With this card you remove abilities and traits from an oppoenets card.

Because it is any phase dose this mean that i could wait for my oppoent to declare attackers during the challenge phase and then play Nightmares or do i need to declare prior to attackers being announced. I am a little confused as to the framework of this card.

Thanks

Daenarys said:

There is a Player Action Window between assigning attackers and assigning stealth/declaring defenders, so you sure could play it in between.

Ok so let me give a hypothesis.

If my opponent has discard narrow sea to lower the cost of the next card he brings into play could i immediately play Nightmares to blank this text and thus the card just gets discarded but with no discount ?

Daenarys said:

No. Your opponent would be finished bringing the character into play, including the discount, before you had a chance to play Nightmares. It is a triggered ability that is not a response, so it cannot preempt or cancel anything.

Ok thanks for clearing this up.

KristoffStark said:

Almost. But: Discarding Narrow Sea and marshalling a character are two separate actions. Between them the opponent does have the chance to take an action himself. He can play Nightmares after the discarding of narrow Sea and before the marshalling of the character. As Kristoffer says, he just can't do anything against Narrow Sea anymore. That action is done by the time he has the chance to play Nightmares. Only a Response that has the word cancel in it (like Maester Murenmure, for example) could prevent Narrow Sea from resolving successfully. If such a cancel response was used to cancel Narrow Sea, the card would still end up in the discard pile, but it's effect (the reducing) wouldn't happen.

This is something that is unclear to many newer players. In practice, using a reducer and marshalling the reduced card often looks like it's one action. That's not true, though. Not only does your opponent get the chance to trigger an action in between - you don't even have to play the reduced card as your next action. You could for example discard Narrow Sea to reduce your next character, then play an event, then marshall a location at full price, then marshall the reduced character. Remember that after each of those steps, your opponent has the chance to trigger an action himself.

Note that Kristoff's answer regarding Nightmares is the same, though.

There is no point between initiating the Sea and resolving its effect in which Nightmares can be played such that the effect doesn't happen, but the cost (discarding the location) is still paid. You cannot interrupt the initiation and resolution of any effect, except with a Response effect that specifically uses the word "save" or "cancel."

The actual application of the Sea's cost reduction power is indeed applied (if at all) in a later player action, but the reasoning about trying to use Nightmares as some sort of pseudo-cancel effect was spot-on.

ktom said:

Not quite. He's right concerning the topic at hand, insofar as Nightmares can't do anything against Narrow Sea after the latter's effect has been triggered. But he wrote "Your opponent would be finished bringing the character into play, including the discount, before you had a chance to play Nightmares.", which is technically incorrect. It's a very minor point in the context of this thread, but since it reflects a common misconception (namely that playing a reducer and playing the reduced card are somehow "welded together"), I thought I'd address it.

Indeed, I had forgotten that Narrow Sea was a separate Marshaling action from the actual playing of the character.

I realize that the timing still doesn't work regarding Nightmares, but for a slightly different reason than I cited.