Is stealth a game or card effect? I would think game, as it is initiated by the game regardless of a card having stealth.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, but stealth is classified as a "keyword"

Vaapad said:

That's not what he's getting at; he wants to know if Cat o' the Canals can be bypassed by stealth. The answer is, no, she can't, because Stealth i s indeed a card effect.

i guess my issue with this is, if I have cat out and my opp attacks me and let's say, I have a char that attacks with his. Can he now stealth cat as now one of the cards with stealth is not controlled by an opp? Same with deadly

johnn0411 said:

As for the (very confusing) question related to the "collective" nature of these keywords, there are some tricky nuances here:

Start with Stealth: "For each of your attacking characters with the 'Stealth' keyword, you may choose, before defenders are declared, a character without Stealth on the defending side. That character may not defend during this challenge." The important word there is "your." Because that word is in there, stealth is resolved by the attacking player choosing 1 character that cannot defend for each attacking character with Stealth that he controls . So your opponent is never going to be able to use the stealth on an attacking character that you control to bypass an "immune to opponent's card effects" defending character because the rules say that only the controller of the card can choose the corresponding stealth target. (If you want to choose Cat to be bypassed by a character that you control and is attacking you, go ahead. Not sure why you WOULD, but it certainly doesn't cause any short circuit with the rules of immunity, etc. It is your card effect, even though you are - strangely - attacking yourself.)

Now on to Deadly: "During a challenge, if the attacking player controls the most participating characters with the 'Deadly' keyword, the defending player must choose and kill a defending participating character after the challenge resolves." Again, control is the key issue. You don't count Deadly by "attacking side vs. defending side." You count Deadly by "you control vs. I control." So if you jump in a deadly character as an attacker against yourself, the "Deadly" that character brings doesn't actually count toward the attacker's deadly count - it counts toward yours. You could be attacked by 2 characters with Deadly, one controlled by you and one controlled by your opponent, with none on the defending side and still not have to kill anyone for deadly because the "count by control" comes up even (just as if 1 attacker and 1 defender had deadly). The immunity against character abilities works out because it is always the higher count on characters controlled by the opponent that make you choose and kill a character.

So you see, when you really get into the definitions of Stealth and Deadly, there are no issues of an opponent using your own keywords against you.

thank you it was the control that I was missing