Overpower & Refilling Face-Up

L5R CCG Rules board, 4 March 2013

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.

A player, 4 March 2013

Is there a rules as intended vs. rules as written issue with the card Overpower. Until TA, refill face-up was explicitly indicated on cards which were intended to be refilled face-up. In TA, a casual reading of Overpower suggests that it is intended to be refilled face-up, but a technical reading suggests that it should refill face-down. The comprehensive rules indicate that the card is supposed to tell you any special ways to refill a province. Otherwise, it is to be refilled from the top of your Dynasty deck, face-down.

Since Overpower does not indicate that province is to be refilled face-up, it would seem that it should not be refilled face-up. Nothing on the card explicitly changes that aspect of "refilling," as per the rulebook. On a related note, The Passing of Tradition only indicates that the province is to be refilled face-up as reminder text rather than rules text. They appear to be intended as identical action effects, but are written somewhat differently. Every EE refill face-up card prior to TA appears to indicate that the province is refilled face-up in the rules text, as would be expected. Reminder text does indicate rules as Intended. Does the lack of reminder text also indicate rules as intended?

Instructions to "refill" a province, unless otherwise specified, will refill it with a face-down card from the top of the Dynasty deck (see Provinces).

Limited: Target your discarded (not dead) Personality: Put him into one of your provinces, discarding any card currently there.

Limited: Target your discarded Personality: Put him into your province (face-up) discarding the card currently there.

A player, 4 March 2013

There's no rules issue here. :redflash:

See, Overpower isn't refilling a province as Famous Bazaar would, instead it's taking a card from a specific place and putting it there, so it's a very specific kind of refilling, but it's still refilling. When a card tells you to "refill a Province face-up", it's just telling you to take the upmost card of the Dynasty card, flip it face-up and lay it on the province. This is the same, the province is refilled with a face-up card; except you get to choose which card. Fom a rules viewpoint (see below), these two ways of refilling fall under the same concept.

Refill

The process of putting a Dynasty card into a momentarily empty province. Instructions to "refill" a province, unless otherwise specified, will refill it with a face-down card from the top of the Dynasty deck (see Provinces).

An effect that tells you to refill a province in a special way - for example, face-up and/or with a specific card - will only affect the refilling of a province that is momentarily empty for other reasons. Refill effects by themselves do not discard cards or put them in already filled provinces.