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Hello, I am a new player, but familiar with general card game concepts, and fluent in MTG rules and concepts like the stack, priority etc, if that helps answer the question

I recently goldfished the I and J decks together to settle in to the game and get the rules down, and I came up with a few questions that I am still unsure about, even after reading through the rules and REG while playing to try to answer the questions.

Here's the situation:
J initiated a rescue attempt with Samson (Yellow 12/6 - no abilities)
I blocked with Saph (Black 9/11 Warrior-Class - Prevent the next Enhancement played by an opponent) and he has Ishbibenob's Spear (Black 5/0 Weapon-Class - You may discard this card to underdeck a hero) already equipped from a previous turn.

It is my understanding that both abilities want to activate when Saph with the Spear enter the battle, and that they should follow Ability Activation Order, so Saph goes first, then the Spear, but I'm a little fuzzy on activation vs resolving.

J only has the one hero on board, so clearly Spear is a threat, and J wants to Negate it. J has two Enhancements in hand:
 Samson's Strength (Yellow - Negate and discard the last evil Enhancement played this battle)
Family Bond (Yellow/White - Negate and discard the last evil Enhancement played this battle)

Heres the question(s): I don't have a clear understanding of the timing of abilities activating, resolving, and action priority.

Does J get an opportunity to play a card before Saph and/or Spear fully resolve?

If Saph resolves, are the Enhancements prevented even to negate Saph? (i.e. can J only negate with a non-enhancement? Son, etc)

I think there will be more questions depending on how this works out , but thats all for now!

Ok, I'll try to explain this the best I can and hope you can follow along with your gaming experience.

In Redemption, if a players last remaining hero or evil character is being removed from battle, leaving the player with no play in the current battle, they get what is called special initiative to stop their hero or evil character from being removed. If Saph comes in and is preventing the next enhancement with his ability and you activate spear, you will win this battle, because neither of the enhancements in the J deck player's hand can stop it. With special initiative, you get only one play to stop the removal and since the next enhancement is prevented and neither of those J enhancements are cannot be prevented or cannot be negated, saph's ability will prevent them and that is the one play for special initiative the rescuing player gets, so there would be no other way of stopping it. In this situation, the best move would probably be for the J player not to play anything and just accept the loss, otherwise the J player is burning resources that could potentially help in a future battle.

If the J player had Angel of the Lord dominant in hand, he could present his Samson hero for a rescue attempt and then play AotL on Saph before he enters the battle to prevent the spear/prevent shenanigans. That would be a good use of Angel in the starter deck as that block is pretty much a guarantee to win the battle and prevent a rescue attempt. You want to maximize the effectiveness of your dominants since they are limited and if you can make a play from one result in a lost soul, that is great. But if you can use one like Angel to stop a pesky block that you have no other way around, you may have to burn more resources to get the soul, but it beats losing your hero and allowing them a block.

One thing to note, as i mentioned playing Angel before saph entered battle, doms cannot be played in special initiative. In special initiative you can only target the specific card causing your removal with an enhancement. Doms are powerful but cannot be played when another ability is trying to resolve. So the timing of when to play them is curcial. The active player, the rescuing player, carries dom initiative and if the blocking player wants to play a dom, they must ask active player for dom initiative. The active player must play a dom themselves or grant the initiative to the blocking player.

Hope I didn't go too far off the rails there and you were able to understand. Let me know if I have confused you and I will try to fix it, lol.

I got Saph and Spear crossed up on your last question and didn't even recognize that you wanted to use those Enhancements to negate Saph.

Yes, the "negate and [whatever]" is one ability acting upon the same target. I can't think of any instances where we don't specify a target.

Moving them from territory to battle is considered "playing" them. Characters are played whenever they enter battle or territory (but usually only activate their abilities when entering battle). Equipped weapons are played each time they enter battle. So if it wasn't Saph, the Spear would be a valid target for either negate.