I ask because I was playing a City of Shadows deck that was bringing out Venomous Blade in the Shadows Phase before Challenges Phase started. Then, they would trigger Meera Reed and get blanking going too. I decided that the Blade was doing more damage since it was permanently (killing) dealing with my characters.

Is it legal to kneel the Painted Table in Shadows phase if I am first player, so that when second player brings a card out of shadows and triggers a response for bringing something out of shadows, it gets cancelled? I want to stop the blade from getting its kill.

AceManUSC said:

(As tempting as it is to leave this answer at "no," I suppose elaboration would be helpful….)

First, what do you mean "Shadows Phase"? There is no such thing as a "Shadows Phase." At the beginning of each phase, before anything else happens, each player (starting with the First Player) may bring a single card out of Shadows. This is not a "phase." It is an action that happens within other phases. It would be like saying the new Theon's ability creates a "Discard Phase" between the Challenge and Dominance phases while he is in your dead pile.

Next, since you are still in the process of beginning the phase, you have not reached a "player action" window yet. You would need a player action window before you could trigger The Painted Table's "Any Phase" effect. So because bringing cards out of Shadows specifically takes place (passively) because the phase is starting, you will not have a chance to use an "Any Phase" triggered effect before all cards are brought out of Shadows.

Finally, The Painted Table only cancels the next effect triggered in the phase. The attaching/killing part of Venomous Blade is passive, so even if you could trigger the Table (you can't), it wouldn't stop the blade from killing anything.

Short of the blade's controller not having any characters, or you not having any characters with printed STR 2 or lower in play, there really isn't anything in the game that can stop Venomous Blade from coming out of Shadows and killing something. The trick is to kill the character with the blade before they have a chance to trigger its "return to Shadows" ability.

Thanks for the help. I thought the Shadows portion of gameplay was a phase within a phase at the beginning of each official phase. So that was why I was thinking it might be possible to use an any phase ability. But because the Painted Table wasn't a Shadows card itself, it wasn't able to do its thing in the "Shadows Phase".

I now understand that it isn't how I thought at all. Thanks again.

AceManUSC said: