Council of Elrond

Hi all, i am a newcomer so maybe this is a silly question.

1) In combat, when assigning strikes to characters, do we have the right not to assign a strike even if we have an untapped character available or to assign it on a tapped or wounded character - while an untapped character is available - on purpose?

2) Also a character assigned a strike is considered tapped imidiately (-1 modification) or after we resolve the strike?

Thanks a lot!!

1) Except when an attack chooses defending characters as specified on the card you may freely assign strikes - one to each of your untapped characters. You may, however, choose to not assign a strike to your untapped characters in which case your opponent assigns strikes to whatever character he likes, no matter if tapped, wounded or untapped.

2) The -1 modification applies only to characters that were already tapped before the strike sequence resolves. In other words: if you tap to face a strike you don't get the -1 modification.

Thanks a lot gor making things clear for me.