I'd like some clarification on how this functions in play. The new Victarion, for instance, has the text "While Victarion Greyjoy is attacking, raise the claim value on your revealed plot card by 1 if you control more participating characters with [Naval] enhancements than the defending opponent."

There seems to be an ambiguity as to how this plays out. For instance, while running The Black Sails, you can only retrieve a card from The Hold if you win with at least one attacker brought into the challenge by means of the naval mechanic. Does the same apply to an effect like Victarion's claim-raising ability (which is worded differently)? Does merely being in the challenge while having an icon with the enhancement suffice to trigger his ability or does he need to be brought into it by means of the naval mechnic for it to trigger?

As this is likely to cause some rules confusion, it would be good to have it settled.

The characters do not need to have entered the challenge using the naval enhancement, but they need to have the enhancement on the icon that corresponds to the challenge.

Khudzlin said:

Can I argue that due to the wording "raise the claim value on your revealed plot card by 1 if you control more participating characters with [Naval] enhancements than the defending opponent." the character doesn't have to have it on the corresponding icon; it merely states that having more N characters is what matters, so N on any icon would count. I would think that it should be read the same as if it said "raise the claim value on your revealed plot card by 1 if you control more participating characters with Power icons than the defending opponent"

Also, at some point I hope we can assign an abbreviation for "Naval Enhancement" - maybe NvE or something since NE is already taken…

Sorry, to clarify my last post I was talking about Victarion, you may have just been talking about BS Agenda Khudzlin…

Skowza said:

I would counter-argue that since Naval is a challenge enhancement , it is inherently meaningless outside of the current challenge. Since the game mechanic for the Naval enhancement is effectively "off" until a challenge is initiated, and only meaningful on the corresponding challenge icon once the challenge has been initiated, it follows that Victarion only counts enhancements on the corresponding icon type, not any and all printed enhancements a character might have.

Said another way: suppose you declare a power challenge with Victarion. This "turns on" the Naval enhancement/game mechanic on power icons. Naval enhancements on military icons - including Victarion's own - are useless. That is, Naval enhancements on icons that do not correspond to the current challenge type are effectively inactive. If they are effectively inactive, it seems hard to believe that they would count for Victarion's claim-raising ability.

Skowza said:

With the agenda, the attacking character needs to have entered the challenge through the naval mechanic, as printed in the rules issued with the chapter. It is not the same.

Khudzlin said:

Actually, I was responding to the hypothesis that I had answering a question about Black Sails rather than Victarion. My point was that my answer would have been different.

• Victarion requires the enhancement on the appropriate icon, but doesn't care how the characters entered the challenge.
• Black Sails requires that the character entered the challenge with the enhancement (thus requiring it on the appropriate icon).

I can't agree with Ktom interpretation.

As naval enhancement are new there is a chance they aren't consistent with the rest of the mechanics of the game, but until we see a Faq, we have to interpret them with what we know.

If some card effect would ask me to count the number of icons on my participating characters, I would count the icons currently active on the card, ie: as printed, but with the relevant effects aplied, as an example, if you use an icon removal effect during a challenge (useless, yeah), i would not count that icon.

By Ktom's ruling, a card with the text: "Choose a participating character with 2 naval enhancements, that character gains renown." cannot be played. But I think it would be possible, the same if the card text asked about icons: Ie: Choose a participating character with a Mil and Int icon, that character gains renown. I guess as you cannot be participating at the same time in two challenges, asking for 2 different icons during a challenge would be impossible, but we know by Direct Assault that it is posible, indeed.

Victarion effect is counting the number of characters with enhancements, not enhancements to the current challenge, not any other thing. I can't find any other effect in the game that cares about active or inactive things, and I have no doubt than Vic ability could be intended to work that way, but as printed, if you have a character with a Mil enhancement, another with Int and another with a power one, i'd rule you are participating with 3 characters with enhancements, regardless of the kind of challenge.

Jef said:

I would further suggest that "choose a participating character with 2 naval enhancements" is bad templating. It would be more consistent with the Rules Insert if it said "choose a participating character with naval enhancements on 2 of its icons."

"Choose a participating character with 2 navel enhancements" is not the same as "choose a participating character with a military and a power icon." It is more like "choose a participating character with 2 military icons" (which is impossible).

I sent the Victarion question to Damon, and his response was (copied/pasted):

VIctarion is checking the total number of participating characters with Naval enhancements on each side.

Because the effect does not mention anything about Naval enhancements on the icon of the current challenge type, or similar wording, we know it is simply counting the number of characters on each side with the enhancement.

