Beyond the Wall, Season 1 Episode 34

Rules quiz.

Coldhands says: "Response: After you play Coldhands from your hand, choose 1 non-Army character controlled by each player, if able, and remove those characters from the game. When Coldhands leaves play, return the removed cards to play under their owners' control." So, it removes 2 characters from play and creates lasting effect with the passive condition to return these characters when Coldhands leaves play. But because Coldhands already left play(moribund), this condition won't be met, and characters will remain removed from the game.

the Ygritte's case seems similar to me, but there is different wording. "Response: After you play Ygritte from your hand, choose and take control of a neutral or Night's Watch character until Ygritte leaves play." I'm not sure, but wil presume that the response creates lasting constant effect, which checks if the Ygritte in play or not. So, after taking control of the character it will immediatly return control back, because Ygritte is not in play. Essentially, nothing happens.

I'll wait a bit on answering the rules quiz questions, to give others the opportunity! 

Grambo: Excellent point, that hadn't quite registered for us!

I know there was some discussion previousy that if Ygritte enters play and is already moribund, you can't even attempt to trigger her response because it will have no result. I"m not sure if that's the correct interpretation of FAQ 3.6.

I've added an erratum, we're told that in Call of Cthulhu, insanity does in fact remove attachments.

In the Ygritte question, I believe you keep your opponent's character (assuming it maintains high enough STR) since the "Moribound:Your Control" state cannot be changed to "Moribund:Back to your opponents control" at the time she is leaving play.

I've added an erratum, we're told that in Call of Cthulhu, insanity does in fact remove attachments.

Ok, so I'll answer the first of the two - but leave the next one for tomorrow night. If the answer to this one makes you re-evaluate your answer to the second, by all means, post your revised answer below!

Ygritte enters play and, as stated, goes moribund:discard. The key word to understanding this question is in Ygritte's text 'Until'. We know what that word means in other contexts; a lasting effect with an expiration. This tells us that the return-to-owner's control effect isn't a passive that initiates when Ygritte leaves play. 

So let's check the moribund rules; 

 

A Moribund card (and its attachments) is considered to have been killed, discarded, returned to its owner's hand or deck, or moved to its owner's shadows area, but only for the purposes of triggering responses and passive abilities.

So, essentially, moribund doesn't matter here at all, because we have neither a passive nor a response being triggered by Ygritte leaving play. Ygritte's lasting effect will expire not when Ygritte goes moribund, but when the card actually physically leaves play (at the end of the action window). 

To then describe the whole chain of events; 

1. Playing Ygritte is initiated
2. Nobody saves/cancels
3. Playing Ygritte Resolves. Constants are applied (Dragonpit, TFTN)
4. The passive effect on TFTN triggers, Ygritte becomes Moribund:Discard
5. Responses
5.1 Ygritte's response is initiated. It's initiation is NOT prevented under the Janos Slynt ruling, as long as there's an eligeable target for the effect.
5.2 Ygritte's response is not cancelled
5.3 Ygritte response resolves, creating a lasting effect. You immediately take control of your opponent's neutral character (whether moribund or not)

6. Action window closes, all moribund cards leave play. Ygritte leaves play, so her constant effect expires. The neutral character is returned to your opponent's control.

In the end, you only very briefly took control of the opponent's character - but that doesn't matter to ruling 3.6 in the FAQ (the infamous "Janos Slynt); the ability did resolve. Furthermore, the change of control would suffice to, say, have that neutral character discarded (if dragonpit caused him to go moribund), or get any "attach to a character you control" attachments to fall off the character - so it's not entirely useless either. 
 

Finally, please note that this was picked to be a particularly difficult scenario - an examples of the rules as their most convoluted. This is the kind of fringe scenario that you'll basically never encounter in regular play, and the Coldhands scenario is even further-fetched (well, more far-fetched, but further-fetched sounds cooler). The rules may have a lot of counterintuitive parts to them that I object to and are far from elegant, but the fact that we can logically apply all the steps to arrive at this conclusion is actually quite reassuring. It's very hard to 'break' the game rules.

Coldhands. In my previous answer I completely forgot that responses also have resolve passive abilities step.

