I have three cards out:

Roose Bolton: Response: After you win a challenge in which Roose Bolton participated, all players take control of each character they own currently in play.

Steelshanks Reserve: No attachments. During the challenge phase, the active player gains control of Steelshanks' Reserves.

The Dreadfort: Response: After you play or take control of a House Bolton character with STR 3 or higher, draw 1 card.

My opponent is first player, and has control of Steelshanks Reserve. I win a challenge on defense with Roose Bolton. I trigger his ability. Do I take control of Steelshanks Reserve for a moment? Long enough to trigger the Dreadfort and draw a card?

jmccarthy said:

Note that Steelshankes Reserve doesn't say that it's control cannot change from that of the Active Player. So (unless I am mistaken) yes, if you own it, and win a challenge with Roose, you would gain control of Steelshakes Reserve, albeit briefly. You could then trigger The Dreadfort, before the Reserves would return to the control of the active player.

Hmm, unless the Reserve's passive ability and Roose's Response would be considered conflicting effects that cannot resolve, and therefore cancel each other out. I could see a case being made for that.

The ability is passive I think. I do not see a conflict of abilities here because once Roose Bolton's response is triggered, you gain control of Steelshank Reserves. Then, in the passive step of his Response you then give Steelshank Reserves back to the Active player. There is still a response opportunity of triggering the Dreadfort afterward because the control change did happen.

The only thing I can see being different is if the ability is considered constant. However, I do not see any reason why it would be considered constant since there is a clear point of initiating it as a Passive ability in all framework windows.

Steelshanks Reserves' ability is constant. How that interacts with Roose Bolton's response, I don't know, though.

There is an argument to be made the "During the challenge phase, the active player gains control of Steelshanks' Reserves." is passive. When a player becomes the active player, the "gains control" effect activates whether you want it to or not. As a result, if another "takes control" effect is applied, it sticks until someone else becomes the Active Player - and the passive effect activates again.

This argument can indeed be made, so we must know if this effect is passive or constant.

Based on other cards similar wording, I would say that the effect is constant.

Here are a bunch of exemples using the word "during" and that are continuous - because cannot be cancelled imho:

Dagmer Cleftjaw. Each Warship location you control counts as 2 STR during the dominance phase.

Casterly Rock. During the challenges phase, your unique [Lannister] characters gain stealth.

Bitter Crone. During Military challenges, characters cannot be saved.

Arena Knight. During Power challenges, Arena Knight gains renown.

Steelshanks' Reserves. During the challenge phase, the active player gains control of Steelshanks' Reserves.

In addition, passive abilities often have their point of initiation defined by its timing : such as "After…" or "When…". So I would say that if Steelshanks' Reserves were a passive, it would likely be worded as "During the challenge phase, when/after a player becomes active player, he takes control of Steelshanks' Reserves.

Also, the argument can be made that even though the active players takes control of Steelshanks Reserves, nothing clearly indicated what is the point of initiation. So we assume, as ktom said, that it should be the framework event when one player becomes active - but that's just an assumption, it is not written on the card.

So as the active player that controls Steelshanks, and the owner of Steelshanks wins a challenge with Roose, does he then not gain control of Steelshanks at all because Steelshanks' ability is a constant and therefore always in effect? If true I suppose the only way to cancel that would be to blank Steelshanks before using Roose.

From FAQ we know that :

"Unless otherwise stated (for example, with a
specified duration), the change of control is
permanent until the card that switched sides
leaves play or control of the card switches
again via a card effect."

So after Roose Bolton effect resolves, the Steelshanks' Reserve ability ends it immediatly. I'd say you can still draw with the Dreadfort.

I think I agree with Bolzano. The thing is, I also think that the point of initiation could also be when the Active Player does not control Steelshanks Reserves. It then triggers to the Active Player gaining control of them, which would satisfy the framework of one becoming the active player and one using Roose Bolton and other character control gaining effects.

It is difficult to say because the ability is not "Non-Active Players cannot control Steelshanks Reserves." because "cannot" is absolute, so don't even try gaining control of them. That sentence is highly more complicated to read than what it currently is, so I know that would be a ridiculous effect. I mean, my question is, can we even use Seductive Promise at all on Steelshanks Reserves if you are not the active player? If the ability is constant, then how could you? Would it just fizzle? :-)

This is a fun debate.

Bolzano said:

I'm on board with that.

