Can Fist Full of Coppers be canceled by Paper Shield?

I'm thinking No because the shadows event has a cost of 0g to bring it out of shadows which is still a gold cost right? (even though its 0?)

Can someone shed some light on the subject? Also if it can be canceled it would go to the discard pile right? Not back into shadows?

My inclination is to say that Paper Shield can cancel 'Coppers' because the cost of "s0" is not a gold cost associated with the triggering of the event, only the cost associated with playing it from Shadows. More experienced rule arbiters (read, ktom!) may have an entirely different (read, accurate) interpretation.

I am pretty curious about this one. 45+ views, doesn't anyone else have an opinion/precedence? Just sayin...

s0 would be the cost to bring it out of shadows, not the cost to play the effect. It it was a s0 event that said "response: kneel one influence..." or "response: pay one gold..." then the cost is paying one gold or kneeling one influence, not paying zero gold to bring it out of shadows. At least that is my understanding.

You guys are looking at this from the wrong angle. Cards brought of shadows are not played (they are brought out of shadows). Thus Paper Shield cannot cancel an event that comes out of shadows.

Paper Shield

Response: Cancel the effects of an event card just played that does not have a gold or an influence cost.

I thought the same thing at first, then I re-read the shadows rules. They say, "After an event card comes out of Shadows, it is treated in the same manner as a non-Shadows event card played from a player’s hand" which is why I'm assuming this card can be cancelled (by GJ or He Call's it Thinking) but I think Paper Shield does not work because if you are "playing it from your hand" you are essentially paying 0g to do that.

Dobbler said:

The question on Paper Shield is difficult. It is true that "pay 0 gold to bring this card out of Shadows" is, indeed a gold cost. It is well established that paying 0 gold is still paying gold. The question becomes, however, whether paying the cost of bringing the card out of Shadows can be equated to the cost of triggering the event.

If you do equate the cost to bringing the event out of Shadows to the cost of the event being triggered, then every Shadow event has a gold cost and Paper Shield could not cancel it. If you do not equate the cost to bring it out of Shadows with the cost of triggering the event effect, Paper Shield can cancel Fist Full of Coppers.

Since the Shadow rules say "after an event comes out of Shadows, it is treated in the same manner as a non-Shadows event card played from a player's hand," I would tend to agree that the gold cost to bring the card out of Shadows is not part of the event cost. It is separate.

Therefore, you just look at the "Response" part of the event. If there is no gold or influence cost, Paper Shield can cancel it. So I'd say that "yes, Paper Shield can cancel Fist Full of Coppers."

Also, in the FAQ there is a section on determining the cost of an event. It is fairly conclusion when it states that the general rule for determining cost is checking for the "Do X to do Y" structure. Since "Coppers" and other zero cost shadows events don't have this typical wording, added to the fact that the shadows rules specifically state that the card should be treated as if played by hand, makes me believe the triggering of the event does not have a cost. The only cost is the cost to bring the card out of shadows, which is independent from the triggering of the event.

If all the shadows events were immune to paper shield, that would make them pretty attractive in the current metagame. Maybe we should email Nate, get an official ruling on this.

Syd said:

They aren't, and it's actually the other way around. All the (current) Shadows events (even the ones with a cost of s1 or greater) can be canceled by Paper Shield.

As we know (or we supposed to know), bringing a card out of shadows is totally separate from using its effect - i.e. first you bring card out of shadows (paying 0 gold for that), then your opponent can play some response to it, and then you can trigger shadow event's response - so there should be no doubt that the effect of this event has no cost (Paper shield is talking about canceling effect without cost, not event, right?). ( ~as opposed to Starfall Advisor)

~No need to bother Nate - shadow rules are so simple and clear now.

Syd said:

As I said before, I think that the fact that Shadow events are treated as "played" after the come out of Shadows makes that too great a leap to make, but I don't think the answer is in the FAQ entry on event cards. For one, that entry was written something like 5 years before Shadows even existed. For another, the timing of Shadows does not fit particularly gracefully into the standard timing structure. In general, the Shadow mechanic, particularly bringing the out of Shadows, defies these normal timing rules. Bringing cards out of Shadows is a strange combination of a framework event executed like a player action. So normal definitions of event card timing are not always particularly comparable.

Good points ktom. I probably should have put some emphasis on "fairly" from my post. The wording in the FAQ regarding events is anything but conclusive, I was just using it as support for an argument. As far as the entry being upwards of five years old, I assume that no matter how old a section of the FAQ is, as a constantly evolving document, all sections are to be reliably utilized for making rulings. That is of course until an entry is made that dictates the specific interactions of certain cards or card types, which there is plenty of precedence for. As a TO I would rule as I and others have voiced previously in this post, but I would not find significant fault with a TO that swung the other way. That level of ambiguity should probably be addressed at some point officially.

Syd said:

Considering that the timing of bringing cards out of Shadows doesn't entirely fit with the basic timing rules of the game, justifying the way a Shadow event works with the basic rules of non-Shadow event cards is not particularly persuasive - especially when you can explain the result with the Shadow rules/rulings alone.

cha0s said:

There is a clear reason why I should avoid posting on the rules threads.

According to Nate:

"The printed gold cost on Shadow effects is to bring the card out of Shadows, not to trigger the event's effect (which is a response to the event coming out of Shadows).

If the response effect itself has no textual gold or influence cost, it can be canceled by Paper Shield."

So I guess it's a "yes".

the1andonlime said:

I think that's lame... or makes "The Hand's Judgement" all the more powerful.

Maester_LUke said:

@ktom: I guess Maester Luke meant that HJ can cancel Paper shield. That's it