Here's a question about Master of the Spear that I haven't yet been able to figure out:

Let's say that I trigger Master of the Spear's action and my opponent chooses (or has to choose if they have only one character) someone with Finger of Jade attached. Can the Finger be sacrificed to stop the send-home, or is it (due to the opponent making the choice) no longer considered to be "targeting?"

Made me think of similar situations in other card games, where effects aren't considered targeting a card if they hit the opponent first and cause them to make a choice (like "target opponent sacrifices a creature").

In this case, I can imagine it going either way, so I thought I would ask.

Thanks in advance.

Cost: 3. Military: 2. Political: 2. Glory: 1.

Cost: 1. Military: +0. Political: +0.

To my understanding targeting and having the opponent choosing who will be affected are different things. Targeting is supposed to happen when the effect is initiated. Here the ffect only forces the oponnent to chose a character who will receive it.

If you refer to the rulings for Way of the crab:

Cost: 1.

The targeting goes on an opponent not on the character that holds the finger of jade. Therefore this one cannot be used to cancel the effect.

That's the way I see it.

Choosing is targeting. Finger doesn't care about who is doing the targeting, just that the targeting is happening when the effects initiate. Since MotS has your opponent target before the "-" in it's ability the target is chosen before the effects initiate and so you can use Finger to cancel MotS's ability.

You can look at Court Games for an example of targeting that occurs after effect initiation, since the "choose a character" bits happen after the "-".