Damon Stone
Associate LCG Designer
Fantasy Flight Games
[email protected]

Fair enough. The Naval rules are pretty brief, so there are going to be some things about the context of the mechanic that need to be clarified.

A couple more of those things, as verified by Damon, are:

1. While only the attacking and defending players may declare Naval attackers and defenders, they can do so on either side of the challenge.
2. "Does not kneel to attack/defend" does not work for declaring Naval attackers/defenders (unless it specifically says something along the lines of "does not kneel to be declared as a Naval attacker or defender," of course).
3. Like your hand or cards in Shadows, The Hold is open information to the owner/controller, but not to other players.
4. Effects that key off of (or limit) "declaring" attackers/defenders applies equally to Naval declaration and to standard framework declaration.
5. Effects that key off of not declaring defenders (think of things like The Lord Commander title, the "support" mechanic, and the card Abel's Washerwoman) only apply to the standard framework declaration of defenders.

#4 creates some interesting possibilities. For example, say that I do an INT challenge with 4 STR. As soon as I do, I declare a Naval defender with 1 STR. Well, a defender has been declared, so Walder Frey's passive effect will initiate and jump him into the challenge on the attacking side. Now, the defending player gets a chance to decare defenders….

If I understand the timing correctly then, I could declare a naval defender during the player action window after the attacker kneels but before he declares stealth targets, effectively avoiding having my naval guy get stealthed past?

Also, would it be the case that if I declared an attacker with Joust and then jumped in my own naval defender that the opponent would not be able to add any additional defenders?

The rules let you do this (for the first point, this is often how I use Greatjon Umber). Your opponent could then declare one of his naval characters as an attacker, making your character not alone and letting him declare additional defenders.

The Joust rules say that your the DEFENDER may only declare 1 defender, not that the challenge can only have 1 total participating defender. So jumping in a Naval defender against your own Joust attacker will NOT prevent your opponent from declaring 1 defender themselves.

Wait, you're allowed to declare one of your controlled naval enhanced characters to defend against an attack you've initiated….. this seems quite… stupid…

There aren't a whole lot of situations where it would be a good idea (controlling "win by/lose by" STR is about the only one), but there are a lot of things that you can do that you probably shouldn't do.

Any thoughts on how Enhancements work with granting/stripping icons?

I have a guy with a M[Naval] icon. My opponent activates The Scourge on him. I choose to respond by discarding a card to give him back his M icon. Does it have a [Naval] still?

I control a guy with a M[Naval] icon and a Rusted Sword equipped. My opponent discards Orphan of the Greenblood from play, targetting him. Who chooses which M icon is lost (the enhanced or unenhanced one) or does an enhancement affect all of a character's icons (I admit I'm a little unclear on how multiple icons work)?

Those are the two obvious scenarios I can think of and was hoping the new FAQ would cover this.

AerysII said:

• Whether or not a character has a particular icon type is a "yes or no" kind of thing. You either have the icon or you don't.
• If a character's icon is enhanced (whether the enhancement is printed or gained), then as long as the icon i present, that icon is enhanced.

What this means in practical terms is that the enhancement is not "attached" to a particular instance of the icon. It counts for the icon as a whole. You look for the presence or absence of the icon and, if the icon is present, any valid enhancement in the check means the result is enhanced. Said another way, when you see the little ship icon on a character's MIL icon, it means "while this character has a MIL icon, it is considered to have an enhanced MIL icon."

Yeah, you're right. My bad. I was too busy reading all the naval rules and didn't pay enough attention to the general enhancement rules.

This opens whole new worlds out there. For example if you are attacked with a char with joust, you can declare one of your naval chars as an attacker, so joust wears off and you can declare as many defenders as you like maybe? After all, joust spells "as long as he is attacking alone"

Also, how do N interact with stealth? From the stealth wording, I would think that the stealthed char can´t defend in any way. You could actually stealth a knelt char just to make sure no card effects stands it, right?

Stealth prevents a character from defending in any way (not just from being declared as a defender), including through effects like Greatjon Umber (either version) or Tyrion Lannister's (Lions of the Rock). However, both Greatjon Umber and the naval mechanic allow you to make a character participate in a challenge befor e Stealth is declared.

More to the point - stealthing a character that is already defending will not remove it from the challenge.

Yeah, I know that. But I´m Martel. The only house in the game with no Navals so far. So I hate them I think I´ll include

LFenix said:

a few icon removals if the naval keeps showing up more and more (as it looks like it will). My deck wasn´t based on icon removals, but considering how things are evolving… :S