Let's assume that Seductive Promise (or Roose's effect) is just as permanent a control effect as Steelshanks' Reserves. Which effect takes over?

- If Steelshanks' Reserve effect is constant (as I think, see above), and no effect takes over, they should cancel each other :

"If, at any time, two (or more) lasting effects
create an endless loop that cannot successfully
resolve itself, resolve the loop as if neither
lasting effect were occurring."

And, the Dreadfort wouldn't even allow you to draw.

- If Steelshanks' reserve effect were a passive, then the last effect triggered would take over.

But, the FAQ precisely defines to what extent a control effect is permanent, and that is, until another control effect takes over. So, if Steelshanks' effect is constant, it will still kick in after Seductive Promise has successfully resolved, and end the fact that it is "permanent".

Bolzano said:

True, but don't forget about terminal effects. For example, "That character gets -1 STR and is killed if its STR is 0."

The "kill at 0" resolves as a passive effect, whenever the STR is 0, despite not having a word like "after…" or "when…". The play restriction of "is the character's STR 0?" is being constantly checked, but when it is, the "kill" effect initiates (passively). If it didn't, there would be no chance to save the character (in this case, with the added requirement that such a save needs to remove the character from the terminal state, too).

Interestingly enough, that is what Bolanzo has described for the "gains control" effect on Steelshanks' Reserve. You can use Roose's ability to take control of the Reserves, but the "active player gains control" effect reasserts itself immediately.

Personally, I agree with this interpretation, even though I acknowledge that it is not the only possible one.

Here's the $64,000 question, though: if the "gains control" effect on Steelshanks' Reserve is, for all intents and purposes, a terminal effect (i.e., the effect reasserts itself because the basic conditions initiating it - the other person being the active player - are still true), would it follow that you would NOT be allowed to change control of Steelshanks' Reserves with another effect unless it also removed the character from the terminal state (by changing the Active Player) at the same time?

-Yeah the "-1 STR and discarded if 0" is what bothered me and made me write that point of initiation are "often" marked with "when" or "after", not always.

- Why do you keep spelling my nickname Bolanzo ^^

- 64,000$ question : I would agree with you, assuming it was a terminal effect (which it is not).

I also like the Terminal Effect comparison and would also be on board with that interpretation.

If the effect is Passive, it is always the last effect to initiate because there is a Passive effect window inside each Response window, which is why I thought it would be a possible outcome.

1. Roose Bolton's Response Triggers

2. Control of Steelshanks Reserves changes to the original owner(Roose owner).

3. Passive effects trigger(inside the Response of Roose Bolton)

4. Control goes back to the active player.

Another reason this can have importance is because of the Ramsay's Name event. It would inherently make it a bit more interesting an event to play as it could effectively cause several changes of control with Roose Bolton. Theoretically, if Roose Bolton somehow participates and wins multiple challenges against the Active Player, the control change of Steelshank Reserves is a lot of power added to them. Of course it could backfire, but just the same, it's an interesting topic.

Bolzano said:

How do you determine if it's passive or constant?

Bolzano said:

This is not a situation of an endless loop because Roose's effect is ended, or at least preempted, as soon as another "gains control" effect is applied and (since it is a Response) cannot be triggered and reapplied. The loop resolves itself when the Reserves' effect reasserts itself.

The choices here are:

1. The Reserves ability is a passive that only initiates in the framework window when a player becomes the active player in the challenge phase (Roose would take, and keep, control and Dreadfort could be triggered)
2. The Reserves ability is a passive that initiates any time the Reserves are controlled by someone other than the active player in the challenge phase (Roose would attempt to take control, and the effect handing control to the active player would "reassert" itself; whether this would allow Dreadfort to be triggered or run into the general limitations prohibiting effects that are immediately made meaningless by reassertion just so to create Response triggers, most often seen and applied in terminal effects)

(It cannot really be a constant effect because something must initiate to give control to each player as he or she becomes active. If it has a point of initiation, it cannot be constant. The discussion here isn't "if" it has a point of initiation, but rather how many it has.)

Slothgodfather said:

This one must initiate because each "gains control" effect is a new application, preempting the last one. That's how "gains control" effects are defined to work. So, since this effect initiates multiple times over the challenge phase (at least once for each player as they become the active player), the effect must be a passive, not a constant.

