Hi all,

I played a melee game recently where by BWB deck got wrecked by the Eastwatch-by-the-Sea location. My opponent politely pointed out to me that it ruins my deck by virtue of the fact that the BWB agenda uses the phrasing "you may not" when saying I cannot move power to my house card and must instead place it on a brotherhood character. I popped onto the forums and did a search on the topic to find that the consensus of answers here appears to support that.

However, I'd like to know if anyone has had an 'official' answer from a game dev, because if by the context of 'you' the agenda is referring to the you in the literal sense of taking the action (as opposed to you in a more general sense of 'your cards'), then this would make the BWB unworkable even without Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. I say that because the act of moving power from house to house is not done by 'you' when you win a challenge. It's your losing opponent who does this, it says so in the rulebook under power challenges. Not seen anyone bring that point up before. Apologies if they have and I missed it, I mean no offense. So, what do you think?

Nitro Pirate said:

It is also worth noting here that under this "YOU is used in the general sense and means everyone, so an opponent cannot use Eastwatch on me" reasoning, the second part of the Agenda has no effect at all because, as you say, when the person with the Agenda loses a power challenge, THEY take the power from their card and put it on the House card of the winner - even though the Agenda allows your opponent to take power from one of your Brotherhood characters.

As a general rule, "you" always refers to the controller of the card it is written on - and only the controller of the card it is written on. Claim effects are considered initiated by and done for the benefit of the winner, so the "you" forcing the placement of power moved during a power challenge onto Brotherhood characters applies to challenges won by you, even though it is technically the opponent picking up and moving the power. (That is, "you" initiate the effect, even though the loser of the challenge goes through the motions.)

Eastwatch is the silver-bullet card against the Brotherhood characters/deck theme. It helps to have Lady Stoneheart around.

can someone explain the this issue to me? i havent had my coffee yet. the agenda in question says you can't have power on your house card and the location in question moves power from a character to a house card. what is the exact order of events when the location owner attempts to activate the response? a power is moved from a character to a house card, which is like a power blackhole so-to-speak, so the power is just lost altogether?

thanks,

d

Actually, the agenda says that when you claim or move power to your House, you must put it on a Brotherhood character you control instead. It says nothing about any other player moving power to your House.

Khudzlin said:

so what is the problem here then? why does this location 'ruin' this deck type? because most of the brotherhood stuff is based upon your house card being devoid of power?

dh098017 said:

Exactly. With power on your House, Hollow Hill doesn't reduce your OoH penalty, Beric Dondarion can be killed or discarded and many other characters lose in efficiency.

ktom said:

I am trying to quickly find other ways to remove that power from your house card and only found the event "Favors from on High"(which is Lannister only) and the character "Orphaned Reruit". I can't seem to quickly find any other card that will allow you to move power off of your own House card.

Anyone got any others in mind?

Lady Stoneheart is a common choice.

ktom said:

Hmm, I've read the rulebook and the FAQ from cover to cover and nowhere can I find anything that directly supports this statement, which leads me to believe that this is your educated opinion rather than a written rule. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'll take no offence.

Nitro Pirate said:

The point is that even though the rules talk about resolving claim in terms of what the losing player must do, it is the game that is taking (ie, "initiating") the claim effect. As such, the applicability of the limitation on "you," the Agenda's controller and winner of the challenge, can be seen as needing to be taken into account since the player-dependency of the framework event will be taken from the context of you winning the challenge.

In reality, it probably comes down to the person writing the card not thinking about the confusion that could be generated by the fact the rules describe resolving claim in terms of what the losing player must do. In practical terms, it usually plays out that when a power challenge resolves, the losing player removes tokens from his House card and the winning player puts tokens on his House card. It's easy to see where the wording on the card applies to how most people play.

Here's the other problem with this line of reasoning. We know for a fact that "you" is always read from the point of view of the card's controller. So if you're going to hold fast to the "the losing player is the one moving the power" technicality here, it is still incorrect to interpret the "you" on the Agenda as applying to all players. It only applies to "you," not your opponents. That means that every power challenge you win - when your opponent has power to steal - is going to end up putting power tokens on your House card because the Agenda doesn't force your opponents to do anything. That's going to be worse for Brotherhood decks than Eastwatch ever could be.

In the end, if you want something official, send the question to FFG. Whether "educated opinion" or "clear application and interpretation," the result I've explained above is how it's going to end up, though.

Nitro Pirate said:

Well, there's this (FAQ page 22):

You can,
however, move power that is already in the
game onto that House card by, for example,
winning a power challenge.

