Can I trigger Bronze Shield's ability that kills the attached character and then save him so that both the shield and the character remain in play? (The easiest way to do this would be with a save like Maester of the Sun, but I suppose the question applies to dupes as well too.)

Any ideas?

Twn2dn said:

You can always trigger the ability as long as you meet the play restrictions (in this case "after oponent plays an event card"). But applying the efect is completely different thing. To do that you have to pay the cost firstt (in this case "kill attached char"). But if you kill the character and save him, this will interrupt the kill efect thus the cost has not been payed thus effect cannot be applied.

Right ktom?

That's right. Save = no kill. Killing the character is the cost so... no cost = no effect.

Rozy is right about the fact that if you save the character that Bronze Shield kills as a cost of its cancel effect, the character is considered to never have died. If it didn't die, you didn't pay the cost. If you didn't pay the cost, you didn't really initiate the effect. If you didn't initiate the effect, it is not going to resolve, either. So by saving the character, you would stop your own cancel. And if you stop the cancel, you won't get the "then, draw a card" part, either.

Now, there is actually a philosophical point here, too. (This is very advanced and unproven deduction on the timing structure of the game, so feel free to stop reading right here if you like.) Saves are played between the initiation and resolution of killing or discarding effects. The whole point is that they interrupt these two steps. Said another way, saves are played in Step 2 to stop a kill that starts in Step 1 and ends in Step 3. However, when you kill for cost, there is no initiation of a kill effect for the card that is being killed. Rather, the card is killed immediately in Step 1, not in Step 3. So technically, there is no place to interrupt the initiation and resolution of this particular kill (since it is not a kill effect in the traditional sense). In short, there is a really good argument to be made, based on the timing structure, that there is never even an opportunity to save something that is killed as a cost. Of course, a lot of costs have the "cannot be saved" clarifier, so this may not compute overall.

Hmmmm, interesting, my next question would have been ... can your opponent save your own character from being killed in order to "cancel" the response?

Zsa said:

As written and normally assumed, yes.

But again, the technical and philosophical points come into play. Most of the time, when something is saved, that means the kill never happened. In a kill effect, that is no big deal because you end up with an unsuccessful resolution/effect. Happens all the time, really. But if the "kill for cost" never happened, then technically, the initiation of the Response never happened (if you cannot/do no pay a cost, the effect is not initiated). If the Response was not actually initiated, you would not be breaking the "one Response per trigger" rule if you simply triggered Bronze Shield again. It would have just its one successful initiation for the trigger. So there is a good argument to be made that even if your opponent has the opportunity to save the character and stop the attachment, it won't actually do them any good because you can just trigger the Shield again immediately.

How abut this. I play a Lannister. I attach a Bronze Shield on Vendor of Venoms. Can i use Compelled by the Rock to move Bronze Shield from Vendor to oponent Character. And kill him when I want to cancel opponent event?

Kuba said:

Nope. "Attach to a HM character you control ." More in this topic Taking Control of Chars with Attatchments

Rogue30 said:

In addition to the Bronze Shield being an illegal attachment on an opponent's character (Martell or otherwise), you are not allowed to pay costs with cards you do not control. You can never kill an opponent's character to pay the cost of one of your "kill a character to do X" effects, just like you cannot kneel an opponent's Fiefdom to provide influence for your card effects.

ktom said:

I was hoping I could find a reference in the FAQ to "considered to never have died," but I can remember BitD, when I was first learning the game, and ran into the "saving against a cost _derails_ (I didn't want to say cancel) the effect, asking the following. Why doesn't this logic apply to Military Glaim?

If you win a challenge as the attacker' date=' then the following claim effect happens, depending on the type of challenge initiated:
Military Challenge: The defending opponent must choose and kill a number of his characters in play equal to the claim value on the attacker’s
revealed plot card (these do not have to be characters who participated in the challenge). Killed characters are placed in their owner’s dead pile.[/Quote']

I realize claim is not a cost, but given the underlying logic, it is sorta weird. Or I'm being difficult. And probably the later.

Maester_LUke said:

Not difficult. Missing a connection, probably. The key is figuring out where the character failed to die, ie - which part of the effect chain was unsuccessful.

Remember that normal kill effects, like military claim, follow a pattern of "Step 1: Choose a character to die; Step 2: Save opportunity; Step 3: Character actually dies and becomes moribund (or fails to die if it was saved)." So the logic behind "a saved character never actually dies" is applied to Step 3, where the character becomes "all-dead" (can you hear Miracle Max in there?) However, the claim effect was still initiated in Step 1, so when the character "never actually dies" in Step 3, you don't go backwards to Step 1 to initiate the kill all over again. It started all fine and legal-like, but it failed to go the distance.

Said as plainly as I can, when a character is saved under normal circumstances, it "never actually died" in Step 3, so Step 3 is the unsuccessful part of the chain.

But a character killed for cost follows a different pattern. Namely "Step 1: Character is killed entirely and becomes moribund as part of initiating an effect' Step 2: Save/cancel opportunity for the effect (not the kill); Step 3: Resolve effect." So if a character killed for cost is saved, it "never actually dies" in Step 1, which means that it was Step 1 that was the unsuccessful part of that chain. So unlike saving for claim, where claim was successfully initiated but unsuccessfully resolved, here the effect was never successfully initiated in the first place. If it was not successfully initiated, isn't that pretty much the same thing as not initiating it at all?

You can see from that "kill for cost" pattern why I said earlier that I have some questions about whether you should even be able to attempt to save a character that is killed for cost. Cost is paid completely in Step 1, so the character dies completely and becomes moribund in Step 1 when it is killed for cost. Saves cannot be played until Step 2, by which time the character is all-dead, not "mostly dead" the way it would be for claim or any other kill effect. If it's all dead, it should be too late to save. Essentially, being allowed to save a character killed for cost implies a Step 1.I, 1.II and 1.III (the way there is for each passive in Step 4 and Response in Step 5) - and this is not stated in the rules of FAQ.

So do you see why the underlying logic applies for "kill for cost" but not for "kill for effect"? It has to do with where in the action window (Step 1 vs. Step 3) "never actually dies" is applied - and the ramifications therein.

Just wanted to say thanks for the clarification. Some of it was definitely overkill, but it's good theoretical knowledge that helps to fill in some conceptual holes that could possibly help preempt future questions