I have a Martell deck that uses The Scourge, which reads:

Any Phase: Kneel The Scourge to choose 1 character. That character loses a Military, an Intrigue, and a Power icon until the end of the phase.

Response: After a character loses an icon from The Scourge, choose and discard 1 card from your hand to have that character gain that icon until the end of the phase. Any player may trigger this effect.

Set: ODG

My thought was that the response window opens for all three icons regardless of whether or not the character has them at that time. My reasoning is that a persistent effect of having lost an icon actually applies to the character even though no icon was originally there (for instance, if I wanted to use Myrcella to give a character an intrigue icon on Quentyn Martell, I would need to do it twice if he had been Scourged) and that persistent effect has both a point of initiation and is therefore technically "losing an icon from the Scourge".

Specifically, I'm looking to use the Scourge to put Darkstar into play and wondering if I can discard Darkstar to give back an icon the character did not already have, thereby resulting in the character still having no icons.

Anyone got any insight here?

So you are trying to strip the icons from your opponent's character, say with printed MIL and INT icons. You are then trying to trigger the response on the Scourge yourself since it does say "any player" by naming POW icon and discarding a card from your hand - which happens to be Darkstar.

Honestly I don't think it can give them an icon lost if they didn't have it in the first place. Going from 0 to -1 is not actually losing anything, because it was never there in the first place. So the part of the response "after they loose an icon" and "gain that icon" means it has to be an icon that was actually lost.

Atleast, that is my take on it.

Sloth is correct.

The question here isn't about the timing of the Response. Rather, it is about meeting the play restrictions of the Response.

Using The Scourge to take away an icon that the character doesn't have would be considered unsuccessful for the purposes of Response effects. It is like when an effect says "Choose and kneel a character." You can choose a character that is already kneeling and kneel it, but as far as "after you kneel a character" Responses go, since nothing changed status from "standing" to "kneeling," you did not kneel that character successfully.

So no. While The Scourge does indeed create the "-1 power icon" effect for a character that doesn't have a power icon, the fact that the effective icon status didn't change (because no matter how many "gains" or "loses" icon effects you have, the only possible results as far as the game is concerned is 0 or 1), the loss is unsuccessful as far as the "after a character loses an icon from The Scourge" play restrictions are concerned.

So if said character without an icon is later given that icon through a card effect, do they gain that icon or are the Scourge's effect and added icon cumulative resulting in no icon? Does this added icon not resulting in an icon count as the loss of an icon? Would a belated loss like this create a valid trigger for the Scourge's response?

mdc273 said:

mdc273 said:

Second, even if the icon status did change from "has it" to "doesn't have it," triggering The Scourge's response at this point wouldn't apply because it was not The Scourge that changed the status here. The response on The Scourge requires the change in icon status from "has it" to "doesn't have it" to be the result of applying the icon modifier from The Scourge.

so if you have 2 int icons and scorge hits 1 away no responce can be triggered because no icon was lost?

johnn0411 said:

That's a great question. I'd say it cannot be triggered because the INT icon is still there resulting in it being unsuccessful in terms of responses. It still, however, performed a -1 INT icon to make it have 1 total INT icon, just like it makes the character "-1 icon" in icons it does not currently have.

This sounds confusing but it's all about the end result of the icon removal effect.
Did the character have an INT icon before the effect and no longer does? It doesn't? Unsuccessful.

Bomb said:

I disagree. As I read ktom's responses and the card, if a card has duplicate INT icons and The Scourge takes one away, the fact that it still has one doesn't change the fact that The Scourge stripped one. Thus, if the card's controller for some reason wanted to discard a card to give it back the 'extra' INT icon, he should be able to trigger the Response.

Amuk said:

Character is kneeling. I play a "choose and kneel a character" effect. Did the character status change from "standing" to "kneeling"? No? Unsuccessful.

Character has a printed INT icon and a +1 INT icon modifier on it. I trigger The Scourge so it also has a -1 INT icon on it. 1 + 1 - 1 = 1 or "has an INT icon". Did the character change status from "has an INT icon" to "has no INT icon"? No? Unsuccessful.