Ratatoskr said:

It matters because if it is the defender, you either have to come up with a reason the "you" in the Brotherhood Agenda's requirement to place power tokens on characters instead of the House card applies to all players (in complete defiance of the templating and interpretation of every other card in the game), or winning a power challenge will hose a Brotherhood player even more than Eastwatch.

I think Ratatoskr is saying that the passage he quotes also implies the attacker moves the power in a power challenge.

ktom said:

You said (and I paraphrase) that it doesn't really matter who physically picks up the tokens and shifts them around, because "Claim effects are considered initiated by and done for the benefit of the winner" - just as it doesn't matter one iota if the card(s) discarded for INT claim are randomly picked by the attacker or the defender or my one year old son ( the only part of Thrones he manages to do reasonably well so far, but I digress).

Then Nitro Pirate said "I've read the rulebook and the FAQ from cover to cover and nowhere can I find anything that directly supports this statement" (I'm sure the "educated opinion" bit and the generous offer not to be offended if proved wrong sounded a tad rude only to my oversensitive ears, and besides I'm guessing your discussions with Rogue have given you a thick skin anyway).

I quoted that section from the FAQ because, unless I'm totally mistaken, it *does* directly support your statement, because it has the victorious attacker in a POW challenge as the one who does the moving.

Ratatoskr said:

ktom said:

~Sorry for being a pedant here, but didn't you use an adjective as a noun there?

And being educational with a slightly pedantic streak here or there is just you being you. We wouldn't want you any other way.

Ratatoskr said:

ktom said:

I think you’ve misunderstood my line of reasoning, or at least, I may not have articulated it well enough. However, this is a point I was working towards, as the current game rules as interpreted by most would appear to be make this agenda worthless, unless that interpretation is selective. This is something I find absurd, which leaves me to believe that some of the wording in the game is being taken out of its intended context.

ktom said:

Confidence, arrogance, or exasperation at someone who doesn’t understand the rules as well as you? It’s alright, I’m still quite new to this game and I’m learning a lot from these forums.

I hope you don’t mind me saying that I’d appreciate your continued input into this thread as I’m not done with it just yet…

Ratatoskr said:

I wasn’t aware I’d said this out loud, although my educated opinion is that you’re talking metaphorically. Please correct me if I’m wrong, I’ll take no offence

Ratatoskr said:

This is not something I’d missed. The full passage actually says –

“Moving power is not considered claiming
power. If an effect prevents you from claiming
power for your House card, you cannot bring
power into the game from the power pool
and place it on your House card. You can,
however, move power that is already in the
game onto that House card by, for example,
winning a power challenge.”

Taken at face value, what this tells us is that power is only regarded as ‘claim’ if it’s being ‘claimed’ from the power pool. Power that’s already in play is there to be moved, not claimed.

First off, the passage makes it clear that moving and claiming are not the same thing. It goes on to say that restrictions to claiming power for your house card are only in effect when taking power from the power pool. Any power that’s in play (ie; sat on an opponent’s house card) is regarded as being moved, the example it gives being the winning of a power challenge.

Consider the wording in the rulebook: “Power Challenge: The defending opponent takes a number of power counters from his House card equal to the claim value on the attacker’s revealed plot card, and places them on the attacker’s House card.”

(I’ll be honest, I’d forgotten that it even said ‘places’ rather than ‘moves’… a pernickety person may wish to argue that placing and moving are different effects and that this would bypass the BWB Agenda. I am no such person, so I’ll put that aside for the time being.)

The wording here uses the phrase ‘equal to the claim value’ on the attackers plot card. But, as in the FAQ you kindly pointed out, it’s not claim. It’s just moving power equal to the claim value, and moving and claiming power are not the same. This section of the rulebook has not been the subject of errata, so should be considered to be correct as written.

Now might be a good time for me to refer back to that particular FAQ, actually. With the rulebook making it clear that the losing opponent moves the power, it means we have to consider that the errata is either contradictory or is being taken out of context. The part that interests me is actually the excerpt you used:

“You can, however, move power that is already in the game onto that House card by, for example, winning a power challenge.”

Well we know it can’t mean YOU in the literal sense moving the power, because that would be contradictory to the rules. Therefore it must be out of context. The use of ‘you’ here perhaps being similar to the use of ‘you’ on the Brotherhood without Banners Agenda, if you see where I’m going that…

Nitro Pirate said:

That wasn't what I was getting at at all. I was actually saying that you have uncovered a true inconsistency in the wording of the rules and the cards. Since the inconsistency is real, you will not find a way to explain it away with the rule sources that are available. We'll have to either accept the inconsistency and move on, or ask FFG to acknowledge and change the inconsistency somehow. The confidence (or arrogance, however you choose to interpret it) in what that "somehow" would look simply comes from being around this game for so long that I can predict with a high degree of accuracy what the outcome of the official word will be in situations like this.

