Shield Islands Dromon
Location
Cost: 1
Warship
Response: After an opponent plays a location, put Shield Islands Dromon on the bottom of your deck to have that player choose to either place that location on the bottom of his or her deck or discard 2 power from his or her House.

Ktom - I am interested in what your opinion is since many of us couldn't figure it out in agotcards.org.

If the player does not have 2 or more power on his or her house card, can they choose that option and discard 0 or 1 power? Or is this one of those cases where you cannot choose to do something you cannot actually do when there is a choice between 2 options?

I think some of It's value will depend on what you say.

Thanks!

We did that question about 2 weeks ago in this thread .

I won't bother re-typing the explanation, but the bottom line is that yes, the opponent could choose to discard power he doesn't have. The Dromon is essentially useless against Brotherhood decks.

OK Thanks. I must have missed that thread entirely.

But wait, I thought for Wildfire that if you have an unkillable character then that character has to be chosen? Is that not the case? (Because then logic would dictate you couldn't choose to discard 2 power that you don't have. Theon Greyjoy is an example of this where the key words "if able" are used after the choosing, meaning you are allowed to choose something you are not able to discard, I believe)

Here was the Wildfire example:

I have 3 non-noble characters and 3 noble characters and Power of Blood flipped. I was told that I had to choose the nobles when I tried to choose to save the non-nobles.

You are under no obligation to choose the Nobles.

I think the key point is that Wildfire Assault doesn't ask you to choose characters to die, it asks you to choose characters who will not be killed. If Wildfire Assault worked differently (say, telling you to choose all but three of your characters to kill), you wouldn't be able to choose the Nobles, because a CBK character can't be chosen to die, but the way WA works they're safe. The characters you don't pick will be killed and cannot be saved, but the Nobles are CBK, so it all works out.

(There might be other considerations and rules nuances I'm missing.)

mdc273 said:

Alpha has the right analysis. With Wildfire, you are choosing 3 characters to NOT die. When something "cannot be killed" it imposes two separate conditions:

1. That character cannot be chosen to die.
2. That character will effectively ignore effects that try to kill it, chosen or not.

Not being allowed to choose someone to die is not the same as being forced to choose them to live. Look at it this way: if you have Power of Blood vs. an opponent's Valar with one Iron Mines on the table, are you forced to use the Iron Mines to stop Valar from killing a Noble character? Of course not, but the idea "you must choose the CBK character to not die" kind of argues that you should.

So, since Wildfire is "choose 3, kill the others," it is not choosing anyone to die. It is choosing exceptions to the otherwise general kill effect. CBK characters are already exceptions to the general kill effect (#2 above), so while you could choose them to be exceptions, it is redundant and unnecessary.

If you have 6 characters on the board, 3 Noble and 3 non-Noble, and you flip Power of Blood when your opponent flips Wildfire, you come out of the plot phase with 6 characters on the board (choose the 3 non-Nobles to "not die," then let CBK do its work when the general kill resolves and tries to kill the characters yo didn't choose).

If you're feeling generous, you could, of course, cut your opponent a break and choose the Nobles to not die (by two separate effects now).