Retreat and Regroup:
Challenges: Play before any challenges have been initiated this phase. If you lose 2 or more challenges this phase, you may return any number of non-unique characters from your discard pile to you hand. (Place this card next to your plot deck until the end of the phase.)

If I play this event, I am wondering:

- what kind of effect is the second part of the event effect (return non-unique chars to my hand)? Is it a lasting effet? A passive effect? A triggered effect? A Response?

- when will I be able to initiate it? Just after I've lost the second challenge (so it should be a passive effect, or a triggered response)? But then why do they precise "2 or more" challenges? Or is anytime in the phase after I have lost at least 2 challenges (then it would be a triggered effet, like "Any phase:").

Comm said:

Technically speaking, it is a lasting effect that creates a passively initiated (or "delayed") effect. For "old timers": The second part of this event is the exact same kind of effect as the "after the challenge resolves" part of the event Moment of Glory .

Comm said:

(It initiates passively, so you don't actually initiate anything after you play the event.)

Whether or not this is how the card was originally designed, the way it reads is that you are given the opportunity to return characters from your discard pile during Step 4 (passive effects) of the "resolve challenge" framework action window for each challenge you lose in the phase, except the first one. So:

1) Lose challenge 1 - Nothing

2) Lose challenge 2 - Pick up some discarded characters (passive)

3) Lose challenge 3 - Pick up some discarded characters (passive)

Etc.

And, of course, the loss can come on attack or defense.

Hope that makes sense. I doubt the timing of it was thought through this specifically before, but to jive with other "delayed initiation" lasting effects, that's how it would work. What would probably make more sense from a conceptual level would be "At the end of the phase, if you have lost 2 or more challenges this phase...," but that's not what it says.

Thanks ktom, this is a really interesting explanation.

And it is making me think again about Maester of the Sun and Open Market. This may be worth trying with Retreat and Regroup.

Comm said:

Nice. Those were my first couple of thoughts in making Retreat and Regroup regularly useful as well. Its a good way to get back your Refugees in a turn where you didn't win dominance as well.