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This came up at our last tournament, and I made a ruling, but am curious about how it is supposed to be ruled.

When does Thirty Pieces of Silver count as being used?
a) If a battle happens (focusing on the "regardless of battle outcome"
b) If a hero is left for battle resolution (focusing on whether or not the discard happened)
c) It counts rounds regardless of whether or not anything of it's effects apply similar to Assyrian Tribute.

Thirty Pieces of Silver (From the Wiki)
Regardless of battle outcome Hero is discarded. David's Harp has no effect. May be used twice. Errata/Play As: Regardless of battle outcome, discard one Hero in play at the end of battle that you blocked. Negate David's Harp. May be used once per battle and twice per game.

Note: I think it should be c due to it having the non optinoal continuous ability of negating David's Harp, but am fairly sure it is currently ruled as one of the others.

It counts as being used when you have been attacked.  So lets say in a multi-player game, you are attacked two times in a row.  Even if you discard and block both attempts TPoS is still discarded, because of the "regardless of battle outcome" clause.  If you are playing one on one and your opponent decides not to attack for two turns, it doesn't matter because you have not blocked, and it has not been used.

What, like in the case of a bullet-proof Gideon? Than it's still counts as a use even though he can't be discarded.

I've always seen it ruled that it activates after every battle regardless of who was making the rescue attempt.

I don't see that play as an official errata, and that is clearly a different ability than what is printed on the card.

Only via initiative. Regardless of any other times an enhancement could be played, during battle you MUST have initiative to play any enhancements.

What, like in the case of a bullet-proof Gideon? Than it's still counts as a use even though he can't be discarded.

So Thirty Pieces of Silver does trigger and counts as a trigger, but because Gideon is protected he would not be discarded.  Now if they ever said that "regardless of battle outcome" means the same thing as "regardless of protection" then Gideon would be discarded.

Doesn't gideons protect abiliy end once the battle is over?

So the "play-as" does make it sound like it is after battle (when Gideon is in territory), but I think it is more of a clarification (for lack of a better word).  The play as I believe is more referring to lets say you do the Boaz, Naomi & Ruth band with TPoS up, and you play Strife and remove two of them from battle.  If you do end up winning the battle and discarding the remaining character, you can still choose one of the ones you kicked out (as long as their was an evil character in battle when you played Strife).

Thirty Pieces of Silver (From the Wiki)
Regardless of battle outcome Hero is discarded. David's Harp has no effect. May be used twice. Errata/Play As: Regardless of battle outcome, discard one Hero in play at the end of battle that you blocked. Negate David's Harp. May be used once per battle and twice per game.

The problems I'm finding with this is that for some reason we are treating Thirty Pieces of Silver like it's worded like Ark of the Covenant... which it's not. Yes both have a "Regardless of battle outcome" trigger ability and both have a limited use, but the problem is that looking at the ability on Thirty Pieces of Silver is that it has two abilities (and if you want to get technical a limited use ability, but that's a little different) One is a trigger ability that discards heroes, the other one is just as important, it's a continuous negate ability. Why is it not considered used if no one battles, because it's still negating David's Harp? (Now you might argue that David's Harp has to be active for it to negate it... but that's not consistent with the ruling on Assyrian Tribute, which counts rounds not Rounds that your Assyrians happen to be blocking in) so I would argue that it should be discarded after two rounds regardless of whether or not a heros were discarded by it.

Secondly I would like to point out that Discarding a Hero isn't necessarily what the limit should be referring to. First of all Ark of the Covenant is worded "Limit holder to two such discards per game." Where it specifically says that the limit is two discards, not two rounds. So we can't really use Ark of the Covenant as the model for Thirty Pieces of Silver since they aren't worded the same, but it is more similar to Burial Shroud, Covenant of Moses or Assyrian Tribute, which are all can be active for up to 2 whole rounds.

Finally I would like to suggest that a "use" of an artifact should mean "round" and not related to what the ability is. This would have the effect of making Captured Ark active for the entire second round before being discarded on the next turn, and would make Thirty Pieces of Silver active for 2 whole rounds, regardless of how many battles happened.

Also I would suggest that Thirty Pieces of Silver should affect your own heroes, since, well, that's what it says.