Not certain if this is the right sub forum so please move if needed.

I am trying to prepare/ hypothesise for the new chapter packs being released with 'naval characters' and had a couple of questions/ queries which would be useful to know prior to receiving.

Am i correct in stating that naval characters can be used as attacker / defender in a challenge regardless whether the owner of the card was either the initiator or defender in the challenge ?

If so then surely the above would mean that characters with deadly / renown would suddenly become immensly powerful , this is more opinion as opposed to a question but got my brain ticking over.

Daenarys said:

Daenarys said:

Similarly, Renown is awarded to the characters with the keyword controlled by the winner of the challenge. A third player cannot use a Renown Naval character to enter the challenge and grab some quick power (because even if they enter on the winning side, the character is not controlled by the winner of the challenge).

Thanks very much for the quick response as usual.

ktom said:

Actually, 3rd-party deadly characters would enter into the comparison, because the attacker needs to have more deadly characters than each other player, not just more than the defender.

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.

ktom said:

ktom,

Per the rules insert, it is not limiting you to which side the naval characters participate on as long as you are the attacking or defending player.

"Any time after an attack is declared, the attacking or defending player can kneel a non-participating character with a NAVAL enhancement on the matching challenge icon and declare it as a NAVAL attacker or defender in that challenge."

Based on that, doesn't that mean you can declare a NAVAL attacker even if you are the defending player?

Khudzlin said:

Makes sense. ktom, could you please comment on this?

@Bomb: Suppose I said to you "Men and women visiting the pool use the men's and women's locker rooms to change."? Granted, the word "respectively" would be more precise there, but would that sentence indicate to you that men use the women's locker room to change, and vice versa?

Within the context of the game, where only the attacking player can "declare" attackers and only the defending player can "declare" defenders, it is reasonable to read "the attacking or defending player can kneel a non-participating character with a Naval enhancement on the matching challenge icon and declare it as a Naval attacker or defender" as "the attacker declares attackers and the defender declared defenders." Again, while the word "respectively" would help, it's pretty much the same as the "men use the men's locker room and women use the women's locker room" interpretation of my example above.

There's nothing technically wrong with the interpretation of "the attacker declares attackers or defenders and the defender declares attackers or defenders," but there's nothing wrong with my interpretation, either. I just think that within the context and specific use of the word "declare," it makes more sense to impose the time-honored understanding of "attackers declare attackers, defenders declare defenders".

But I could be wrong. We should probably as FFG for its official interpretation of a sentence with such ambiguous conjuntions.

@ Flintac: Yes. Khudzlin's interpretation of counting Deadly participants by controller rather by side is correct. I was too focused on the "you can't jump in a Deadly character and have it count for another player" thing to clarify the additional step in reasoning that while it doesn't count for the attacker or defender, it counts for "you," which can end up screwing the attacker.

Thanks for comment! No confusion now.

ktom said:

I agree with you generally. I was just reading it as the rule is written. They are being relatively specific about most of the other clarities in the rules insert about Naval declaration, so I was taking the meaning of the rule to be literal.

Honestly, I think the only reason I'd want to declare a Naval attacker while I was the defending player is for the purposes of attempting to trigger the Black Sails agenda. So perhaps the rule is intended to be loose for partly that purpose.

I will also ask FFG about what else qualifies for Naval declaration(does not kneel to attack/defend, etc).