If a player is not allowed to use any special order token (tokens with star) and they still want to play an order token of a kind (eg. 3 march orders), can they play the special order token as a regular order token?
In an extreme case, what if all the other kinds of regular tokens are used and no special order tokens can be used?
No. You may not use them.
From page 22. on the 2nd Edition rules:
In addition to 10 normal Order tokens, each House also have five Special Order tokens. A player may use any of his 10 normal Order tokens during the Planning Phase, but may use only as many Special Order tokens as he has stars on the King's Court Influence track position.
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While special orders are purely better than their regular counterparts, they have an additional subtle advantage: Having access to three instances of any order type (rather than two), can be of tremendous benefit to many strategies (such as launching a major offensive, quickly accumulating power, etc).
It's a key dynamic in Game of Thrones that you have less order tokens than you'd like. You need to choose wisely how to use them, and this rule also incentivises you to bid on the King's Court Influence track.
If you have run out of Order tokens that you'd like to play (such as march and support orders), then you need to fill your remaining spaces with the less useful tokens such as defence and raid orders.
The scenario where a player has used all of his possible order tokens is described on page 12, in the section 'Not enough order tokens?'.
In very rare circumstances, a player will have fewer eligible Order tokens than he needs (ie. he is unable to assign an order to each area containing one or more of his units). In this case all players must take the Assign Orders step in turn order (rather than simultaneiously). The first player places all of his orders (facedown as normal) on the game board, followed by the next player in turn order, etc. The player(s) with insufficient number of eligible Order tokens must place all his eligible Order tokens during his turn, but as an exception to the normal rules, is allowed to leave areas (of his choice) without an order. A player may never, under any circumstance place more order tokens than allowed by his position on the King's court influence track.
The rules are very clear about this. It is by design that you don't have enough order tokens.
