Hi.

Take this example:

Mik kneels 4 influence and plays Blood Magic: Any phase: kneel X influence to choose a character without attachments. Until the end of the phase, that character gets -X STR and is killed if its STR is 0.

Seb plays Injurious Poison: Response: copy the effects of an event card or character ability just triggered (without paying any cost).

My question is: what can Injurious Poison do? Burn a character with 4 STR (because Mik knelt 4 influence) or burn a character with 0 STR (because of the letter X in the event).

About the "letter X", I've found this in the rules:

(3.1) The Letter X
Unless specified by a preceding card, card
effect, or granted player choice, the letter "X"
is always equal to 0. Further, any card without
a cost of the specified type is assumed to have
a cost of 0 for purposes of determining how
that card interacts with triggered effects that
need to count its cost.

and

(3.11) Definition of Variables
[…]
Triggered Effects and Passive Abilities define
or count their variables once (when the effect
is initiated), and the variable is then constant
throughout the duration of the effect.
When an effect checks a variable but there is
no number present or has no quality capable
of being checked (STR, power, cost, etc.) the
variable is counted as 0.

This, tough, is not sufficient for me to decide what happens in this case. Is Blood Magic considered a "preceding effect", so the letter X has a constant value throughout the resolution of Injurious Poison too?

Thanks.

When you copy an effect, you are triggering the copying card, not the copied card. So in your scenario, you're only getting the effect. Well, that effect is "target character gets -X STR and is killed at 0." That's the important thing to see here - you are only copying the effect. And the effect is not "gets -4 STR." It is "gets -X STR," with X being defined by the cost that was paid for that effect.

But since you did not copy the cost, which is where X is defined, the X in your effect is not defined. That means you treat X as 0, making it pretty pointless to copy Blood Magic.

Ok.

Then could you please make an example involving "Unless specified by a preceding card or card effect", as stated by the rules.

In particular, "a preceding card" seems to imply that two separate effects are played. One stating a value for X, and another one using that value. I thought (wrongly), that this was the case. That here there was a "preceding effect/card" (blood magig) stating the value for X, used by a subsequent card (Injurious Poison). But, by your answer, I infere that this is not the case.

Thank you.

It's just telling you that X can be determined by other cards depending on the criteria in the effect.

For example, "X is the highest income of all revealed plot cards" is determined by a pre-existing card.

"X is the number of participating characters"

Basically, the rule is templated to accommodate all possible scenarios where you are determining the value of X. X can be associated with the cost paid, it can be associated by revealed information, or it can somehow be determined by other card effects somehow. If X is dependent on the card effect cost, then unless the copying effect has the same cost, then you will not be copying the effect using the same value for X. If X is determined by revealed information(X is the number of characters in play, X is the claim value on the revealed plot card, X is the amount of gold in your gold pool, etc), then that is depending on other cards or other revealed information.

Bomb has got the right of it.

If a card uses an X, then the instructions or method for defining X are going to be on that card. There has never been, and likely never will be, a card that defines X on some other card or effect. But the option is open and the rules would accommodate it if they ever decided to make one.

That said, if the definition for X is part of the effect, not part of the cost, Injurious Poison would copy if. For example, if Blood Magic said "That character gets -X STR. X is the number of unique characters you control", then the copied effect would also copy the information that defines X - although the frame of reference would change from the Targ player to the Martell player, meaning that the applied value of X will probably change in the copied effect.

Ok, thank you!

And because the forum tells me that this post is too short to be published, I've to add also this sentence to be able to thank you

Hi again. Yesterday we had a similar problem.

There is Robb Stark in play, with Grey Wind (Any phase: kneel Grey Wind to choose and kill 1 character with STR 1 or lower. (STR 2 or lower if attached character is Robb Stark)) attached to it.

If Devious Machinations (Response: after an ability is triggered, kneel 4 influence or kneel a Noble character to copy the effect) is triggered in response to Grey Wind, does the information about Robb Stark is preserved or lost?

Does Devious Machinations kill a STR 1 or STR 2 character? Thank you.

Umm… what card does this?

Slothgodfather said:

Sorry, I don't understand the question. I quoted both cards. Grey Wind (Lords of Winter) and Devious Machinations (Iron Throne) and eventually any of the many Robb Stark..

Slothgodfather said:

He is apparently using a CCG card in combination with LCG ones.

Bomb said:

I'm sorry, we always do! My meta is always and only a "Legacy" format…

Ikaros said:

As stated before, when you copy an effect, you are triggering the copying card. So the effect "choose and kill 1 card with STR 1 or lower (STR 2 if attached character is Robb Stark)" acts as if it were on the event. You resolve the effect as if it were the event's original effect. Since the event is not attached to Robb Stark, you only get to choose and kill a character with STR 1 or lower.

As usual, thank you ktom.

As said somewhere else, I'm sorry, but we are a way too small group of people to exclude CCG cards, or to follow standard tourney rules. I hope asking these "unusual "questions is not a problem, because this game is the best card game we've found

If we stuck upon impossible-to-tell questions (I remember an old question of mine about a very old bad worded card), it's not a problem for us. We would just try to adjust the rules for the older cards…

Ikaros said:

As said somewhere else, I'm sorry, but we are a way too small group of people to exclude CCG cards, or to follow standard tourney rules. I hope asking these "unusual "questions is not a problem, because this game is the best card game we've found