Beginning of Jaime's Challenges

The Lannister player is the first player, so he will initiate his challenges first. There are three types of challenges: military (indicated by the red axe), intrigue (the green eye) and power (the blue crown). Each player can initiate one of each challenge during his challenges phase. In order to participate in a challenge, a character must possess the appropriate challenge icon. So Cersei Lannister could participate in an intrigue or power challenge, while the Feuding Clanswoman could only participate in a military challenge. We'll get to the effects of each challenge in a bit.

The Lannisters are dominant in intrigue - almost every character they have has the green intrigue icon! Our only intrigue defense is Sansa Stark, so our opponent doesn't need to attack with much. He declares an intrigue challenge with Cersei Lannister. To have characters attack or defend, all you do is kneel the characters you want to participate (you can have multiple ones on attack or defense):

Jaime initiates an intrigue challenge with Cersei Lannister

Cersei Lannister's STR is 3 (her strength is the number in the grey shield). To win on defense, you would need standing characters with intrigue icons whose total STR was at least 4 (since attackers win on ties).

Your only character with an intrigue icon is Sansa Stark, and her STR is only 1. That means you will lose. Is there any reason to defend?

The answer is yes. When an attacker wins an unopposed challenge, he claims 1 power for his house. I'll tell you a secret - most power is created through unopposed challenges. So it might be worth defending with Sansa Stark just to prevent your opponent from claiming that power.

But read Cersei Lannister's game text - when she is attacking in a challenge, characters with the intrigue icon don't count their STR. This means that even if we defend with Sansa Stark, we count 0 STR on defense. There's a special rule regarding that: if the defender's total STR is 0 the challenge is considered unopposed. The flip side is that if the attacker's total STR is 0, the attacker cannot win the challenge, and cannot claim power for an unopposed challenge.

The upside is that there's no reason to defend with Sansa Stark. Our opponent's intrigue challenge is unopposed, so they claim 1 power on their house card. Plus, as a reward for winning an intrigue challenge, our opponent forces us to discard X number of cards at random from our hand, where X is their plot claim! Fortunately, his plot (Hear Me Roar) only has one claim (the rightmost number), so only one card is discarded. By convention, we let Jaime choose which one. We shuffle our hand, he picks one at random to be placed in our discard pile, and it's. . . Routing the Charge. Too bad, that would have been a useful card - but that's the power of the intrigue challenge: it reduces your opponent's options in future phases and rounds.

So here's what our hand and board look like after our opponent's successful intrigue challenge:

He wins, claims unopposed, and discards Routing the Charge from your hand

Jaime has no standing characters with a power icon, so he cannot initiate a power challenge. However, he can initiate a military challenge with the Feuding Clanswoman:

Jaime initiates a military challenge with Feuding Clanswoman

Wait, she only has 0 STR! Her natural STR is 1, and Hear Me Roar lowers her STR to 0. Attackers cannot win with 0 total STR, so there should be no need to defend. But sometimes you'll want to defend anyway - your opponent may have buff events that raise their character's strength. And losing a military challenge is bad - it means that we have to choose and kill X characters we control, where X is the opponent's claim.

We can use Eddard Stark or Wolfswood Hunters to defend - or even both! If we use Eddard Stark, we can use his card ability to stand him after we win the military challenge, and then use him again when we attack. Plus, he has renown, so he claims one power after he participates in a winning challenge.

But wait - Feuding Clanswoman has a special word in her text box - stealth. For each character with stealth that the attacker uses, the attacker can pick one character controlled by his opponent without stealth, and choose that character to not be able to defend. Our opponent chooses Eddard Stark. So, we'll defend with our one unstealthed character with the military icon - Wolfswood Hunters:

You defend with Wolfswood Hunters and win

The total attacking STR is 0, and the total defending STR is 4 (remember to subtract 1 for Hear Me Roar). We win the challenge! Since we win the challenge, does our opponent have to kill characters for claim? No; claim effects only apply when the attacker wins the challenge. So that's one reason to attack even when you know the defender will win the challenge: you force the defender to kneel characters so that the defender cannot use those characters to attack you during his challenges phase.

Here's another reason: after he loses the challenge, Jaime kneels Doubting Septa and plays this card from his hand:

This is an event card. Event cards can be played in specific phases, or under specific circumstances. This one can be played after a player loses a challenge. That player then pays a cost (kneeling a Lannister character) to produce an effect (killing an opponent's character that participated in the challenge). In this case, your opponent chooses Wolfswood Hunters.

Jaime plays A Lannister Pays His Debts to kill Wolfswood Hunters

Since A Lannister Pays His Debts says that the targeted character is killed, it ends up in our dead pile. There are certain effects that work on cards in the discard pile, and others that work on the dead pile; that's why it's important to keep them separate. In addition, if your unique character ends up in the dead pile, you cannot play another copy of him. Dead is dead.

Event cards go to the discard pile after they are played.

Jaime says that his challenges are over. Let's take stock: you've lost a good card to an intrigue challenge; had your strongest character killed by A Lannister Pays His Debts; and your opponent now has 1 power, to your none.

Now it's time to take your revenge!