Ran into this in yesterdays game.

My baratheon opponent used his painted table so that the next trigger would be cancelled.

I did a Military challenge to my opponent and first triggered my carrion birds (cannot be cancelled) and after that I triggered my syrio forels response of going back to shadows. Now the question is will the painted table try to cancel the carrion bird response even when it cannot be and then just fade away doing nothing or will it "see" that the response cannot be cancelled so it stays at the background and will cancel the next legal trigger (in this case Syrios response)?

We thought about this for quite sometime and ruled that it failed in cancelling carrion birds response so that Syrios response was not cancelled.

Yeah I would say that it skips the Bird and hits Syrio. If it can not be canceled, then you can't even try and cancel it, so it sits there and waits for the next legal cancel.

A valid question I think. Based on the word "next effect triggered", I am leaning toward agreeing with your assessment. However, "cannot" is absolute. So, it is possible that if "Cannot be canceled" is on an effect, the Painted Table doesn't even try to cancel it. Just like "cannot be killed", unless there is no other eligible target, the next eligible triggered effect will be canceled. Therefore, Syrio Forel's Response should be canceled by Painted Table.

This question opens up with a similar situation and hypothetical question:
What would happen to River Blockade if an opponents location had "cannot be canceled" on it and it was the first location effect triggered? I'd say the same exact result to the situation above, whatever the ruling becomes.

There is only one "next effect triggered". If the next effect triggered cannot be cancelled, tough luck for the controller of the Painted Table. In your example, Syrio's response is not the next effect triggered, but the next-but-one, and hence not covered by the text of Painted Table.

It's the same thing with River Blockade. If your opponent is FP and triggers, say, a fiefdom during his marshalling, and you marshal a copy of River Blockade afterwards, then RB will not cancel anything that round, because the first location effect triggered by your opponent after you marshalled RB does not euqal the first location effect triggered by an opponent in that particular round.

I hope you get where I'm going with this. I should probably have worded that better.

Staton said:

But you are not trying to cancel it. A lasting effect you have created previously is trying to cancel it, and that lasting effect will automatically attempt to cancel "the next effect triggered this phase". And only the next effect triggered - not the next but one.

We've had this discussion before with River Blockade, and that was the outcome. Unless I'm wrong, of course, which is always a possibility. In this case I'm pretty sure I have this down. Then again, I've been certain and wrong before, so let's wait for ktom to chime in.

Boy, I do wish the Search function, imperfect as it was, was back.

I am actually going to agree with Ratatoskr here. The "don't even try" with "cannot be X" only applies to choosing targets of an effect. There is no targeting with Painted Table, so it's "cancel the next effect triggered" is still attempted on the Carrion Bird's response. Since Carrion Bird's response is technically the next triggered effect, that is where Painted Table applies its cancel attempt and then fails to cancel it. So, it is indeed soaked up by Carrion Bird like an adult diaper with an old woman.

You guys are over-thinking this.

Play restrictions are never met for The Painted Table's lasting effect/delayed cancel in this situation, so nothing is canceled.

> Carrion Bird "cannot be canceled." So the delayed cancel does not initiate in Response to the Bird being triggered.

> Syrio is the second effect triggered after The Painted Table, so the play restrictions for the delayed cancel are not met and it does not initiate in Response to Syrio being triggered. (Staton: There is nothing in the text of The Painted Table that allows you skip to the next effect triggered that can be canceled . Just because the delayed cancel is hanging around un-initiated does not mean that the second effect will meet its play restrictions. It's a huge weakness in The Painted Table.)

BTW: The "don't even try" short-hand for what "cannot" means does hold here. "Don't even try" reflects the fact that "cannot" bars the initiation of any relevant effect that involves the "cannot" card. It is not just a bar on targeting; it is a bar on initiating. After all, very few saves actually target anything - they don't routinely use the word "choose" - but "cannot be saved" still stops you from initiating saves, targeted or not.

So, this is a simple matter of reviewing play restrictions. There is only one "next," so all others will fail to meet that play restriction. And there is no means to "transfer to a new next" if that one "next" somehow doesn't allow the cancel to resolve.