Subject: A question about the legality of Experienced Personalities
Sorry, but there were no replies to this and no other way to bump it than to just repost it. I'm having the same question.
Randy...
Hello. I have been playing the L5R CCG, off and on, for about 8 years now. I truly love the game and am very happy with a lot of the things I am seeing in Ivory edition (I am especially happy about the return of the Kabuki Theater, being an honor-running player ). Recently, I have begun convincing a lot of my friends to start playing the game as well and, with these new sets of eyes pouring over the rule books, a few questions have arisen from what I previously remember or have been taught and what the newer players are reading and interpreting from the rule book. Therefore, I come to you knowledgeable folks for clarification!
The one rule that we are having a really hard time finding any concrete evidence one way or the other on is the legality of previous version of Experienced Personalities. I have done a search here, on the wiki, and on the web in general, but nothing has quelled this debate.
When I was first taught the game, I was told that Personalities follow the "previous printing" rule, just like all other cards. This rule, as printed in the Ivory Edition Advanced Rulebook, is as follows: All cards in the play deck (including the Stronghold and Sensei) must be Ivory Edition legal, having the Ivory Edition symbol in the lower left hand corner of their most recent printing (MRP). Older printings of the cards may be used ... but in all L5R formats, cards are considered to have the stats and text of their MRP. If you use older cards, you're responsible for knowing these differences and communicating them to your opponent. From my understanding, the way that you determine whether or not a previously printed card is the same as the currently printed card is to check the card title, which the Ivory Rulebook denotes as follows: Card Title: At the top of every card is its title bar. All L5R cards have a title in this bar, except for created cards.
Subtitles in smaller font inside the title bar, and the comma that separates them from the card title, are not part of the card title (For example, Hiruma Nikaru, The Flesh Eater is titled “Hiruma Nikaru” for play purposes.) In the example, they state directly that the card title for the Personality, Hiruma Nikaru, is "Hiruma Nikaru". Therefore, by combining those two rules, one could use any card with the title "Hiruma Nikaru" as an Ivory legal card.
Combining this with Experienced Personalities has the added benefit that you could play with a Personality who had a previous Experience version. This also makes sense when we take into account that the only two benefits, really, of playing with Experienced Personalities is that you can a) have more than 3 of that Card Title in your deck as long as you obeyed the other rules of Uniqueness and did not have more than the allotted number per level of Experience (ie you could have 3 non-Experienced version as well as 1 Experience (1) version, meaning 4 total cards with the same title in the deck) and b) that you can use the overlay mechanic to replace a Personality with a lower Experience level with one that had a higher Experience level without needing to pay the Gold cost or meet the Honor Requirement.
What a friend of mine is arguing is that, due to the current rulebook and the way that he reads it, only those Experience versions that have actually been printed in the current edition of the game are legal - all their previous Experience levels are not. To me, this doesn't make sense as, for one, that is not how I was taught and secondly, this would remove both of the benefits of having the Experienced Personality at all. At that point, it might as well be an entirely different card because there will never be a lower Experience level released in the new set for the overlay mechanic and you cannot have multiple cards with the same name (but different Experience levels) if all the other versions are now illegal.
The example I personally have is Shiba Tsukimi. I play a Phoenix deck and have been using Tsukimi since she was released in Lotus. In Ivory, Tsukimi has gotten her Experience 5 version. By my understanding, this would mean that I could put in all of her previous Experience levels into my Ivory deck (following the "previous printing" rules from above). This would mean that I could, legally, have 3 non-Experienced (Lotus), 1 Experienced (Diamond), 1 Experienced 2 (Samurai), 1 Experience 3 (Celestial), 1 Experience 3.5 (Emperor), 1 Experience 4 (Emperor), and 3 Experience 5 (Ivory - 3 because the card specifically states that it is not Unique). I could, then, in effect run a dynasty deck with 11 Shiba Tsukimi-titled cards contained within it. If they came up in order, I could overlay each Experience level on top of the one previous all the way from the first non-Experienced version all the way up to the new Experience 5. This has always been the way that I was taught and understood what Experienced meant.
Per what my friend is reading, this would not be the case. I would only be allowed the 3 Experience 5 versions of Tsukimi that have been released specifically in Ivory. The only versions of her that would have ever been allowed to employ the overlay function would have been her Experience 3.5 and Experience 4, since those are the only two which were released in the same edition. I would not benefit from either of the Experience benefits as outlined above.
Obviously, I hope that you will tell me that my understanding of the rules is correct - I will be pretty sad if I have to only use one version of my favorite Personality that has ever been printed! - but in the end we are looking towards having a tournament at our local store and we really just need to know the answer to this question. If you say that I am wrong and he is right, I will eat my humble pie and tell him so and we will play with those rules from hear on. I really hope that you don't, though.