before defenders, without intervening action window), the challenge ends without resolution.

The important point is that is that announcing the challenge and declaring an attacker is all part and parcel of the same action of initiating the challenge. There is no opportunity to break those two bits apart and drop in the Archers as an attacker to initiate the challenge. Either the challenge hasn't begun yet (so you can't drop them in) or there is already an attacker (so they aren't alone).

Best you can do is initiate the challenge with character A, drop the Archers in, then remove character A.

another card that looks great untill you read everything right and turns out it's crap.

well.. looks like i won't be out of filters in a while

The card is not remotely crap.

Being able to throw a surprise 3 STR into the middle of a military challenge - on attack or defense - is huge. So you can't initiate a challenge with it alone. Oh, well. Not like you really LOSE anything for that.

Horseback Archers are actually pretty good in my opinion. It's really nice to be able to use them only for what they are good at(MIL challenge) and then being able to return them to your hand at no additional cost. It's important sometimes to take characters back into your hand to protect them from effects that may kill them outside of the challenges phase.

The surprise attack with them is also spectacular after your opponent has declared defenders. It may indeed get you the win.

1 influence is a bargain.

And then after they know you have that character in your hand they get gun shy or are forced to over commit which you can use to your advantage. The card has a lot of uses.

AMAZING card. I love it with sun stroke.

And Flaming-Pitch Tower.
And BwB Jhogo.
And about a dozen other cards I won't list...

Always hit a Targaryen's hand: intrigue first, so they either lose cards or put them into play so you know what you face.

Khudzlin said:

That's a good general rule against any House. Intrigue before Military is virtually a default strategy. You pretty much have to have a reason NOT to do it.

ktom said:

Like needing to win a Military challenge in order to push through the intrigue through claim or response. Which is generally my only reason for not intriguing first.

it has it's uses alright but the doubts if it would stick arround in the deck or give room for bloodrider when i get it is over. bloodrider it is defenetly. also, while i don't get the bloodrider i'll be using horseback hunters that can actualy come in from my hand and start the chalenge for just 1 more influence.

Or if you really need to get rid of a claim soak (Viserys or Davos, for instance) - the military happens first to bounce, the intrigue happens second to discard him.

Inversely to this- can Horseback Archers DEFEND alone? I suppose the more accurate question is: when can they be put into play? It says they enter 'as a defender' as a Challenge phase action- can this be done both BEFORE and/or AFTER you have declared other defenders?

imrahil327 said:

Technically, they could end up attacking alone, too, if the character you use to initiate the challenge is removed from the challenge of killed. They just cannot initiate a challenge alone because a character must be declared as an attacker as part of initiating the challenge - something the Archers can never do (from hand).

Excellent, thank you!