If I have Calm Before the Storm plot out:

Text:
Characters and locations are immune to events this round.

Can my opponent play To Be a Kraken?

Text:
House Greyjoy only. Play only if you have at least 1 Military Battle plot card in your used pile.
Response: Stand a Greyjoy character you control to cancel a triggered effect.

We both agreed that even though the cost is like masking an awesome effect, paying for an effect with a cost that interacts with a character(like standing or kneeling them) is not something that immunity extends to. Is that the right of it?

An additional question:

If what I said is correct, can we trigger an effect just to pay the cost even if the effect cannot resolve successfully?

An example - maybe I want to kneel a clansman for the purposes of them being eligible to not be killed because of Timmett Son of Timmett. Let's pretend it's the event A Lannister Pays His Debts. If there is no legal target to kill(maybe because they are immune to events or cannot be killed), is this one of those "don't even try" because you can't choose a legal target?

I am 99% sure that you can't even try, but I'm trying to figure out what types of events can and cannot be used that involve characters when Calm Before the Storm is out.

I had the same type of question come up with Desperate Tactics. If you know that you don't have an army to put into play from your hand, can you still play the event and return an inplay army to your hand (to get rid of an attachment for example)?

Bomb said:

1. The card is an ineligible target for whatever it is immune to (ie, it cannot be what is "chosen"); and
2. The card ignores all non-targeted effects of whatever it is immune to

Nothing in there about ignoring costs, play restrictions, etc. So if you can kneel an Advisor to the Crown to play an event with an influence cost while Calm Before the Storm is out, you can stand a Greyjoy character to play To Be a Kraken. It seems a bit more counterintuitive for the "To Be a..." events because we don't normally think of paying costs as being beneficial, but a cost is a cost - and immunity doesn't make a card ineligible for paying costs.

Bomb said:

So...

Bomb said:

However, you could kneel Timmett to play "The Raven's Message" (assuming you just revealed a Power Struggle plot), even if there are no characters in play with the INT icon to be knelt by the effect (or all characters with INT icons happen to be immune to events).

Do you see the difference there? In the ALPHD example, you couldn't meet all the requirements to trigger the event in the first place, so you never even reached whether the resolution could be successful. In the Raven's Message example, you DID meet all the play restrictions and could legally initiate the event, even though when you got to resolution, there was no way for it to affect anything.

Bomb said:

• Any event that uses characters to pay for costs can be used. (eg, To Be a Kraken)
• Any event that chooses characters as targets cannot be used. (eg, ALPHD)
• Any event that does not choose characters as targets, but ends up directly affecting them when it resolves, can be used, but will be ignored when it does resolve. (eg, Westeros Bleeds)
• Any event that does not choose characters as targets, but might end up affecting them indirectly when it resolves, can be used and will not be ignored when it resolves. (eg, Red Vengeance during a military challenge)
• Any event that chooses or affects something associated with a character, but not the character itself, can be used. (eg, To Be a Kraken canceling a triggered character ability or Ill Tidings to choose and discard an attachment that is on a character.)

So it looks like Desperate Tactics would be legal to play without an army in your hand since nothing is specifically targeted? The cost gets paid but the effect fizzles?

ktom - As always thank you very much!

Your answers were very, very helpful with the bullet points of several(actually probably all!) of the scenarios where immune to events will apply. It makes To Be a Kraken type of events very neat as the cost is a round about way to stand your character when they are immune to events.

dh098017 said:

So while it is not against the rules to return the bigger Army to your hand without a smaller one to put out, you had better be ready and willing to prove to your opponent some way that you do not, in fact, have that smaller one to put out.

Bomb said:

Immunity to events only stops the direct effects of an event card from being applied to the character. The classic example is: if character A is immune to events, using an event to give character B stealth will, of course, leave character B perfectly free to bypass character A using that granted stealth. Similarly, Ill-Tidings could be used to choose and discard an attachment off of an "immune to events" character like The Red Viper. That's because the direct effect is on the attachment. The character it is discarded from is only affected indirectly.

That much of it is pretty easy to see, but here's where it can be counter-intuitive. Take "He Calls It Thinking." You cancel an event, then you want to attach the event to a character as a +2 Boon. Can you attach it to The Red Viper? Turns out that you can because the direct effect is on the event, putting it into play as an attachment. The character it goes on is only affected indirectly. (Same thing as Ill-Tidings, but in reverse, right?)