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, 5 April 2014
Since I am very new to l5r. I was reading the instructions in the ivory edition and a few questions came to mind. Exactly how does cavalry work. Like if I have a unit attacking I can just bring another unit from home in? Do reserves work the same way as cavalry only they're infantry? And when attacking a province because the rules did little to explain this. Exactly how do you win. Does your total force have to be greater than the opponents force of both his troops and province combined? Or seperatly.
Everything else seemed pretty straight forward. It's just I can't seem to grasp these few things.
Jon Palmer (rules official), 30 April 2014
Since I am very new to l5r. I was reading the instructions in the ivory edition and a few questions came to mind. Exactly how does cavalry work. Like if I have a unit attacking I can just bring another unit from home in? Do reserves work the same way as cavalry only they're infantry? And when attacking a province because the rules did little to explain this. Exactly how do you win. Does your total force have to be greater than the opponents force of both his troops and province combined? Or seperatly.
Everything else seemed pretty straight forward. It's just I can't seem to grasp these few things.
Cavalry is an action taken during the Engage segment. You can bring a Cavalry unit into the current battle from home or from another battle, and since the ability has the Absent keyword, you don't need to have a unit there to do it.
Reserve is a separate ability; it allows you to bring cards into play in battle if they'd be opposed, either from your province or from your hand.
When you attack a province, if you exceed the force of your opponent's army, you win and destroy his army. If you exceed the force of his army plus the strength of his province, you win and destroy the province along with his army.