This happened this weekend at the NY Regional and I'm starting to think that it should have happened differently.

I was playing against KoHH Martell who revealed The First Snow of Winter as his first plot. He chose me to be first player, so we went on to marshalling and I did all my stuff. During his turn, he marshalled two characters that were 2 cost with effects that put cards into his hand. They were both also allies. So at this point, I had 4 characters that were going to get put back in hand due to his plot and 1 that was going to stay on the table and he had two that were going back to hand and no others on the table. After he finished marshalling, I played Dissension on both his characters so that he had no one on the table and proceeded to not initiate any challenges, effectively canceling his plot.

My question is, could he have played the 0 cost character he still had in hand after I played my dissensions (he was out of gold iirc)? As I look at the flowcharts, it looks like players can only take actions when a player is still considered the active player (would have been my opponent in this case). So, as I think about it several days later, it looks like he could have played the 0 cost character after my Dissensions to ensure that a challenge would have been initiated during the challenge phase.

Erlessan said:

Because I am a stickler for terminology here, you did not "effectively cancel his plot." In this game, something has to initiate in order for it to be canceled. You created a situation where his plot never initiated in the first place. The result is the same (the effect never happens), but the fact that the thing never initiates makes a huge conceptual difference.

Erlessan said:

You are correct. He was still the active player after you played your events, so he still could have Marshaled characters from his hand.

In fact, if he wanted to be a real sticker for the timing rules, he could have said you waited too long to play your Dissensions. The Player Action Window in which he was the active player closes when both of you pass consecutively. I'm assuming (because this is almost always how it happens) that he played something, you did nothing, then he said "I'm done," doing nothing after you did nothing. Right there, you two have passed consecutively and the Player Action Window is closed. But instead (again, because this is what people do all the time), after he said "I'm done," you said "then I play Dissension." At that point, you've got one of two choices - your opponent could enforce the technicality and say "no you don't," or you could agree that his "I'm done" doesn't count, you get to play your events, but he can still take actions, too, including the privilege of playing characters, locations, and attachments from his hand (because he is still the active player).

BTW: Most people do not enforce the technicality without specifically asking "do you want to do anything?" before saying "I'm done marshaling" and closing the Player Action Window, leading to the end of the phase.