Thanks for the spoilers Ktom.  It seems like an interesting CP, but for the casual player like myself, where my friends and I all play out of the same cardpool, it seems like my options are to buy three of this Chapter pack, or just skip it.

Just out of curiosity, what does Milk of the Poppy do to these Reinforcement cards?  All of their attributes (including their very existence) are part of the text box and would therefore be blanked.  But the text isn't written in the form of a constant effect, so blanking the text box might be irrelevant once they're in play already.

Milk doesn't do anything to the reins, it is just more charcater control (and cheap) so it got put in my off the cuff deck to go on charcaters i can't steal.

Old Ben said:

Oh, I understood what you wanted to do, I was just trying to point out that you cannot do it. You cannot play Spy in Their Midst after losing an intrigue challenge earlier in the phase without paying the 1 gold to turn it into a character.

"Play after you lose an (intrigue) challenge" is a play restriction. It is not an effect in and of itself. You cannot initiate something that doesn't have an effect to resolve (although you can initiate something with an effect that will not resolve successfully; there's a difference). And paying 1 gold is a cost of triggering the Any Phase effect. If you don't pay the whole cost, you cannot play the event card.

So again, except for Retreat and Regroup, there is no option to play a Reinforcement event card without triggering the effect that puts the character into play. In your scenario, you must pay the 1 gold in order to play the Spy in the first place and give yourself the trigger for your two Weary Swordsmen, also giving your opponent the chance to steal the resultant 3-STR, stealth, renown character. It may be a viable payoff, but I'm guessing it won't be more often than it is.

Arma virumque said:

You have the issues down cold. Impressive.

The end result is your observation that "the text isn't written in the form of a constant effect." Blanking it after it has been triggered is indeed irrelevant.

The easiest way to picture it is this: Say you had a location that said "Challenges: Put the top card of your deck into play, face-down, as a character with an (intrigue) icon, stealth and renown." After you trigger the effect and get the character, the location is discarded. What happens to the "character" with the location gone from play? Nothing, right? Because the face-down card has already been transformed and was not relying on the text of the location to maintain the transformation. Same deal with the Reinforcement events, except that they are "transforming" themselves. The event text does not maintain the already-complete transformation.

ktom said:

Ummmh, so i misread the card.   That however dramatically changes my view at the mechanic given that the men without a king seem to be a very strong counter and might become game play defining just as the carrion birds are gameplay defining for the winter/summer theme. 

ktom said:

Interesting is too kind of a word in my opinion.  I really, really hate the existence of these cards.  They are better than probably 50% of the characters out there - losing 1 challenge isn't really that hard/much of a cost (at least the intrigue one's a bit more of a risk since it could be pulled) - and they just add more blandness to the game which is currently in need of much more thematic synergy with the source material (IMO).  

Agree that this is a chapter pack worth skipping (i got 1 copy, pretty much for Tommen).  

LordofBrewtown said:

heh, i am going to get this pack three times, just to have the stark crest armies 3x, for a war deck seems very nice and also in our meta there is a lot of agenda play...

LordofBrewtown said:

Oh, the intrigue event isn´t too much of a risk as you think. Remember that you only need to loose an intrigue challenge, so you could as well loose the challenge as an attacker. That´s why i think that the loose part is 50 % of the cases no cost at all. It makes playing the army charachters so easy, because if you can win all 3 challenges as an attacker against your opponent you might be winning anyway.