I was playing yesterday and used Rhaenys's Hill to put my opponent's dead pile into play under my control. One of the cards was Syrio Forel. I won a military challenge with him and, since I controlled him, I triggered his Response and put him into Shadows, still under my control.

And then I realized I had no idea what happened at the end of the phase. On the one hand, he's left play, so he should 'forget' whatever happened to him before that. On the other hand, Rhaenys's Hill creates a lasting effect that should send him back to the dead pile. Since neither of us was sure how to handle it, I thought it fairest to just put him back in my opponent's dead pile at the end of the phase. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if that was the correct play.

So, if I trigger Syrio's Response under these circumstances does he:

• a) Go to my Shadows area, 'forget' about how he came back from the dead, and stay under my control;
• b) Return to my opponent's dead pile at the end of the phase; or
• c) Go to my opponent's Shadows area (since he owns him and he's leaving play) when the Response is triggered?

Neither of us even thought of © at the time but now I'm thinking it's kind of likely (so triggering the Response would generally be a bad idea).

It would probably help to remember that Shadows basically is an out of play area like any other. If Syrio said "discard him from play" or "take him to your hand" instead of "put him into Shadows", would you ask the same question?

The general rule applies here, too: If a card leaves play, it goes to it's owner's OOP area. Rhaenys' Hill only returns cards to its owner's dead pile if they are still in play at the end of the phase. In your scenario, if you trigger Syrio's Response, he goes to your opponent's Shadows area and stays there.

So what I'm hearing here is, I should be playing Syrio with The Kindly Man.

Kindly Man is "non-unique," isn't it?

ktom said:

Yes… why do you ruin all of my poorly thought out plans?

Well, you can still do something similar by running Tywin Lannister (KL) OOH in a Stark deck with The Kindly Man and non-unique shadow characters.