I have a question that arose from a game I played earlier where my opponent's last card was Words have Strength and I had won the battle as the attacker. My honor was at -19 before resolution and I had a dishonored maiden along with another maiden. I was wondering after resolution does the attacker choose which resolution goes first? What I mean is can you choose to gain honor from Plains of the maiden for killing the enemy army or even destroying the province before doing the rehonoring process? Also, when does the reaction for Words have Strength go off? I'm going to guess it would be after the attacker's first resolution. This is all important to know because it could mean the difference between losing the game or staying alive possibly for another turn by preventing your honor from dropping to -20.
Words have Strength and Plains of the Maiden Resolution
A topic from AEG's L5R CCG Rules forum, copied for Oracle of the Void from a copy of the forum saved in October 2015, so pages it didn't save are missing. Players' names are left out; the rules officials are named. Rulings are as they stood on these dates; later rulings, the rulebooks and the Rules Archive may differ.
I have a question that arose from a game I played earlier where my opponent's last card was Words have Strength and I had won the battle as the attacker. My honor was at -19 before resolution and I had a dishonored maiden along with another maiden. I was wondering after resolution does the attacker choose which resolution goes first? What I mean is can you choose to gain honor from Plains of the maiden for killing the enemy army or even destroying the province before doing the rehonoring process? Also, when does the reaction for Words have Strength go off? I'm going to guess it would be after the attacker's first resolution. This is all important to know because it could mean the difference between losing the game or staying alive possibly for another turn by preventing your honor from dropping to -20.
Well, first of all rehonoring is never an issue when it comes to Plains of the Maiden. If you check the rules for rehonoring here, you'll see that the box doesn't trigger rehonoring. You will gain the two honor.
Now, when it comes to resolution, you're going to want to look at the steps of battle resolution here. You destroy the province at 2ii, which triggers Plains of the Maiden (gain 2, putting you at -17). At 2iii, you rehonor your dishonorable Battle Maiden instead of gaining honor for destroying however many cards at resolution (minimum 1, to trigger Words Have Strength). At this point, the battle finishes resolving, which is the trigger for Words Have Strength. Your opponent may now play it, dropping you to -20.
Edit: It's been pointed out to me that I should've given a bit more clarity in regards to one of the hypotheticals you posed. Because Plains of the Maiden triggers off both army and province destruction, if you destroy both the army and a province, you would gain the two points of honor twice, putting you to -15, and resulting in Words Have Strength only dropping you to -18.