...or are we missing something?

My girlfriend and I have been playing AGoT for a few months now (not regularly, mind), and something occurred to me yesterday re: the benefits of attacking / defending, and I wanted clarification in case I'm missing something.

There's little point heavily defending anything if you know it's a lost cause, and that obviously makes sense - why commit all your cards to fending off an attack you can't win anyway?

But this creates a situation where the advantage seems to be very much with the person attacking second - if I want to make a military challenge and can see it needs all my cards to win the challenge, according to the rules I have to declare which cards will be in that challenge. But my opponent, realising they won't win, can then put forward a token card to ensure the challenge isn't undefended, knowing I have no more cards to face a military challenge when they are attacking.

Are we misreading the rules on this? It seems to place the advantage hugely with the person going second, because while they'll lose the first go round, they will get both the standard reward plus the power token for an undefended challenge.

Any help would be much appreciated!

No that's entirely correct. That's why there's an element of strategy. So don't over commit with all your forces on any challenge if you think your opponent is going to chump block you.

So you have to be sneaky, use guys who have stealth. Maybe do something so that your guys don't kneel to attack, or have something that lets you defend even when your characters are knelt.

Play an event or use an ability so that your forces that looked weak before are now suddenly a powerhouse.

Maybe you go in with a challenge that your opponent will win so that they kneel defenders then declare another challenge type that you really wanted to win now that your opponent is less defended.

As the beginning of a general analysis of the challenge phase, what you say is spot on. There is an advantage to not going first in the challenge phase because you do not have to be conscious of holding a "reserve" for defense. You opponent's turn to attack is past, so you do not have to worry about holding back resources on your own attack. The person who goes first has to more carefully manage their attacking resources if they want to avoid being "tapped out" when it comes their turn to defend. That can definitely be a disadvantage, especially if you are still gaining experience in the challenge phase of the game.

That said, there is a lot of advantage to going first in the challenge phase, as well. For instance, there are a ton of Response effects in the game that key off of winning a challenge. The person going second has to be aware of the possibility that putting up only a token defense (and thus making sure they can go crazy on attack) that losing a challenge can mean a lot more than simply satisfying the claim. I've seen decks that use Responses to kill 2 extra characters and claim as much as 5 power. With that sort of possibility out there, the decision to only put up a token defense on a challenge you could win on defense takes on a new dimension, doesn't it?

There is also an advantage for the person going first who can keep the number of characters on the table roughly equal. Let's say that you have 4 characters on the table and I have 3. Most of your characters are stronger than mine. But I'm going first. If we follow the "second player has the advantage" philosophy too closely, I might not bother to attack at all, just so I have something to defend with. But it's probably a much better idea here to attack anyway. For example, I initiate an intrigue challenge with a 1-STR guy. You have a 3-STR intrigue guy, so you could win easily - but what if that kneels out your only intrigue icon? Your choice is now to let me have an unopposed intrigue challenge in order to have something to attack with, or give up 1/3 of your possible challenges in order to defend. Either way, I come out ahead since I couldn't have won that intrigue challenge on defense, whether I had attacked or not. Now I do the same thing with a 3-STR military challenge. You could win it on defense, but you'd have to kneel 2 of your characters to do it. So my military challenge on attack leaves you choosing between killing a character for claim, or kneeling out another 2 of your characters (leaving only 1 available to attack in this progressing scenario). Again, I come out ahead because you either eliminate your own opportunity, or give me a win I otherwise wouldn't have had.

That's all a very long way to say that yes, the second player does have an advantage in the challenge phase, particularly when they have many, many more characters on the board, but when the number of characters is about equal, the first player can usually manage attacks in such a way (depending on the icon spread) that they either force the other player to give up a whole bunch of options (often to the point of not being able to do all three attacks), or allow them benefits for winning challenges that might otherwise not have been won. And this is without even including "after you win a challenge" Responses.

Plus, if you gain enough power during your challenges to win the game, he person going second never gets the chance to attack at all.

The challenge phase is a very interactive phase, and while your analysis is correct, it is not the whole story by a long shot. There is a lot of personal preference, play-style, and "metagame" use of card effects that get factored in. Most people I know usually prefer to go first because of the advantages it can have in controlling the board position of the other player before they ever get a chance to attack.

Thanks for the quick and detailed responses. I understand entirely what you're both saying, so it may just be that as yet we've not got enough cards to even the disadvantages out - at the moment, whoever gets the most characters out early enough and builds up some early power wins very much has the upper hand as we don't have enough response / event cards to either gain extra bonuses or to limit what the opponent is able to do in reply (we have the Core set, Queen of Dragons, Kings of the Sea and two chapter packs).

That said, we do obviously have certain cards that do this to some extent, so it's probably a question of us both paying much closer attention to these in order to ensure we're getting the most out of the game.

Cheers guys!

Lords of Winter: Die By the Sword

Princes of the Sun: Make an Example
Kings of the Storm: Superior Claim

Kings of the Sea: The Price of War

Tale of Champions: No Quarter (i forget which)

Core: Seductive Promise

Secrets of Oldtown: Condemned by the Council (I forget which)

Lions of the Rock: Terminal Schemes (WE HATES IT PRECIOUS)

Non Kneeling Attackers: The Red Viper, Northern Cavalry Flank, Knight of Flowers
Vigilant characters: Stannis Baratheon (Valar Morghulis) and others.