Quill & Tankard Regulars - Issue 22

Quill & Tankard Regulars - Issue 22

"The Iron Link is not forged lightly", the old Maester mumbled clutching his chain with both hands. "In order to forge it, one needs not only to read about war, but also witness it, and such sights can never again be unwitnessed", he continued with his eyes staring past the patrons of the Inn, at sights only he could see.

After staring into emptiness for a long while, he suddenly snapped back into focus.

"As a lover of knowledge, don't fool yourself! Warfare has very little to do with epic battles, glory and strategems. Blood, guts, pain and brutality are the 'art' of Warfare. It is the darkness which lives inside each of us, brought into the light of day and given form.", he croaked, his voice filled with pain.

Beware the Sphinx - The Battle for the Shield Islands

Beware the Sphinx is a series of articles concentrating on important cards with several peculiar, complex or unintuitive interactions. An emphasis is kept on both new and competitively relevant cards. Remember, the Sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler.

It has been quite a while, since we last recieved a new Epic Battle, and with the new one being talked about as being important for the game, it would be amiss from us not to use this opportunity to look at some of the peculiarities of the Epic Battle cards in general.

So, what is this new card I'm talking about? Why, The Battle for the Shield Islands, of course:

As you are all probably aware, Epic Battles are a set of event cards, with similar templating, that create Epic Phases. All of the existing Epic Battle cards create the phases after the Dominance phase, with the created phase bearing similarities to the Challenge phase. However, as with many cards in AGoT, there's much more here than what meets the eye.

Epic Phase Structure

While it's an easy analogy to think of the Epic -phase merely as 'another Challenge -phase', there are a few differences between the two. The obvious one, is of course that any effects designated as "Challenges: " cannot be triggered, but that's not the half of it.

The tricky part is that Epic phases do not have Player Action windows before, or after, each of the challenges. This makes the usage of some control-effects, like Orphan of the Greenblood (PotS), a lot more initiative dependent. The normal action windows during the challenge (after attackers and defenders are declared) still exist as usual, so those will be the only places you can use to for such effects. For some cards, like the aforementioned Orphan, this may be too late, if your opponent is acting first. There are also other cards, like Narrow Escape (KotStorm) and Glamor of Fire (ARotD), which may be much trickier to use successfully, since you are not guaranteed a suitable action window for triggering them. For further info, see the discussion here.

Multiple Epic Phases

Each Epic Battle event played creates it's own Epic Phase, as is clarified in the FAQ (4.0, §3.36):

If multiple epic phases are created in a single
round, they are played in the order in which
they were created, after the dominance phase
and before the standing phase.

Since each of the phases has the usual 'beginning of the phase' and 'end of phase' frameworks, there are some cards like Ser Jaime Lannister (LotR) and Syrio Forel (TftRK), who can often participate in challenges every single phase.

Claim Replacement

As many of you will possibly remember from our discussion on Pyat Pree, claim replacement effects, such as the one on The Battle for the Shield Islands, have a tendency of working past almost any immunities. One reason that this new card is making such a big splash, is the fact that it presents a very real threat to players with the House of Dreams (ARotD) Agenda.

Participating while knelt

The text on the card also states that characters with Naval enhancements can participate in challenges, even while knelt. However, it should be noted, that similarly to The Fox's Teeth (TWot5K), this only contradicts the requirement for a character to be standing, when declared. Since the requirement for an icon is not contradicted, the Naval characters will still need to have the correct icons... However, it should be noted that the character does not need to have the enhancement on that particular icon, having it on any one icon is enough for participating in all the challenges that a character has icons for. See here for details.

Epic Battles and Moribund

NOTE: This part has been updated according to information from Khudzlin, thanks!

And finally, for the most baffling part of the events themselves.

The original interpretation of Epic Battle events was that their effect also placed the event card itself into a very peculiar situation. Effectively, it was thought that the event put itself into a suspended moribund:discard (or moribund:dead if Deathbound) state, which lasts until the Epic phase itself ends (instead of only lasting until the end of the Player Action window). This would have meant, that if two copies of Battle of Ruby Ford (BoRF) are played by one player in the same phase, the second one will only duplicate the first, instead of actually creating another Epic phase.

However, it was later reported that Nate French had contradicted this, by saying that it's not in play after the player action window... So, where is it actually? Frankly, this is a bit... open. Should the event be considered to be in the discard/dead pile for other purposes, but kept distinctly different so that it functions as a visual cue? Or does it go into some kind of 'out-of-play' state, from where it will move to the discard/dead pile after the epic phase? While this might not matter in many actual games, there are some cases where it could. For example trying to return a pre-plot played Epic Battle with Lie for Your King! (BoRF) or playing a second Battle of Ruby Ford (BoRF) during the same Plot phase.

A question on the matter is currently being submitted to FFG. Sphinx material, indeed!


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.