Ruling XY67 Jirachi interaction with recycle energy

[Kent Freeze]

Jirachi's "stardust" attack reads:

Discard a Special Energy attached to your opponent's Active Pokémon. If you do, prevent all effects of attacks, including damage, done to this Pokémon during your opponent's next turn.

Recycle Energy:

If this card is discarded from play, put it into your hand instead of the discard pile

This came up in a marshadow toolbox deck I ran online -- used the jirachi attack to discard the recycle energy. I *think* that Marshadow should still be vulnerable to attacks because I did not successfully discard the recycle energy? But I'm not sure.

For what it's worth, at least in PTCGO it made my Marshadow-GX protected from attacks in the next turn, which is not what I was expecting.

 

[Kent Freeze]

FYI, I just found this in the compendium:

Q. Is the old print of Recycle Energy from Neo:Genesis legal for tournament play since it has slightly different wording that the latest version from SM:Unified Minds?
A. No, the wording is different in that the old version works after Recycle Energy has reached the discard pile, but the new version works even before Recycle Energy reaches the discard pile. You must use the newer version of the card in tournament play. (Aug 1, 2019 TPCi Rules Team)

In my mind, this seems to confirm that using jirachi's "stardust" attack should not activate the effect of the attack when selecting recycle energy (but if we used neo:genesis version it would).

 

[Otaku]

@Kent Freeze You're over complicating things.

Discard a Special Energy attached to your opponent's Active Pokémon. If you do, prevent all effects of attacks, including damage, done to this Pokémon during your opponent's next turn.

If this card is discarded from play, put it into your hand instead of the discard pile

All Stardust cares about is whether or not it discarded a Special Energy from your opponent's active; the text says nothing about where that Energy ends up. Recycle Energy's effect only activates if it was discarded from a Pokémon in play, so Recycle Energy can't be triggered unless something successfully discarded it from the Pokémon to which it is attached.

So yes, Stardust would be satisfied discarding a Recycle Energy, even though Recycle Energy technically never hits the discard pile itself; it was still discarded! Similarly, Stardust will work if used against Beast Energy {*}, even though Prism Star cards go to the Lost Zone when discarded, instead of the discard pile.

 

[Kent Freeze]

Thanks -- that makes sense to me.