This came up in a melee today, and we weren't sure how to resolve it. The situation:

Targ Player initiates a Military challenges with 2 STR against the Stark Player, who currently has the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard title. Stark kneels a Bolton Refugee to defend, and the Targ player triggers his Meereen Tourney Ground; Targ has more unique characters, so the Refugee takes -3 STR. Who wins?

Here's the relevant bit from the CS rules on resolving a challenge:

Add the total STR of the attacking characters. This becomes the total attacking STR. Then add the total STR of the defending characters. This becomes the total defending STR.

The player whose side has the highest total STR wins the challenge. Tied STR goes to the attacker, as long as the attacker has at least 1 total STR on his side. (A challenge may not be won by an attacker or defender whose total STR is less than 1, or who has no participating characters when the challenge is resolved.)

And from Lord Commander:

If you choose this title, you add 3 to your side’s total STR in any MIL challenge in which you have at least one participating character.

There was disagreement over how this played out. Our most experienced player insisted that the Targ player won, and said that he had seen the same situation before at a tournament and that ktom had ruled that there had to be at least 1 STR from participating characters for a player to be able to win, even with the title. This is how we played it, but reading the rules I have my doubts.

The Bolton Refugee is still a participating character, and I can't find anything in the rule book or FAQ that makes me feel like the Stark player shouldn't've been the winner. That parenthetical is obviously important to this whole issue, but to me the core issue is this phrase "total STR." Lord Commander (and Master of Whispers and Crown Regent) modify total STR; it's what they do. The Bolton Refugee had 0 STR, but Stark's total STR should have still be 3.

Is there something I'm missing?

alpha5099 said:

This isn't true as worded. It sounds like combination of two different rules that shouldn't be combined. (1) You have to have at least 1 participating character in order for the Titles to modify your total challenge STR. (2) You have to count at least 1 in your total challenge STR to win and/or oppose a challenge. Making the only character in the challenge not count its STR (or reduce it's STR to 0) will not turn off the requirement for #1, and if the title is counted, you're going to meet #2 (although whether you win or not will depend on what the other side counts).

I can imagine saying "there has to be at least 1 participating character for a player to be able to win, even with the title" (because the title will not add its STR to the challenge STR without a character) but I cannot imagine I said "there has to be at least 1 STR from a participating character in order to win, even with the title" (because so long as a character is there, the title can add its +3, no matter what its STR).

The defending Stark player should have won that challenge, 2 total attacking STR to 3 total defending STR.