Here's what this whole situation comes down to:

• When reading any card, the word "you" is always interpreted to mean the controller of the card. Therefore, the Brotherhood Agenda only places a restriction on the person playing the Agenda, not all players. That means there is nothing stopping an opponent with Eastwatch from using it to move power from one of your characters to your House card (although it would prevent you yourself from using it to move power from one of your own characters to your own House card).
• The rules for resolving a power challenge (which were written almost 10 years ago, I might add) talk about an opponent moving power from their own House card to yours when they lose a power challenge, but the Brotherhood Agenda implies that opponents move power from YOUR House card to theirs when they WIN a power challenge. Obviously, the rules and the card contradict each other. Therefore, there must be some sort of explanation or solution for the inconsistency. The options are:

1. The word "you" on the Agenda somehow applies to anyone trying to move power onto that particular House card. Personally, I don't see how this can be correct because I think this creates more problems than it solves. Not only does it mean interpreting this one card differently from the way every other card in the game is interpreted, it also means that the word "you" is used differently IN THE SAME SENTENCE on the Agenda. ie: If you (= "any player") would claim or move power to your (= "the controller's") House, you (= "that player") must place it on a Brotherhood character you (= "the controller") control instead.
2. The technical description of resolving a power challenge (ie, the loser does the actual moving of the power) is somehow incorrect, or at least not the way that the designers really think about the mechanics of claim in a power challenge. Considering the other entries in the FAQ that talk about the attacker fulfilling claim (like the one Rat describes, the entry on PotS Doran Martell), this option seems less inconsistent to me. Challenge "claim" is primarily thought of as the attacker's prize for winning, not the defender's punishment for losing. Given the way that play has evolved over time (like the attacker randomly choosing the card from the loser's hand for intrigue claim, and power claim being more of the two-step "discard from the loser, put new on the winner" process), it seems more natural to me that the concept of power claim would have morphed in the minds of the card developers to reflect that attitude (prize for winner, not punishment for loser as worded in the Core Set rules) without anyone ever going back and updating the wording in the Rulebook.

So we can discuss which of the two resolutions to the inconsistency is the right way to go. The point is that you will not find the answers written in the rules or FAQ. Personally, I think you can find Option #2 written between the lines of the rules and FAQ, but the only way you will get a definitive, satisfactory answer to which way to go that ultimately isn't the opinion of someone in the community is to send it in.

What you're saying makes complete sense and I agree with it. It's shame that some of these inconsistencies exist, but given the scale and scope of the game it's no surprise that these things creep in over time and I think the FAQ is generally very comprehensive and clear. I was just surprised this hadn't been addressed already, although the BWB isn't exactly ancient... I guess the purpose behind my original post was to see if anyone could actually point me to something I'd missed. That didn't happen, but only because that section doesn't exist and as you say there's some genuine inconsistency. The currently adopted way of handling claim for power seems to be in need of revision, but I also think that for gameplay reasons either the BWB agenda or Eastwatch-by-the-Sea should see some errata.

Ideally, I'd like to see Eastwatch-by-the-Sea say something like 'that cards controller must them move the power to their House card' (yes, this is purely because BWB deck's do not need this kind of assassin, they already have to content with Milk of the Poppy, Ghaston Grey, Slander and Lies, a host of other text blanking effects, and most recently, Meera Reed to contend with!), and also/or for the BWB Agenda to say "If you would claim power or if power would be moved to your House, it must be placed on a Brotherhood character you control instead. Opponents may choose and take power from your Brotherhood characters to fulfill the claim of Power challenges initiated against you."

I do think I'll send this in to FFG and see what happens. I'm not expecting fireworks, but with the surge of interest in this game the time would never be better to wrap up some of these loose ends.

Thanks for the insights, I'll no doubt be back to check on more rules soon, although definitely not on something as contentious as this

i don't think Eastwatch or the Brotherhood agenda needs to be changed, you have Stoneheart as a reset if you need it and location control to get rid of eastwatch if you desire it. Brotherhood might not be the strongest deck in the world but i think keeping eastwatch as a viable threat is worthwhile

I'll bet you dollars to donuts what gets adjusted, errata'd, or clarified is the ruling surrounding it, or the cards in a way for it to work precisely the way the majority of players here have been doing it, which is Eastwatch moving that power on to the House card of the BwB House card.

Penfold said:

That's the only real inconsistency here - and exactly the way that pretty much everyone plays as it is.

So, has there been an official answer to this debate yet? I only ask as I'd love for nitropirate to be wrong again