From FAQ, page 19:

For every response, players must go through these steps before the response is fully executed:
1) Initiate response
2) Save/cancel responses (only for the preceding response)
3) Execute response
4) Resolve passive abilities triggered by the response, etc. (following the same steps as Step 4 (I through IV of the action window))

 

So, I try again.
 

1. Playing Coldhand is initiated
2. Nobody saves/cancels
3. Playing Coldhands Resolves. Constants are applied (Dragonpit, TFTN, Aegon Targaryen)
4. The passive effect on TFTN triggers, Coldhands becomes Moribund:Discard

5. Responses
5.1 Coldhands response is initiated. Aegon and unnamed high-strength character are chosen.
5.2 Coldhands response is not cancelled
5.3 Coldhands response resolves, creating a lasting effect with the passive condition to return characters when Coldhands leaves play. Aegon and other character become moribund: remove from play.

5.4  Lasting passive created by Coldhands triggers, because for purpose of passives Coldgands left play. Trying return characters into play.
FAQ says:
 

(3.42) Moribund Cards Returning to Play
Any effect that attempts to return a moribund card to play from its moribund destination should be treated as a replacement effect that changes the card's moribund state to "remaining in play." The card is still considered to have left play for the purpose of responses and passive effects. All attachments and tokens on it are discarded. During step 6 of the action window, when all moribund cards are moved to their final destinations, the card is removed from the moribund state but remains in play.

 

So, Aegon and other character become moribund: return to play. I say strength boost still effects Aegon, cause card continue interact with other cards and effects in play.

6. Action window closes, all moribund cards leave play. Coldhands leaves play. Aegon and other character remain in play.

Kizer: control change is not a moribund state. Best example of this would be the bastard's elite; after you lose a military challenge and choose them for claim they become moribund dead, but technically control will still pass to your opponent in the passives step. I can't think of an effect right now that would interact with that, but I am sure one exists and is just as stupid as we imagine.

The best example of why this would matter is an effect like Parting Blow--the controller of Bastard's Elite would get to trigger this. But in this case, it would be the controller of the player who won the MIL challenge, not the owner of the card.

So if the character stolen by Ygritte had enough power on it to cause the player who played Ygritte to win, would that be GG?  I think so.

So if the character stolen by Ygritte had enough power on it to cause the player who played Ygritte to win, would that be GG?  I think so.

It would indeed.

This sounds too easy that everything(Aegon + unnamed character) comes back due to Coldhands leaving play. I say that due to a weird loophole in the action windows Coldhands leaves play and Aegon + Character are stuck out of play.

Alright, here's the anti-climax. Please not that this ruling has *not* been officially FFG (or even Ktom) confirmed, but if you can find flaw with the reasoning, by all means let me know.

The key to this scenario is that unlike Ygritte, Coldhands's text clearly indicates triggering a passive (when coldhands leaves play), so moribund has a role to play.

1. The action of playing Coldhands is initiated

2. (No Save/Cancel)
3. Coldhands Enters play. TFTN, Aegon and Dragonpit affect him.

4. Coldhands goes moribund, thanks to TFTN's passive

5. Response window.

5.1 I Initiate coldhands's response
5.2 (No Save Cancel)

5.3 Coldhand's ability resolves, sending Aegon and unspecified character to moribund:out of play. 
5.4 This is where passives triggered by the resolution of the response would resolve, and is the *first* opportunity for Coldhand's "when coldhands leaves play" to trigger, since it didn't even 'exist' until now. However, it's already too late for this trigger! It had to be resolved in step 4.0. We already know that, say, Banner for the Storm's response is too late to allow a character to stand for the vigilant granted.
6.0 Coldhands is discarded, Aegon & unspecified character are removed from the game (permanently). Aegon's -1 str modifier ceases to apply. 

Now the only FAQ ruling we can use to dispute the aforementioned scenario is 

Why not email Nate and get confirmation?

Woot!  Got #2!

Errata: While FAQ 5.3.1 clarifies some of the str reduction scenarios, it appears that according to ktom (source: here), my ruling on Maegi crone was wrong... but is now right. Yay for prescience?

Wouldn't aegon cause himself to be discarded before the coldhands scenario could happen?

Sure, that's why I specified Aegon had a STR buff to avoid getting discarded - eg, Khal Drogo (If it is summer and you control more attachments, your characters get +2 STR).