I know you can not cancel an agenda responce but you can cancel an immune cards responce with a card that it is immune to. could someone explain why you can do one but not the other?

Edit: Ah, sec, I forgot about Maester's Path and thought you were mistakenly assuming the Alliance agenda is a response (it's not, it grants the house card that response - which can then be cancelled). Will answer in a bit when I get back!

Edit2: Or Ktom will beat me to it. See below.

No great mystery, really. It's because the rules say so:

" (4.11) Agenda Cards
Agenda cards are not considered to be in play.
Further, the effects of an Agenda card cannot
be canceled. "

" (3.19) Scope of Immunity
Immunity only protects a card itself. Peripheral
entities attached to or associated with a
card, such as attachments, duplicates, power
counters, gold tokens on the immune card,
and also including triggered effects originating
from the immune card , can still be affected by
cards of the type to which that card is immune ,
as long as the affecting cards do not target the
immune card."

-Istaril said:

At first I didn't understand the question when I originally read it.

I am only posting because the post itself is not being flagged as read because of Istaril's post edit and that is driving me crazy.

i guess my issue is if the agenda is not in play no one controles it right? so how can a player use a responce on a card they dont controle? its not that i dont get that the rules says so i just want to understand why the rules say so

johnn0411 said:

I think you are over thinking this.

You can trigger event cards right? Shadow cards that can come out using their triggered ability? These are all out of play until you choose to trigger their effects or bring them into play. There is nothing in the rules that says you can't trigger effects from cards that are out of play as long as they meet the play restrictions of triggering their effects.

Whether you are considered to "control" your agenda card does not matter. You own it and can trigger it's effect when the timing allows you to.

Bomb said:

Even more generally, you are considered to control all cards you own (in play or otherwise) unless some card effect says differently.

Only cards in play are actionable, unless otherwise specified. So while you normally cannot use, target, or affect cards in your hand, deck, discard pile, dead pile, etc., when something specifically says you can, you can.

If you are going to say "how can someone use a Response an agenda when an agenda is not in play?", you really should take that a step further. How can any agenda text affect the game at all since the card isn't in play? I mean, how different is it really to be triggering the Response on Maester's Path when the agenda is not in play as to be drawing a card or claiming a power when you win an INT challenge against a player using Power Behind the Throne? If you are not balking at the passive effects on things like PBtT or White Book, there really is no more reason to balk at triggering the Response on Siege or TMP.

The "cannot cancel" rule applies to those passives as well, after all. For example, if the opponent who wins an INT challenge against the PBtT player chooses to draw a card, that technically meets the restrictions for Wildling Wisewoman ("cancel 1 card effect that would allow an opponent to draw 1 or more cards"). Without the "no canceling agendas" rule, she could cancel that.

Anyway, the long and short of this is that the very nature of Agendas specifies that they are actionable despite not being in play.