Situation: I am a defending 'second' player. My opponent has chosen his attacker. We both passed on our action options. He has no stealth options. I knelt my defender. He passes his action option. I (without verbally declaring that i pass my official action window) play Red Vengeance.

The issues this brought up:

1. At that point in the flowchart, after the first player has verbally passed his option at an action, is it technically illegal for the second player to jump directly to playing a response card such as Red Vengeance? i.e. How would a tourney official rule to the playing of that card?

2. When I played Red Vengeance, he asked me "Is this your action?" I replied yes thinking he meant the generic english term 'action' not 'action vs response' in game terms. He claimed that because I attempted to play this 'response' as an 'action' that it should be considered an illegal move. How would a tourney official rule here? Is an accidental verbal declaration binding?

3. Red Vengeance is a response to losing a challenge. He argued, that since we hadn't added up all the strength modifiers of yet, that this would be an illegal move because we do not know if I actually lost the challenge (like for example if I added wrong in my head or accidentally forgot to account for an effect). I argued that regardless of whether or not we have worked out the math yet that that doesn't change where we are in the framework. I can somewhat see his point here if it turned out I had done the moth wrong and had won the challenge, but if I did the math correct, and had indeed lost challenge, was any rule broken?

I am guessing that most of this may just come down to courtesy/sportsmanship/house rules, I am just hoping someone can shed some light on the rulings here as if these situations had happened in a tournament setting.

The main issue seems to be if it is 'tourney' legal to bypass your action option by proxy via playing a card that legally can be played in the next available action window.

1. It is indeed illegal because both of you should also pass on the save/cancel opportunity for framework event 1. Determine winner of challenge.

Then your opponent must also pass on his first opportunity to save/cancel framework event #2 Challenge result is implemented.

The fact that both of you have passed your action during the player action window dos not mean that your opponent will also pass his next Response: opportunities. As a TO, I would first say that you broke the rules twice : you did not wait for the opponent to pass his Response opportunities, and you illegally showed him a card from your hand. If I see the situation have no impact of your opponent ability to respond to the framework events (which is very likely), I'd rule that you can play it. But if it does, I would forbid you to play it without telling you why before the end of the game.

2. He should not ask "is this your action?" but rather say "this is not the time in the framework to play this, so you cannot". If he claims you are in an illegal situation, it means he has allowed it too and is as faulty as you are so I'll stick to what I said in 1.

3. Rules were broken as explained previously.

If you are not first player, your opponent will always have a save/cancel opportunity (or an action window) before you. You are not allowed to skip them.

If you are first player, and you pass your action, you opponent must also pass. Then the next opportunity to play something will be yours, so you can play it directly. But regarding resolution of the challenge you shouldn't assume your math is good since it is very common that one player forget some STR bonuses. That might even be part of your opponent strategy to have some tricky bonuses you might forgot when you declare defenders.

In a friendly game this should be easy.

Firstly - as illustrated above - you did indeed jump the gun a little and went straight to "responses to challenge resolution"

However, in our group we would simply put the card back in our hand and allow these steps that were missed to resolve (determine resolution, save/cancels etc) then let you play Red vengeance. The only person disadvantaged is you as you "showed your hand" too soon.

As for tournament rules the guy above clearly is involved with these where I am not, but again - if I play a card out of sequence and an opponent calls foul the only person being disadvantaged is myself so I would not see the harm in just taking that action back - seeing as though i could not play it anyway - (as in the friendly example above) and then playing it later at the appropriate moment.

Generally, when my play group plays something incorrectly (like Red Vengeance or A Lannister Pays his Debts) the opponent tells them they are playing it wrong, and it goes back into their hand. The only person who gets hurt is the person trying to play it, since I now know a card in your hand. If you don't catch the person playing something incorrectly, tough luck. You always get the option to red their cards when they play them if you don't know what they do.

Bolzano has the right analysis for the intensely rabid way you guys are playing. By not formally passing your Player Action, you did not indicate to your opponent that you had progressed to the "Resolve Challenge" framework action. And, since you were not the First Player, you technically are not allowed to play a cancel to a framework event (let alone the second framework event) until your First Player opponent passes on his opportunity to cancel that event. You're the one that technically jumped the gun and played illegally in this situation.

I can tell you that at most tournament events, no judge is going to be a rabid about the timing structure as you guys are. AGoT plays much more casually, even in sanctioned events, and pretty much resists all attempts to make it as fomalistic as you guys are making it. The casual play feel extends to the tournaments. As such, most TOs/judges are going to look at that situation for the end results. A tourney judge is going to look at the situation this way:

1. The First Player passed, so if the opponent did not play an action, the First Player didn't lose the opportunity to do anything. The opponent did not play a standard action, so no one lost anything by "skipping" the end of the Player Action window.
2. The STR count and who won/lost the challenge was done correctly. No one is disputing that the attacker really did have higher STR and won the challenge.
3. There aren't and "after you win a challenge" claim effect cancel Responses in the game, so even though the attacking First Player did have the first opportunity to play a save/cancel Response for the claim effect, there wasn't one for them to actually play.
4. RESULT: No harm, no foul. Red Vengeance stands.

What it comes down to is that if the technical timing structure HAD BEEN followed to the letter, the exact same practical result would have been achieved as you playing Red Vengeance immediatly. So under the typical AGoT "let's not be stupid-technical; it's not fun" mentality of casual-ish play, Red Vengeance would stand at a tournament.

But under the "house rule penalties for not following the timing structure exactly" rules that you say you guys have been playing, you played the event illegally and would/should be penalized for it.