Hand's judgement vs Hand's judgement

By joecana, in Rules Questions

I play event card.

Opponent play The hand's judgement to cancel.

Could I play Hand's judgement to cancel my opponent's Hand's judgement?

If ys, how much should I pay for?

Tks

The Hand's Judgment is an event, so it is possible to cancel it with another The Hand's Judgment. Its printed cost (which is what The Hand's Judgment looks at) is X (without definition), so it's taken as 0.

The letter “X”

Unless specified by a card ability or granted player choice, the letter X is always equal to 0. For costs involving the letter X, the value of X is defined by card ability or player choice, after which the amount paid may be modified by effects without altering the value of X.

This is an awkward mouthful of text from the RRG, but basically what it boils down to is that all things being equal, X=0, and then is modified by whatever card text is governing the effect. But since your THJ is only looking at the printed value of the THJ you're trying to cancel, whatever your opponent paid for his is irrelevant.

Long story short:

As khudzlin says: You can use Hand's Judgment to cancel your opponent's Hand's Judgment. It will always cost you 0, no matter what your opponent paid for his Hand's Judgment.

If you want the long story for why it costs you 0, let us know. It's a little technical, so some people prefer not to know how the sausage is made.

I thought I summed up the why fairly succinctly, making the citation to back up khudzlin. Do you have anything to add to what I said?

Edited by Grimwalker

Thanks for all kindest replies :)

I like both Short ans & Long ans (even if it is long and technical)

I like to learn more for this game.

Very appreciate to have you guys to share with me more about the logic behind.

Do you have anything to add to what I said?

You're not calling me out there, are you? ;) Let's just say that, in my eyes, the succinct explanation "yadda yadda"s over some important details.

It is important to note that, when it comes to cards like The Hand's Judgment, this:

all things being equal, X=0, and then is modified by whatever card text is governing the effect.

contradicts this:

since your THJ is only looking at the printed value of the THJ you're trying to cancel, whatever your opponent paid for his is irrelevant.

That is, it is not immediately apparent to everyone that the text on Hand's Judgment #1 - which defines X on Hand's Judgment #1 - does not "govern the effect" when determining the value of that same X for Hand's Judgment #2.

And the definition of "Printed" from the RRG, p. 16 (reading, "The word 'printed' refers to the text, characteristic, icon, or value that is physically printed on the card") does not necessarily help, potentially leading to the conclusion that Hand's Judgment #2 should not be able to cancel Hand's Judgment #1 at all , because you cannot pay a literal "X gold" for anything.

In my view, the complete, though somewhat technical, answer would provide the full picture by saying something like this:

A. In order to cancel Hand's Judgment (#1) with Hand's Judgment (#2), you have to determine the value of X on HJ #2 to pay as a cost. To do this, you look for the printed cost of the event you want to cancel (HJ #1). "Printed" cost means the literal ink on the card (see RRG entry), which is "the letter X" on HJ #1, no matter what the person playing HJ #1 actually paid when playing the event. So, the cost of HJ #2 = the "printed" cost of HJ #1 = the letter X.

B. But, of course, you cannot pay "the letter X." We need to determine the value for "the letter X" in this situation, if we can. Note that we cannot use the text of HJ #1 (that defined the value of X when triggering HJ #1) because applying that text would require us to modify the value of X independently from the play restrictions of HJ #2 - and use something other than the "printed cost" of HJ #1 to determine the cost of HJ #2.

C. At first glance, this seems like a contradiction, and you'd be right that it is if we didn't have an RRG entry on "the letter X" which tells us what to do. That entry tells us to use a default value of "0" when we have no other way of setting a value for "the letter X."

D. Using the default, we get that:

Cost of HJ #2 (X) = the printed cost of HJ #1 = "the letter X" = 0 (by rules default).

I played Superior claim

Cancelled by Hand's judgement

Could I play another Superior claim immediately?

(Coz it says Max 1 per challenge)

Also, is there any difference between

1 per challenge

and

Max 1 per challenge?

Tks

1) Limits and maxima are on the number of times you try, not the number of times you succeed (otherwise, you could trigger Robb's response until it succeeds, making cancels pointless). So you can't play another Superior Claim in the same challenge.

2) There is a difference between "Limit X per [period]" and "Max X per [period]". The former applies to each copy of a card separately (and is found on cards that stay in play throughout the resolution of their effects - Old Forest Hunter, for instance), while the latter applies globally to all cards with the same name (and appears on cards that either don't enter play or don't stay in play - Superior Claim, for instance). Note that both apply to each player separately.

Limits and Maxima
“Limit X per [period]” is a limit that appears on cards that remain in play through the resolution of an ability’s effect. Each copy of an ability with such a limit may be used X times during the designated period. If a card leaves play and re-enters play during the same period, the card is considered to be bringing a new copy of the ability to the game.

“Limit X copies per [card/game element]” is a limit that appears on attachment cards, and restricts the number of copies of that card (by title) that can be attached to each designated card or game element.
“Max X per [period]” is a maximum that appears on cards that do not enter or remain in play through the resolution of their effect. (An event card, for example.) Such a phrase imposes a maximum number of times that ability can be initiated from all copies (by title) of cards bearing the ability (including itself), during the designated period. Initiating an ability on a card counts towards the maximum for all copies of that card.
• All limits and maxima are player specific.
• If the effects of a card or ability with a limit or a maximum are canceled, it is still counted against the limit/maximum.

Do you have anything to add to what I said?

You're not calling me out there, are you? ;) Let's just say that, in my eyes, the succinct explanation "yadda yadda"s over some important details.

Usually the way it goes is Person A asks a question, Person B gives an answer, then KTom chimes in with the Rules Reference and the detailed explanation. Since I'd provided the rules reference in question in kind of a "for further reading" sense, your first reply didn't seem to say any more than I had.

Clearly your second response went into the usual level of detail, and I think we're broadly saying the same thing. "Cost of HJ #2 (X) = the printed cost of HJ #1 = "the letter X" = 0 (by rules default)" I think is exactly the same as what I was trying to say succinctly. I can understand why you were reluctant to go hip-deep into THJ vs THJ again as it's been the subject of more than one thread where people are confused.

Fundamentally I think the confusion stems from--at least in my experience--that the RRG section on "The Letter X" is much more understandable when read in reference to a card like The Things I Do For Love. In that context it's just spelling out exactly what it says on the tin: the printed cost of the character you're bouncing becomes the cost of the card. I think the reason it's opaque is that most people's first reason for looking up that section is not TTIDFL or a single instance of THJ, it's when THJ is trying to cancel one of those cost X events, in which context extracting the correct answer is a bit more convoluted. I think if this had been anticipated, then maybe spelling it out a little more specifically might have avoided such threads. Something like "Unless specified by a card ability or granted player choice, the letter X is always equal to 0. If a card ability would specify X as being equal to a value which is a different instance of the letter X, then the value is 0, regardless of the modified value of that letter X." Et cetera.

Thank you