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The Dance with Dragons expansion for the Game of Thrones Board game includes a Walder Frey combat card, whose text reads:

Any player (other than your opponent) who grants support to your opponent must grant that support to you instead.

When playing with the Mother of Dragons vassal rules, could this card be used to affect your opponent's vassal that is supporting them in the combat?

For example, say the Arryn player enters combat with the Stark/Bolton player, and Baratheon, who is a vassal of house Arryn, has a support order in an adjacent zone. If Stark/Bolton plays Walder Frey, do they receive Baratheon's support instead of Arryn?

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  • This question brought our game to a half-hour halt as we debated the intent of the card vs the rules as written. We determined that, as originally written, the intent of the card would probably be to allow for this kind of scenario. However, given that the cards were not retroactively edited for the new expansion, and observing the language of the MoD rules, clear distinctions are made between the terms 'vassal' and 'player'. The wording of the rules does not seem to support this use of Walder.
    – pmain8
    Jan 4, 2019 at 16:26
  • We eventually just flipped a coin to keep the game going, but never resolved whether the originalist or textualist interpretation is correct.
    – pmain8
    Jan 4, 2019 at 16:31

2 Answers 2

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A bit late, but still :)

There are three words that adresses people in different ways in this game. House, Player, Opponent. (in this specific scenario, the difference between opponent and player is crucial)

1: Judging from the Bronn Vassal House Card. "After you reveal house cards, your opponent may choose to discard 2 of their available tokens to reduce this card's combat strength to 0"

This is of course to address the person you are playing against, and not the house (ie possible vassal) as the vassal cannot have power tokens. Even more clear would be the example if two vassals are in combat. The vassal playing against Bronn doesn't have power tokens (ie, the person commanding the vassal needs to pay, meaning the opponent is 1 player with 2 or more houses)

2: The rulebook states that you as a commander of a vassal resolve the combat on behalf of the vassal. - meaning that you do everything, get the rewards and the punishments. That makes the vassal a non-player imo.

Finally, I think the text on Walder Frey nullifies any confusion as it has both player and opponent in it.

"Any player (other than your opponent) who grants support to your opponent must grant that support to you instead."

So the card would not reverse the support of your opponent's own vassal. In fact, it is the only counter to the situational, but sometimes powerful, card of Walder Frey. :)

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We played it with the "intent" of the card. So your "opponent" is Arryn, that is the person the battle is directly against. The vassal is another "player" so their support for Arryn becomes your support.

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