Admittedly, it can be a little hard to tell the difference between a passive effect (that initiates when its play restrictions are met) and a conditional constant (which is just true when its conditions are true). For the most part, though, anything that is an active change in status (kneels, changes control, is discarded, is removed from challenge, etc.) will be a passive while anything that is a modification to characteristics (gains STR, loses icons, etc.) will be constant.

Thanks for that clarification ktom. As a passive I think it would be triggered during the passive window like Bomb was saying earlier. This would allow someone to take control of Steelshanks for the duration of the framework window until passives are executed.

However, if I'm looking at the action window correctly, in the scenario of: Player A is the owner of steelshanks but not the controller, wins a challenge with Roose, the action is resolved and passive abilities are initiated. Player A regains control of steelshanks, but their passive ability also means they go back to Player B as the active player.

Does this open a new framerwork action window due to the condition of "gaining control of a Bolton"?

As a passive ability (and not a constant), would it come down to the first player determining which passive response triggers first? If they choose Steelshanks passive to go first, they stay under Player B's control until Roose's passive is triggered, which would give Player A control until the next time passive abilities where initiated.

Slothgodfather said:

I'm really not following this. What two passives are you talking about?

Player A owns the Reserves, but is not the controller because they are not the active player. Player A wins a challenge with Roose. Roose's ability is triggered Response (not a passive), so you wait until Step 5 to trigger it. The First Player has absolutely no say in when, let alone if, a triggered Response initiates. When you trigger a Response, after that Response resolves, you initiate and resolve any passives whose play restrictions are met as a result of resolving that Response. (You can see this in the basic anatomy of a framework action window, Step 5.IV, on page 18 of the FAQ, so it's pretty clear this is part of the original "resolve challenge" framework window, not a new window unto itself.) So, if we are looking at the Reserves' passive ability as initiating any time the current active player does not control them, then it will initiate again - here - in the Step 5.IV of resolving Roose's ability (which was initiated in Step 5.I). And this will happen any time someone other than the active player tries to take control of the Reserves during the Challenge phase by any means.

So by this view, Roose's ability will never be able to hold the Reserves (unless Roose's controller is the active player) longer than the space between Step 5.III and Step 5.IV. Under that sequence, Roose's controller would be allowed to trigger The Dreadfort, though, because no matter how brief, control did change.

However, there is a prohibition, primarily applied to terminal effects, that says if you trigger something and after resolving it in Step 3 (or Step 2.IIII, or Step 5.III), things would immediately revert in Step 4 (or Step 2.IV, or Step 5.IV) to the state they were in before the resolution in Step 3, you are not allowed to initiate that effect in the first place. This is why you are not allowed to save a character that is "killed at 0" unless it's STR is also increased. The question therefore remains whether this prohibition, which is taken for granted when terminal effects would "reassert," should also be applied when the Reserves' "gains control" effect would "reassert." Is so, triggering Roose would have no effect on the Reserves, which would not switch to Roose's controller in Step 5.III (and back to the active player in Step 5.IV), so Roose's controller could not trigger The Dreadfort.

The other possible explanation is that the Reserves' only initiates when a player first becomes active player - as opposed to whenever it is not controlled by the active player. If that is the case. then after resolving Roose in Step 5.III, the passive does not initiate a second time in Step 5.IV. Roose's controller thus keeps control and is able to trigger The Dreadfort.

Hope that helps clarify what is going on - timing wise - here.

Apparently I still need to look at the cards again before I do any responses. I had thought that Roose's control ability was passive and not a Response (as it clearly is). My mistake.

Yes that does make things much clearer on the timing. Thanks for that. I'm done doing my own guessing as to how this should be played out though, which direction are you leaning towards?

Sorry for bringing back this old topic : is there a final answer for this Roose / Reserve / Dreadfort or Roose / Reserve / In the Name of Ramsay interraction ?

Saneth said:

That means when Roose's ability is triggered, the owner will take control of the Reserves. Then, as a passive result of that, the active player will take control of the Reserves. So The Dreadfort can be triggered for the Reserves, and if In Ramsay's Name is active, the Reserves will claim a total of 2 power (1 for the owner taking it, 1 for the active player taking it back).

The whole "terminal effect" thing was always an interesting possibility, but a stretch and not a serious possibility because "terminal effects" are defined as only applying when entry into moribund (ie, removing the card from play) is involved.

Crystal clear, thanks ! Good to know when defending, but also when using Lucas Blackwood to initiate a challenge without being the active player.