I have a couple questions about challenge winning events:

1. Can you win an unopposed challenge while defending a challenge? For example, my opponent attacks me in power and I declare no defenders, then I play True Power to win the challenge. Did I win the challenge UO for the purpose of triggering effects and gaining power?

2. I attack an opponent in power and I am currently winning by 4 STR, my opponent plays True Power and I play one of my own. Do I still win by 4 STR, so I can trigger cards like Superior Claim?

Thanks in advance

Darkcrystalxd said:

1. An unopposed challenge is a challenge in which the defender counted 0 STR, by definition. Thus, a challenge won by the defender can never be an unopposed challenge, because a defender can never win a challenge by counting 0 STR during challenge resolution. In order to win, the defender needs to either count more STR than the attacker, or he would have to be granted the win by a card effect instead of by comparing STR.

2. True Power cancels the normal determination of the challenge winner, i.e. the STR comparison. If you win a challenge with True Power or similar card effects, you are granted the challenge win by the card effect. STR isn't counted in that case, so you can never win by any amount, and the challenge can never be considered unopposed.

It's even simpler than that. Here's what the rulebook says on unopposed challenges:

Unopposed Challenges
During the “Resolve” step of any challenge, if the attacker wins the challenge, and the defender had a total STR of 0 (or no defending characters), then the attacker claims 1 bonus power for his or her House from the power pool. This bonus power is in addition to all other effects of winning a challenge.

This means that, by definition, the defender can never win an unpposed challenge. Btw, you do count STR anyway in the case of card effects that grant you a challenge win, because you might have to check play restrictions on responses (and you might respond to such an effect with another copy of the effect). Note however that, if you count 3 and your opponent 7, playing True Power doesn't make you win by 4 STR, it makes you win by -4 STR, so no "win by 4" effects for you; but if your opponent was to play another True Power in response to yours, he would win by 4.

Sorry Rat. Khudzlin is correct on #2, and his response to #1 is more accurate. Where you seem to be tripping up on both is that challenge STR is still counted when events like True Power and Misinformation are played, it just isn't used to determine who wins.

ktom said:

Oops. In that case I apologize for giving an incorrect answer. You know, I feel extra bad, because I always want people to flag their answers with expressions of uncertainty unless they're absolutely positive the answer they're giving is 100% correct. Guess I should practice what I preach… Really sorry.

That said, could the two of you please elaborate on why that is so, and how we know it? What you're saying is that the STR comparison takes place during the initiation, not the resolution of the "Determine Challenge Winner" framework event, right? I thought it was part of the resolution, but thinking about it some more, I see why you have to be right. If the STR comparison happened during the resolution (step 3) of the framework event, you would never know during the save/cancel step (step 2) whether an opponent would win the challenge against you, so you could never trigger True Power, Misinformation or Feigned Retreat, because their play restriction would never be met. Is that it?

That's it.

The framework event is "determine challenge winner." The rules tell you that in order to determine who the winner will be, you need to check the STR count for the various sides of the challenge. So, counting the attacking/defending STR and comparing them is really more of a play restiction on determining the winner of the challenge; i.e., you need the comparison in order to determine who the winner of the challenge is. So when you "cancel the determination of the challenge winner," you are not canceling the actual STR count, just the "interpretation" of it.

Think of it this way: If you have an effect that says "kneel a character to choose and kneel a character with greater STR," the relative STRs of the characters involved are part of determining which character to kneel. If you cancel that effect, the target character is still considered to have a greater STR than the character knelt to pay the cost; he just doesn't kneel. Same think here. If you cancel the determination of the challenge winner, the players are still considered to have counted the same amount in challenge STR; the person who counted the higher STR just doesn't get to be labeled "winner."