Quill & Tankard Regulars - Issue 21

Quill & Tankard Regulars – Issue 21

So, tonight we're going to tell you a story. A story about a man, who is probably the most deadly man in Westeros. He is so deadly, that if there is no-one else around he will kill himself. This is why we believe he has gathered such a large family around himself.

The Bad Side of Oldtown: Deadly
There is a side to Oldtown, where only the suicidal and morbid dare to tread, where the streets form a labyrinth, and even fervent Archmaesters hold tightly to their Valyrian Steel Links. This is where the rules can twist into surprising shapes, or terrible specters. This is the Bad Side of Oldtown.

This week in The Bad Side of Oldtown we are taking a look at something that many players are familiar with - the keyword Deadly, and some strange interactions it can create.

Lets have a look at what the core rules say about 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."

So what we are accustomed to is that the attacking player has a deadly character, and if the defending player defends without one he will have to kill a character for deadly. Pretty simple. What could be complicated with this scenario?

What makes this keyword more interesting than just what we are used to are deadly characters who are able to jump into challenges on either side. Our main suspect today is Walder Frey (ACoS), an old card that rarely sees play, but makes deadly do very peculiar things. Walder Frey states that he will participate in a challenge on the winners side after at least one defender has been declared.

In Joust there are four possibilities with our good old trustworthy Walder Frey:

• You are attacking and winning after defenders have been declared: Walder Frey will kneel and participate in the challenge on your side with your other forces. In this case he will work as a normal deadly attacker and your opponent has to kill a defending participating character if he didn't have as much deadly as you did. All fine all good so far.
• You are attacking and losing after defenders have been declared: Walder Frey will kneel and defend against you with your opponent, oh dear... So does this mean that you don't get deadly on that challenge as Walder is on your opponents side during this challenge? Actually... no. Let's re-read the way the wording for deadly. They only care about participating characters controlled by the attacker and you still control Walder Frey, so your opponent has to satisfy deadly. Great, now he has to kill one of his defenders right? Unfortunately not, since the rules state that deadly can be satisfied by a participating defender and the defender doesn't have to control the character. So... Yes, he can go ahead and choose Walder Frey to die for his own deadly.
• You are defending and winning after defenders have been declared: Walder kneels and will defend for you. Again very normal. You now have a defending character with 4 strength and deadly.
• You are defending and losing after defenders have been declared: This is again a strange part where mistakes can happen. Walder will kneel and attack against you. In this case you don't have to satisfy deadly because of Walder Frey is attacking, since you still control him and the attacker doesn't. Further, he actually negates the deadly of another attacking character.

In melee we can add two more situations to the list:

• An opponent is attacking another opponent and is winning after defenders have been declared: Walder Frey kneels and participates as an attacker. Since Walder Frey isn't controlled by the attacking player the player cannot make use of his deadly. The attacker will however gain the added strength from Walder to the challenge and use some "win by 4" effects.
• An opponent is attacking another opponent and is losing after defenders have been declared: Walder Frey will kneel and participate as a defender. Again since the control of Walder never changes his deadly during these challenges is completely useless keyword. He will again add his own strength to the challenge and nothing more.

NOTE: See Khudzlin's post in the comments below for how Walder's Deadly can actually mess with the attacker's deadly (but not the defender's) during a challenge in Melee.

So as we can see, deadly even when we have gotten used to it, can cause some quirky rules interactions. In this case probably the strangest is that a deadly character while controlled by the attacker and defending against its controller will most likely end up killing itself. Talk about suicidal tendencies...

Walder is one of the examples for this, but this can also happen now with the new naval enhancement icons and deadly (as well as through cards like Dragonbone Bow (ARotD)). It is possible that a player wants to for one reason or another (like, say, triggering his Black Sails (RotK)) to jump a naval character with deadly as an attacker against himself in a challenge. Which, according to reported communications with Damon Stone, should be legal, but only the next FAQ will let us know for sure. More on that issue in Dear Archmaester.

Dear Archmaester

Dear Archmaester collects interesting, unusual and unexpected rulings from the FFG Rules forum.

Q: Dear Archmaester,
how does all this Naval -stuff work? Like, you know, can I look at my hold freely when playing with the Black Sails (RotK)? How does Victarion Greyjoy (RotK) function?

A: Q&TR will be doing an Issue on Naval and The Black Sails as soon as the information is concrete and reliable enough. In the meantime it is best to read up on this thread in the FFG Forums, which contains answers to those questions and various others, as answers reported by players from AGoT Lead Designer Damon Stone.

Antti Korventausta (WWDrakey) is a self-proclaimed Finnish AGoT philosopher and nitpicker, who also used to practice Quantum Mechanics, but found that it paled to AGoT in both interest and complexity. As a Stahleck regular and judge, he sometimes has oddly vivid dreams of understanding portions of the game. In AGoT, he'll play anything as long as it's suitably twisted... often ending up with something that has horns on it.

Helmut Hohberger (Ratatoskr) started playing AGoT in September 2010 and has never looked back (although his wife has, longingly). As a German, he loves rules - and I mean *loves* 'em. Try triggering a Response at the end of a phase on his watch, and he'll probably invade your country. He has actually read the FAQ, and was made a judge at Stahleck and at various other events. He sometimes answers rules questions on boardgamegeek and the FFG rules board. Some of his answers haven't even been contradicted, corrected or expanded upon by ktom - there is no higher accolade for a rules board morlock.

Every Maester needs a Raven on his shoulder. As a Finn, Iiro Jalonen (Ire) got pulled under the waves by Krakens years ago, and has never looked back. A self-inflicted Shagga and active member of the global AGoT community, he has always strived to know the rules of the game, in order to make them do ridiculous things.