Quick question about Bought and Paid for.

Lannister event. House Lannister only.

Dominance: Pay X gold to choose and discard 1 attachment from play. X is the printed gold cost of that attachment.

Say I use this to discard a zero cost attachment, like Apprentice Collar. Can this event be canceled by Paper Shield? (Response: Cancel the effects of an event card just played that does not have a gold or an influence cost.)

A cost of 0 is still a cost.

Essentially, Paper Shield cannot cancel something that specifically says "pay 0 gold" for the same reason you cannot play 0-cost attachments outside of your turn in the Marshaling phase. You can only spend gold to play characters, locations, and attachments fro your hand when you are the active player in Marshaling and, as Rat says, spending 0 gold is still spending gold. So the effect has a gold cost, putting outside the play restrictions of Paper Shield.

Excellent, that's what I thought. Thanks!

On a side note, what about trying to cancel Wendy's Maester save (greyjoy) with one of the Martell Cancels that only works if it doesn't have an influence cost. Wendy's save has an influence OPTION. How does that work?

dh098017 said:

Look at the entry in the FAQ:

(3.38) Saving from "Then" Effects
Any "Then" effect that would remove a character from play creates a special opportunity for players to play “save” responses to the terminal “Then” effect. Only save responses can be played during this special opportunity.

This effectively says that the "then" part of an effect plays not role in the save/cancel of the original part of the effect.

Do THEN effects only create a separate SAVE opportunity or is it a SAVE/CANCEL opportunity? Meaning, would Wendamyr's Response have two separate chances to be canceled? Once on the initiation and a second for the THEN (which would only cancel the post THEN) ?

dh098017 said:

(3.38) Saving from "Then" Effects
Any "Then" effect that would remove a character from play creates a special opportunity for players to play “save” responses to the terminal “Then” effect. Only save responses can be played during this special opportunity.

So it seems pretty safe to say it is just "saves," not "cancels."

I find this very interesting. I only asked the question because in most places where FFG references Responses, they speak of two flavors, regular and save/cancel. With this ruling it seems that there are now three flavors, regular, save and cancel. I find it to be somewhat counter to the rest of the game rules in general that THEN effects open a save window but not a cancel window. I do not dispute what you say, I would just like to hear the reasoning behind why FFG made this disctinction. Is there ever a situation where a THEN can be canceled? I wonder what the example was that made them say not being able to save was an issue, but being able to cancel was not necessary.

I'm assuming it's because it only made sense that way. The "then" portion of cards is something that will automatically happen if the first part happens, so if you can't cancel the actual effect, then you can't do anything about the entire effect. But it wouldn't make sense to deny someone the opportunity to save their cards just because the part that offed them happened in the "then" portion of an action. So you can save from "then" but you can't cancel it. Makes sense to me.

There is also an aspect that the play restrictions on some cancels would only be met if the conditional "then" part of the effect happens, but cancels are supposed to stop all effects that share the same trigger. The Maester Wendamyr thing is a good example. Say there was a cancel that said "cancel a character ability with an influence cost." As we just talked about, Maester Wendamyr's character ability doesn't have an influence cost unless the "save" part resolves successfully. So this hypothetical cancel does not become applicable until after half of the character ability has been completed. So, do we allow a cancel to undo something that is completed, do we say the cancel does not actually cancel the entire character ability, or do we just say "no cancels based solely on the 'then' part of the effect"? FFG has obviously opted for the third solution to this particular quandary.

I completely understand the ruling, I just dont see the issue of allowing a save/cancel to each effect (note: I am sure that there is one, and that is why FFG made the ruling, I'm just curious as to what that is). For the Wendamyr example: He activates the initial save and it goes through with no issues, then he tries to activate the THEN, why shouldn't a cancel be allowed to only cancel the post THEN effect? Seems pretty simple to me. They are already distinguished as two separate effects by pre/post then, why not allow them both to individually be cancelled as they can already both be individually saved from?

Again, I have no confusion as to the actual correct answer, I just can't find an example of where canceling a THEN would open a black hole and cause the game earth to suck itself into oblivion

dh098017 said:

Part of the issue is that cancels and saves are not equivalent, although they share similar interrupt timing. Cancels work on the effect itself, saves work on the character being killed. The distinction is made all the time - otherwise everything that is "cannot be saved" would be "cannot be canceled," too.

Actually, that makes complete sense. Thank you for your patience in helping me untangle this mental knot.