I played my first game last night and a few questions came up. I think I got most of them answered with the FAQ but there was one thing I want to be sure of.

During the Player Action Window and Framework Action Window Steps 2 (Save/Cancel Response) and 5 (Responses) you can only play/trigger actual "Response" actions, not any other actions, correct?

A situation arose in which one player declared an attack against another player, and in response the defending player attempted to play "The Lion's Will" which states " Any Phase: Pay 2 gold to choose a character. Kneel that character." in response to kneel a character before the attacker could kneel him to declare him as an attacker. We ruled that it was not allowed because this was not a Response, it was an Any Phase Action, and there was no Player Actions window between declaring an attack and kneeling attackers. Is that correct? Or could he have played it as a Response?

You ruled correctly, and for the reasons you stated - a Response ability is card text beginning with the word Response :. The only response I can think of that isn't so worded is the ability to discard a dupe to save a character.

Also, the only responses able to be played during Step 2 are those that specifically save something or cancel something - no other responses are allowed.

You definitely got the right result, but you can take the reasoning even deeper.

- You are perfectly correct that in Step 2 of any action window, you can only use effects that start with "Response" - and in this case, include the word "save" or "cancel" somewhere in the text.

- You are also perfectly correct that in Step 5 of any action window, you can only use effects that start with "Response."

So once the attacking player got the the Framework step for initiating a challenge, it was too late to play an "Any Phase" effect like The Lion's Will to kneel a potential attacker. The Lannister player should have done that before the attacking player got anywhere near the "I'm declaring a challenge against...you!" stage.

Where you can take your reasoning even deeper, though, is that since the attack is declared in Step 1 and resolved in Step 3 - so that the attacking characters are knelt and officially attacking by Step 3 - it's going to be too late to even use a Response effect to try to stop a player from declaring a particular character as an attacker, since you can't even play 90% of Response effects until Step 5. Once a player starts announcing his challenge, the only way yo can manipulate the characters he has available to attack with would we with a "save" or "cancel" Response - usable in Step 2. And, quite honestly, none exist.

What this comes down to is that a player can't sit there and say, "Andy is getting ready to attack. If he attacks me, I don't want him to be able to use his big Army. But if he attacks Joey, I don't particularly care, or want to waste my Lion's Will. So I'll wait to see who Andy attacks before playing my card." The timing rules don't allow for it.

Essentially, unless the effect uses the word "save" or "cancel," you can't interrupt anything someone else is doing - even with a Response.

Awesome, thanks for the explanations. Glad to see we were doing it right. The timing chart was a little confusing at first, but this should clear a lot of that up.