Hi,
I am pretty new player. My group has wondered is it possible to response to something with triggered effects like Challenges:
For example I am attacking and opponent plays Cately Stark Challenges: Put Catelyn Stark into play from your hand, knelt as a defender...I use my Longship Iron Victory to boost my intimidate character and Catelyn is not able to block...Does this go like that? If not, when can I use those effects?
Thank You!
Yes, as far as I follow it, that'd be fine- they play their Catelyn response, then you can respond with your next action, to trigger iron victory.
There are action windows after declaring attackers, but before declaring stealth/defenders, and then again after declaring defenders normally, before resolving the challenge.
Basically correct, yes.
But - there is a BIG difference between being "not able to block" (we say "defend" around here) and "not counting STR". Intimidate will not remove Catelyn from the challenge - she will still be defending. She just won't count her strength (unless she manages to boost it high enough to meet the Intimidate character).
I thought if defending character's strenght goes to 0, attack will be unopposed. Am I correct?
But I see this is different scenario.
Possu, that is correct, but the defending character is still participating, which can be relevant for a lot of effects.
Please note that none of these are Response effects. You are simply talking about the alternation of triggering standard player actions here.
What may be confusing you is something a lot of people from other games have trouble with at first. Having a character defend is not enough to oppose a challenge. In order to oppose a challenge, you must have both 1) a defending character and, 2) a total challenge STR of 1 or more - and you must have both of these things at the time the challenge resolves . In some games, just having a defending character at some point before challenge resolution is enough. In this game, though, whether or not the challenge is "opposed" is determined as part of challenge resolution - by the presence of a participating defender and a total challenge STR of at least 1.
So the whole Catelyn/Intimidate thing ends up with an unopposed challenge not because there isn't a defending character (criteria #1), but because the total challenge STR is 0 (criteria #2 fails because Intimidate stops Catelyn's 3 STR from being counted as part of the challenge).