Can you bring the Venemous blade out of shadows and attach it to a character even if there are no Str 2 or lower characters around to kill? Had a scenario where I wanted to bring it out of shadows and attach it to a char to stop it getting killed by an icy catapult later that phase. Wasn't sure if it was legal to do so with no eligible targets for the blade to kill.

Thanks

sure can. Any "RESPONSE: Do this" is optional and doesn't have to be done if you don't choose to do so.

Yea, that's the problem. The response part of Venomous blade sends it back into shadows. Text:

" After Venomous Blade comes out of Shadows, attach it to a character you control. Then, choose and kill an opponent's character with printed STR 2 or less. Response: After you lose a challenge, Venomous Blade goes into Shadows."

The intial part is not a response, it's the effect which happens when brought out of shadows. If you can't fulfill that effect can you still bring it out of shadows?

Lars said:

Heh. Caught Lars napping on the card's actual text. But he has the right overall answer, even if he messed up the mechanics a bit.

You can bring Venomous Blade out of Shadows whether or not you have a character on the table and whether or not there is a character 2STR or lower on the table.

If you bring it out of Shadows, you must attach it to a character you control - if you have one - whether you want to or not. If you don't have one, it is discarded.

If you successfully attach the Blade to one of your characters, you must choose and kill a character with STR 2 or lower, whether you want to or not. If none of your opponents have a character STR 2 or lower, you have to choose and kill one of your own. If there are no characters STR 2 or lower on the table at all, the effect just fizzles.

The overall answer to your question is that you can still bring the Blade out of Shadows, even if the "kill a character" effect is doomed to fail due to a lack of legal targets. Just remember that when looking for legal targets, you are required to look at your side of the board, too.

ktom said:

Venomous Blade says "opponent's character", but above is true for cards like Varys for example.

Rogue30 said:

There you go. Caught me napping, too.

Great, thanks for the answers. Much appreciated

Can i kill a Summer Reserves if its character with Venomous Blade ? I dont think , because this card hasnt pritned str...

Kuba said:

Other way around. The card doesn't have a printed STR, so it's printed STR is treated as 0 for the comparison, which is less than 2. You can, indeed, kill Summer Reserves with Venomous Blade.

Is there any statement in the rules/FAQs saying that? I cannot find it.

Thanks.

(3.1) The Letter X
Unless specified by a preceding card, card
effect, or granted player choice, the letter "X"
is always equal to 0. Further, any card with no
cost of a specified type is assumed to have a
cost of 0 for purposes of determining how that
card interacts with triggered effects that need
to count its cost.

So, for example, if Ser Lancel Lannister is attacking (While Ser Lancel Lannister is attacking, characters with printed cost lower than the number of attacking Lanni characters cannot be declared as defenders), Summer Reserves could not defend because - as the event card has no printed cost - its printed cost is assumed to be 0.

This rule about cost is generally, and historically, extended to situations where a card does not have any characteristic of a specified type which interacts with triggered effects that reference said characteristic. The cost example becomes the precedent for any characteristic.

As far as I know STR is not a cost... BTW, I don't understand why that clarification on the letter X only appears under the costs section. I wouldn't be hard to write a global clarification for the letter X and non-defined attributes such as STR.

I thought it would not be possible for venomous to kill any reinforcement card because it says kill a character with printed strength 2 or less. In my mind it seemed that the reinforcement events/characters have no printed strength since they are not characters to begin with. They don't have the shield icon therefore no printed strength.

Zsa said:

Correct. And since they have no printed STR of their own, when an effect looks for its printed STR and finds nothing, it treats that printed STR as 0 in order to resolve - just as the FAQ entry says you should do when you look for a particular type of cost and find nothing. So the comparison isn't "null, therefore not applicable," it is "null, therefore 0." So Venomous Blade looks at the character without a printed STR and says "yeah, it's printed STR is less than 2" and kills it.

eloooooooi said:

I'm sorry, I apparently wasn't clear when I said "this entry for the characteristic of 'cost' is applied to any characteristic." This does not imply that cost and STR are the same thing. Rather, it says that since we have an entry that says "when an effect says to look at the value of a cost on a card and that type of cost isn't there on the card to be found, treat the cost as 0," it is reasonable to say that "when an effect says to look at the value of a STR on a card and that type of STR isn't there on the card to be found, treat the STR as 0."

Again, the cost example has become the precedent for any characteristic referred to as part of an effect. That's experience and history speaking.

If you don't like the explanation of the precedent for undefined cost being extended to any undefined characteristic, feel free to send the question in to FFG. I'm willing to bet their answer will look almost exactly like what I have said here.

ktom said:

Yeah, I understood that. And that's why I said it would be much clearer for new players to have that statement in the FAQs instead of having to ask a veteran player. It's not that I don't like your answer nor anything like that.

eloooooooi said:

Sorry. I read that as "STR is not a cost...so the comparison is invalid and the precedent can't be right" instead of as "STR is not a cost...so how is someone new to the game supposed to know that's the precedent to use".

Hey, no need to apologize. English is not my first language so I cannot express what I think the same way I would do it in Spanish. Thank you for your help!

Ok, I realize that the str is not printed in a shield like other chars, but still not seeing why it wouldn't be 4 (for the card in question). The text basically lays out all the necessities of a normal character card... Trait: Army; Keyword: Deadly; Str: 4; and the mil, int, pow icons. Does this mean that the other parameters can not be afftected due to them not being printed in the normal fasion?

The problem here is that the Reinforcement card has no PRINTED strength. Is has 4 STR, that's what the text says, but printed STR is not the same as STR. Remember that Venomous Blade works with characters with printed STR 2 or lower.

eloooooooi said:

Exactly.

Look at it this way. I have a Knight of the Rainwood in play (2 STR, Mil/Pow icons). I put Shadow's Blessing on him (attached character gets +2 STR if it has a Pow icon). Can Venomous Blade kill this character? It's STR is 4 (it's regular 2, +2 more from the attachment), but the STR that is printed on the card is only 2. Venomous Blade says to choose and kill a character with printed STR of 2 or less, so it can indeed kill the Knight in this example. Similarly, it could NOT kill a 3STR character with Flame-Kissed on it. Even though the character's STR is 1, it's printed STR is still higher than 2.

From these examples, you should be able to see that "STR" and "printed STR" are two separate parameters. As a character, Summer Reserves has a "STR" parameter, but not a "printed STR" parameter. It's STR can be affected, manipulated, etc. - but its printed STR cannot. Similarly, effects can manipulate its icons, keywords, etc., but if a card tried to manipulate or identify it by its printed icons, keywords, etc., it would not be able to do so.

I think that Boreas tried to say that the card has its parameters determined, specified by its gametext, thus printed (fixed from the start just like other characters have).

Rogue30 said:

If so, it would be incorrect. Those parameters are "fixed" by a card effect, not the natural parameters of the card itself.

The 4STR that is "set" on the card once it becomes a character by triggering its effect is more like giving some character "+4 STR" with a card effect than it is like a character card with 4STR printed on its STR banner.

I think we should take the literal meaning of printed here. Summer Reserves is an event and, as such, it only has printed text and a trait (besides the title, of course).

Rogue caught my meaning. The way I was seeing it, the printed text defined all the parameters of a normal character card. I understand your examples using other modifiers and their effect toward these situations. In my thoughts, printed str(in text) vs. printed str seems to be scewing language. I was under the impression that when in doubt take the literal meaning, and by that the 4 str would be a printed str. I could see your examples working if the text says gains 4 str, but it defines a set integer.