Drew Tuzson said:

Here's the whole thing, bullet pointed, in review. It more or less paraphrases the rule book:

1. These rules for playing dupes only apply to unique cards (ones with a black flag symbol before the title).
2. You must have a unique card in play that you own and control.
3. You must have a copy of the same unique card -- as determined by title -- in your hand.
4. When it is your turn in Marshaling, you may attach the copy in your hand to the copy already in play. This is considered "playing a dupe" and doesn't cost you any gold.
5. If that card would be killed, discarded, returned to hand, returned to deck, returned to Shadows or otherwise removed from play, you may discard the dupe to save the original copy.
6. The duplicate does, and pretty much means, nothing else beyond this "save" function.
7. Since the original copy is "saved," whatever effect tried to remove it from play is considered to never have been successful. The original copy thus never leaves play to being with.

I'm not sure I can explain dupes any more clearly than that.

that is the clarity i have needed! thank you!

ktom said:

My question is about dupes that voluntarily return to shadows. Especially the new Jaqen. If he is returned to shadows in a way that is not within his game text, then what happens to his "stolen" identity. For example if the shadows baratheon ashaii card was to turn him back into shadows, would the "stolen" character identity just go back into its owners dead pile? Also if shadows cards have attachments would the attachments go into their owners dead/discard piles? I hope thats clear enough, my guess is yes to both questions.

The "stolen identity" attaches to Jaqen as a duplicate. Normal duplicate rules apply. If Jaqen is discarded by Sister of Truth , the dupe goes to its owners discard pile.

OKay, have another question to this thread.

Do duplicates count as attachments when counting attachments for things like "The Prince who was promised" or "Flame-kissed"?

Duplicates do not count as attachments; it's in the FAQ.

davidlian said:

No, duplicates are not attachments (even the duplicate of an attachment isn't an attachment). Attachments are a different type of card.

Now I have a question too:

Lt's say I steal a unique character with one or more duplicate on it and then my opponent declares against me (and win) a military challenge. I decide to kill that unique character. If I understand correctly I can decide not to save the character from being killed, because duplicate gives the ability to save to the character, that now I control, so I can kill him and don't activate the saving response.

Is this right?

thorin_81 said:

That's correct. The ability to save a character with a duplicate is a gained Response: of the character (see FAQ). Because it's a Response, it's optional, and because it is a gained ability of the character, the controller of the character would decide if he wants to trigger it or not.

Compare this to the following example: Let's say you take control of a Stark character that has Nymeria attached to it. You can decide to kill the character for MIL claim, but as the attachment has not changed control, your opponent gets to decide if he wants to trigger Nymeria's ability to save the character.

Ratatoskr said:

Other than that, yes, all Responses (and thus, pretty much all saves) are optional.

So to make it clear in my head...

Say we have a character with a duplicate and the milk of the poppy on him....does that mean that the player cannot trigger the "response" to save him , or can he?

And if we have bowl of brown, on a character with duplicates, can the player or not trigger the response to save the character?

Kelemvor said:

Milk of the Poppy blanks a character's text box. Gained abilities are not added to the text box. They are just gained. So Milk of the Poppy has no effect on using Duplicates (or any other gained ability).

Bowl of Brown prevents any effect from being triggered and so prevents the Response associated with saving a character via a duplicate from being used.

ktom said:

I am unclear how a situation would arise where you control a character but not the duplicate. As ktom already pointed out , the FAQ states: (3.25) Taking Control of a Card With Attachments Any time control of a card switches via a card effect during a game, the new controlling player gains control of said card and all duplicates. The FAQ also states, in part: ( 3.27) Unique Cards and Changing Control Duplicates can only be played or put into play on cards you own and control.

3.27 appears to prevent any player from playing a dupe on a character whose control has changed from the owner - so the only way for a charater whose control has changed to even have an dupe on it is to have had it prior to the change - meaning the controller would control the dupe as well. What am I missing?

While we're on the subject of duplicates, I wanted to get some input on dupe stragety. Somewhere in my previous forum searches I got the impression that duplicates only applied to characters. I imagine it came from the fact that once a character goes into the dead pile, any other duplicates of that card become unplayable; whereas locations and attachments are never killed (save Deathbound) and thus nothing prevents you from putting another copy of that card back into play. Perhaps the advantage of duping locations and attachments was lost on me at the time.

Understanding now that locations and attachments CAN be duped, I want to make sure I understand the implications in choosing whether to play a second copy of a unique location/attachment as a duplicate, or to hold it in my hand to replace said card if and when it leaves play.

Duping: On the plus side, obviously, is the save response, as well as not having to pay a second marshalling cost. On the negative side, an effect that prevents or cancels the save will make me lose both the card and its dupe.

Holding: On the plus side, when the card leaves play, I can simply replace it next marshalling phase. On the negative side, the cost to marshall it is gold I wouldn't have had to spend if I duped it instead, and it is subject to discard effects while in hand.

Is there anything else that plays into this decision?

You have to consider the risk of losing the card you're holding in your hand (instead of duping) to the claim of an Intrigue challenge. Also, while I have cancelled dupe-saves before, I think the risk of that happening is generally small (IMO).

And it would seem that it also depends on the particular card. For instance, the unique attachment Ice reads "While attached character is participating in a challenge, kneel and discard Ice from play (cannot be saved) to choose and kill another participating character." Although meeting all the requirements for a duplicate, doing so would be a waste since it cannot be saved. So maximizing the effect of having 3 copies of Ice in one's deck would mean replacing the attachement each time it got discarded.

I feel that in order to know the best way to use a card, you have to know why the card was designed. In this case, I'd say it is unique to prevent you from arming multiple characters with it It simultaneously, and its effect ensures that it can only be used only once per challenge phase, thus preventing you being able to use Ice's effect twice in the same challenge to kill multiple participating characters (being two powerful).

The original observation that you have to control the dupe as well as controlling the "original" in order to use the save was more of an observation on the explanation that had been given not being generally applicable to all "take control" save situations. For the most part, you will not ever control a character without also controlling the dupe.

sabrefox said:

sabrefox said:

So I don't think that you need to know why a card was designed in order to know the "best" way to use it - because the "best" way to use a card can often have nothing to do with why it was designed, but rather on the total environment (which is always changing), as well as the specific deck you are using.

Hi, I'm new to the game and I'd like to make sure of something about duplicates:

If I have a unique character with a duplicate attached and my opponent plays a card that says "kill a character, cannot be saved", the character dies and cannot be saved by discarding the duplicate, is that right?

Thanks for the answer.

That's correct. What else would "cannot be saved" mean?

Specifically, if something is "cannot be saved," you cannot save it by any means - including dupes.

"Cannot" is an absolute term in this game. If you see "cannot be X," there will never be an exception that allows you to do X.

I'll throw this question in here as well, since it's about duplicates- do you remove two duplicates to pay for a claim value of two? I recently played someone who was adamant that since it was the only character in play, his twice-duplicated unique character only had to lose one of the duplicates to satisfy the claim. Is this correct? If there was another character in play, could he have actually removed two of the duplicates to save the other character?

petereff said:

petereff said:

When an effect (like 2+ value military claim) kills more than one character, those characters are chosen, then all die at the same time. That means each character can only be chosen once for any military claim, no matter what its value is. So since the unique character can only die once for any single military claim (no matter what the claim value), it only needs to be saved once.

So, on the one hand, if you only have 1 character in play, you only need to save it once, no matter how high the opponent's claim value. But on the other hand, if you have a character in play that can be saved multiple times, other characters in play cannot "hide behind" that character when the claim value is higher than 1.

Thanks for the response, it makes sense now.

Hello all, I'm also new and have a question about duplicates and attachments, did not found it so hope you can help me.

If you have unique character A in play with duplicate B on it, when character A dies, you discard duplicate B in order to save the character. The original card never leaves play - the duplicate does. And since it was saved, it never leaves play -- and was never actually killed -- in any way. So power, attachments, etc. stay because the character never left play, leaving you no reason to do anything to it.

In fact that is what the rules say, as a duplicate cannot hold attachments, they have to stay on the original.

BUT, this would mean that if I attach "Flame kissed" (core) to a character with duplicates on it, and that characters STR is reduced to 0, that the character cannot be saved, as the attachment stays on the character and so still has STR0 and will hence die (you could discard the duplicates to save, save again and than the character will be blank and be killed by the attachment). Right?

In fact that is what the rules say, as a duplicate cannot hold attachments, they have to stay on the original.

BUT, this would mean that if I attach "Flame kissed" (core) to a character with duplicates on it, and that characters STR is reduced to 0, that the character cannot be saved, as the attachment stays on the character and so still has STR0 and will hence die (you could discard the duplicates to save, save again and than the character will be blank and be killed by the attachment). Right?

This is what we call a "terminal effect", i.e. an effect that will remove a card from play once a constantly checked condition is met. Since the condition is checked constantly, trying to save the card would indeed be pointless. In fact, the FAQ tells us that you cannot even *try* to save the card unless the save also removes the card from the terminal efect at the same time. A card that *could* be saved from an effect like Flame Kissed would be Viserys Targaryen (Core), because his ability saves him *and* removes him from the terminal effect at the same time.

You can read up on terminal effects in the FAQ.

Very good, Thanks a lot!

Hello, everyone! As a newbie I had lots of questions but this thread has given me the answers I needed about the dupes.

Now I have one theoretical queston remained, probable I may not encounter such a situation but in case I meet it it would be helpful to know how to resolve it.

Lets say I've got a control on my opponent's unique card so I control it but do not own .

ktom wrote that for playing a dupe I need both: own and control the unique card .

And lets presume I have a copy of this card in my hand - can I play it and how:

- as a dupe (I suppose it is not correct because I do not own the unique card in play),

- as an independent unique card (so I will have under my control 2 same unique cards)

- or I am not allowed to play my unique card (in this case until what: till the opponent's card under my control is dead?)?

Here's the whole thing, bullet pointed, in review. It more or less paraphrases the rule book:

1. These rules for playing dupes only apply to unique cards (ones with a black flag symbol before the title).
2. You must have a unique card in play that you own and contro l.
3. You must have a copy of the same unique card -- as determined by title -- in your hand