could someone explain how time of trials Balon works? It seems he is essentially stealing a shadows card. I am a bit worried confusing situations will arise in interacting with certain cards and I would like to clear a few things up beforehand.

A) Must I pay and OOH gold penalty to bring said card out of shadows and into play?

b) Do cards like Syrio that jump back into shadows return to their owners discard pile? I guess what I am wondering here is are these cards ultimately leaving play (ultimately returning to their owners).

bbleers said:

bbleers said:

Apropro of nothing, I'm a little uncomfortable with this card's effect - it's the only effect that lets you put a card that you do not own in an out-of-play area and in an unrevealed state. Do you think there is the possibility of abuse with this effect? Or do you think it's sufficiently different from putting a card you don't own in your hand or deck (something I'm confident will never happen) that I'm worried over nothing?

radiskull said:

Most people are playing with sleeves, right? I can just speak from my experience, but how often are two people playing with the exact same sleeves at once. So at least in that regards, it seems unlikely to really conceal the card you've taken control of.

What kind of abuse are you thinking of? Beyond accIdentally picking up the card at the end of the game, which people do with negative attachments, I'm not sure what kind of abuse you'd see. The Shadow area is such a limited area of interaction that I'm not seeing any real way to take advantage of this effect to do anything more than what it does at face value.

Not to mention tournament rules require revealing all cards in shadows at the end of every game.

All very good points. I don't see practically any abuse, due in part to the limited nature of the Shadows area, as was mentioned.

Just the idea of taking control of a hidden card rubbed me the wrong way - sorta like adding cards from my opponent's discard pile into my hand. I think it's more of a visceral thing than anything else.

radiskull said:

hmm, the question i am thinking of, which i am surprised has not been brought up yet, is: all the house specific shadow cards have the 'house X only' text on them. so if you steal a shadows card from someone with this text on it, can you even bring it out of shadows at all?

dh098017 said:

"House X" text is only a deck restriction. I can't think of any reason why you couldn't bring "House X only" out of the shadows even if they weren't matching your house.

House X only is purely a deckbuilding restriction. You can steal any character (including House X only) by winning an intrigue challenge with Reek. right (except for immunity, ofc)?

dh098017 said:

Seriously though, the "House X only" description only shows up in the rules for deck construction. It has absolutely no impact on the way the game is played once your setup hand is drawn.