Can this situation be compared to Rickon Stark and Summoning Season?

In Summoning season, you choose an opponent. Is choosing the opponent considered the "cost"? Or is choosing an opponent in almost all cases considered never a cost because there is always an opponent and that will always be a fulfilled prerequisite?

Just trying to make heads and tails with copying effects because if it's considered a cost, then clearly you cannot use Rickon Stark with effects that depend on choosing an opponent to share the search with you.

Bomb said:

No. For it to be a cost there would have to be a "Choose an opponent to do something" construction. You can always identify a cost by the "do X to do Y" construction, with X being the cost. If there's no construction like that, the effect has no cost.

More accurately, and detailed elsewhere in the thread I believe, conventional ruling on copy effects allow you to choose a new target - which is what you are dealing with in the Rickon example. You may not pay "new costs," though. That's the difference between the two situations.

Just a little more clarification... the convention is that copy effects can choose new targets. Presumably, these effects can make all new choices, even when the choice is not in the form of a targeted effect? (for example, you can choose a different character card with the copied Summoning Season effect). Assuming this is correct and you can make new choices, I would think that Maester's Tower could copy its own effect and then choose a new effect to copy with this additional opportunity to copy. Is it best to think of the ruling that Maester's Tower can not copy its own effect as a special ruling specific to Maester's Tower? Or am I overlooking another element of how copy effects work?

Take a look at Nate's reported answer again. Maester's Tower cannot copy itself because it does not meet its own play restrictions. It does not return a character directly - only by virtue of copying something else. It's not the same as the To Be a Stag example - where the resolution of the copied effect is flawed. It's the initiation of the new copy that is flawed.

In that case, I don't understand the distinction between Maester's Tower's effect and the effects of The Prince's Plans and Street Waif. For The Prince's Plans and Street Waif, Nate says that "The Tower copies results, not intention, so if the Prince's Plan or Street Waif ended up returning a character, the effect can be copied." What is different about looking at how the Prince's Plans resolves from looking at how Maester's Tower's effect resolves? For Maester's Tower, Nate says "You would only end up with an opportunity to copy, not an original effect that can be copied. And you can only trigger the Tower once per "original effect."" I don't see why, if you end up with an opportunity to copy, you couldn't use that opportunity. It almost sounds like he is saying that the second opportunity to copy (which nominally is copying the copy of the original effect) would end up counting as a second triggering off of the original effect and so would violate the one response per trigger rule.

schrecklich said:

The Prince's Plans and Street Waif return cards to your hand. Maester's Tower copies an effect that returns a card to your hand. When you copy The Prince's Plans, you're basically initiating the following effect: "return the top 4 cards of your discard pile to your hand." If you wanted to copy the effect of Maester's Tower, you'd initiate this effect: "copy a triggered effect that returns a character from your discard or dead pile to your hand, deck, shadows area, or play." You would be trying to copy an effect that copied an effect, but which now does nothing for you, because the effect by itself does not return a card to your hand. The copy of a copy has no reference for the effect that originally returned a card to your hand.

Saturnine said:

I agree with this part.

Saturnine said:

I don't agree with this part. Here is my reasoning. Maybe you can point out where I am making a mistake:

All effects triggered previously within the current action window are still "available" to be referenced by copy effects. Otherwise, no copy effect would work within the timing structure since copy effects do not interrupt the resolution of an effect but only copy it after it has completely resolved and is otherwise "gone" as far as the game is concerned. The effect that is being copied is the quoted text above ("copy a triggered effect that returns a character from your discard or dead pile to your hand, deck, shadows area, or play."). The play restriction of Maester's Tower that the effect must return a character to hand was already met when the Maester's Tower was triggered for the second time in response to the first time it was triggered and this new copy was created. After the effect is copied for the second time, it does not matter that it is not returning a character to hand itself (otherwise, I don't think the effects of The Prince's Plans and Street Waif should be unconditionally copiable but that seems to be the case). As I resolve the second copy's copying effect, I choose to copy the original return to hand effect (which should still be available for copying) and not the first Maester's Tower activation.

I went quickly through this thread. Because "Ours for the taking" copies ability not effect it can't be used with cards like Rhaenys's Hill. Because in Hill text is Kneel and discard as a cost. Is it right?

berto said: