Hypothetical Situation to help me understand card interactivity. I have italic'd the verbiage I wish to discuss.

The Maester's Path' (errata included): Before shuffling your deck during setup, remove up to 12 Chain attachments with different titles from your deck and place them on The Maester's Path. You cannot win the game if there are any Chain attachments on this card. Response: After you win a challenge, attach 1 Chain from this card to a printed Maester character you control.

Apprentice Collar: Item, Chain Setup. Attached character gains the Maester trait and gets +1 STR for each Chain attachment it has.

Steel Link: Item, Chain Setup. Maester character only . Response: After attached character kneels, choose and stand 1 location. (Limit once per phase.)

Pre condition: I have a Maester character in play (lets call him Maester X) whose text box has been blanked, but who has the Apprentice Collar attached to him.

I want to make sure that I am grasping the blanking concept. For the purposes of the situation described above, my understanding is that if Steel Link is on the Agenda card, that I cannot use the Agenda's response to move Steel Link to Maester X. Reason being that his text box has been blanked and therefore is not considered to have the printed Maester trait. However, if I have Steel Link in my hand, it is legal to play Steel Link onto Maester X, reason being Steel Link itself does not look for a printed trait, and the trait added via the Apprentice Collar would satisfy its play restriction.

Gracias Amigos.

When you check for printed anything, you look at the actual ink, no effect can change what is physically printed on a card.

So in the situation you describe, Maester X still has the printed Maester trait, regardless of the blanking effect and, since he has the Maester trait from the Apprentice Collar, you can attach another link to him.

Khudzlin said:

so your stance is that the new link can be attached whether it is on the agenda or in my hand?

dh098017 said:

That is correct. Due to the errata, the agenda's Chains can only be attached to someone with the printed trait (regardless of blanking, as Khudzlin stated). You'll need the the Apprentice Collar in place due to the Chains own condition of a Maester character only.

what if Maester X did not have the Apprentice Collar on? Would the wording of the Steel Link prevent me from moving the attachment from the Agenda to the character since the attachment says Maester only?

In my opinion, if the agenda only requires a "Printed Maester", then you should be allowed to at least attempt to attach a chain attachment to Maester X since that is the requirement of the agenda. What should happen is, the chain attachment would then immediately be discarded from Maester X because the Maester X did not meet the play restriction of the chain.

Bomb said:

By extension, I could use Pale Steel Link to attempt to put into play a Bodyguard on a non-Lord or Lady? Something doesn't feel right about that.

Aren't attachments' play restrictions "cannot" restrictions, and therefore "don't even try"?

i think that if you are only talking about the agenda and a blanked maester character (with no attachments), that while the agenda wouldn't prevent you from moving a chain from the agenda to the blanked maester, but the chain itself would since you cannot meet the play restriction of the chain.

I do agree with what was just said. I was thinking that getting the chain attachments off the Agenda was based on the existence of a Printed Maester in play. Similar to how Loyal Guard doesn't abide by the play restriction of attaching duplicates to unique characters only.

But I do agree that 2 play restrictions are checked with this agenda.

Bomb said:

Since you can only move an attachment to a character with the printed Maester trait, the Agenda effect is technically allowable (meets all play restrictions) when the Maester in question has its text blanked. "Printed" is absolute.

However, you have to consider the restrictions on the attachment you are moving. The "printed" Maester is not effectively a "Maester character" while blanked, and all chains (other than Apprentice Collar) are "Maester character only." That means the chain cannot, at any time, be on a non-Maester character. Therefore, the attachment cannot leave the Agenda for that character, even though it is legal to trigger the Agenda ability.

It's the same deal with the chain from your hand. You cannot pay the 1 gold to try to attach to a non-Maester just to discard the attachment from your hand. No different here.

I prefer to just kill the maesters myself.

So, with all that's been said.

If an Attacker has a printed Maester character with several chains participating in a challenge, and I use Frozen Moat to blank him. All of that Maester's chain attachments would be immediately discarded?

Rogue Cypher said:

Yep. (unless you have Apprentice Collar of course)