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, 27 April 2014
Went to a card shop with my friends yesterday and we picked up some of the Ivory Edition Starter Deck Tins. So far this game, from what I actually do understand, seems extremely flavorful and entertaining. My problem with this game, however, is not the game itself, but the lack of clarity in both the Beginner and Advanced Rule Books (as well as a lack of orientation in some of the card text, but I'm sure that won't be a problem once I learn how things in this game work).
Anyway, I'm having a difficult time understanding how the keyword Reserve works, how Absent Battles work, examples of cards or situations where other dynasty cards are on your Provinces, miscellaneous battle mechanics, and ability resolution.
My understanding of how Reserve works is that when you go into combat and are opposed by the defending leader, you may recruit a face-up Personality from your provinces and use them as an Absent Battle Action, ignoring the Rule of Presence (not having to be in the battlefield to activate abilities with the Engage, Battle, Reaction, or Interrupt designators), but not ignoring the Rule of Location. The way The Rule of Location is defined on the wiki page makes it seem exactly the same as the Rule of Presence. What is the difference between the Rule of Presence and both parts of the Rule of Location, and how are Absent Battle actions applicable to this? Also, can a recruited personality only move to the battlefield if it's moving to a cavalry unit?
The other thing I've heard is that Provinces can have cards on top of them, but neither rule book explain how or when this happens.
Some miscellaneous battle mechanics that I am wondering about are when an attacking unit in an army is sent back home (does it bow or stay straightened, including but not limited cards like Fall Back! or abilities like Fear); if you move a unit/ personality from home to the battlefield after you declare your attacking units for your army, will that unit contribute its force during the battle resolution; and if a personality is bowed in the battlefield, does it return home or remain in the battlefield, and if so, does it apply damage.
Also, am I correct in saying that, when an ability activates, that it first resolves before the player who is passed priority can activate an ability? What about bowing a holding for gold? Does that action pass priority to the other player to respond; if so, can you bow multiple holdings at once as a single action before priority is passed to your opponent to respond (relevant to know for cards like Coastal Pearl Bed when you bow a holding for gold)?
Although there is a lot more I don't know about, these are the most pressing questions I have. My friends and I spent hours online last night trying to find out how these things worked because neither rule book explained any of it, and the game is so cultish that resources are difficult to find to help answer our questions, especially with how many changes L5R has had recently. Thanks.
A player, 28 April 2014
Hi, and welcome to the game, in the name of the entire L5R CCG Rules Team! Also, welcome to the Rules Forum, where the Official Rules Team answers any and all questions. We're the only ones allowed to reply here (besides Forum Mods, obviously ), so if you have any follow-ups, you'll have to post them separately and link back to this post. And on with the answers..
My understanding of how Reserve works is that when you go into combat and are opposed by the defending leader, you may recruit a face-up Personality from your provinces and use them as an Absent Battle Action, ignoring the Rule of Presence (not having to be in the battlefield to activate abilities with the Engage, Battle, Reaction, or Interrupt designators), but not ignoring the Rule of Location.
Actually, you're ignoring (implicitly) the Rule of Location, since Recruiting a Personality in play would make no sense. But that's just a minor quibble
The way The Rule of Location is defined on the wiki page makes it seem exactly the same as the Rule of Presence. What is the difference between the Rule of Presence and both parts of the Rule of Location, and how are Absent Battle actions applicable to this?
Please note the wiki page (I mean, the old rules page in wiki format) is no longer updated, the Ivory Rules are in the Comprehensive Rules documents.
The difference is, that the Rule of Presence is more general and refers only to you. You need to have at least one unit in the current battlefield to take an action, of all kinds, regardless of effects. The opponent isn't concerned by your Presence. On the other hand, the Rule of Location cares of who takes the action and whom it affects. It the action comes from a Personality, Follower, Item or Spell, it has to be at the battlefield. It the action targets one of those, the target has also to be there.
Let me illustrate it with a few examples: Scenario A: You have a Daigotsu Konishi at the current battlefield and target an opposing Hida Saiyuki. This fulfils Presence (you have a Konishi there) and Location (the action comes from a Konishi there and targets a Saiyuki there)
Scenario B: Konishi has stayed at home now. You don't have Presence, and therefore can't also fulfil Location. Saiyuki is safe.
Scenario C: You left a Konishi at home while send to defend a Daigotsu Roburo. You have Presence thanks to Roburo. You can use Roburo's Fear battle action and target Saiyuki. However, you can't use Konishi because he's not there. You fulfil Presence thanks to Roburo but not Location (because Konishi stayed at home)
Scenario D: You defend elsewhere with Roburo (no enemy army) and want to bow one of the opponent's Personalities with Roburo's Fear. However, since you aren't opposing them, you can't bow a possible future defender at home, or one of the Personalities attacking one of your other provinces. You'd fulfil Presence and the first part of Location (action coming from a Personality there) but not the second part (you aren't targeting a Personality there)
Scenario E: You have a Lao-She at home and want to move him to the current battlefield. Since his ability has Home, you need not fulfil Location (first part; the second part doesn't apply because his action has no targets). However, you still need Presence. If you had another unit at the current battlefield giving you Presence, you could move Lao-She to join him there. Otherwise, Lao-She would have to stay at home.
Also, can a recruited personality only move to the battlefield if it's moving to a cavalry unit?
I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean here. Reserve and Cavalry are completely unrelated abilities. You may use Reserve any time you're opposed and have a Reserve Personality face-up in any of your provinces. Cavalry or not, it is irrelevant. Please note that Recruiting a Reserve Personality into the current battlefield counts as attacking / defending but is NOT moving. (So cards that affect movement, ie Ring of Earth or Blanketed Forest, don't stop Reserve)
The other thing I've heard is that Provinces can have cards on top of them, but neither rule book explain how or when this happens.
It's as simple as you taking the topmost card of your Dynasty deck and placing it face-down in front of you, representing a province. You're perhaps reading too much into it
A province is just an arbitrary area you define, and you do so using the Dynasty cards. You usually have four Provinces, so you begin the game with four face-down Dynasty cards in front of you. During the game you will reveal this cards and buy them (or discard them, if you don't like them). When your opponent destroys one of your four provinces, the card representing the province is discarded, and you can't use that arbitrary space anymore (so now you'll have three Dynasty cards in front of you, later two, and so on). This effectively means that your capability of using the Dynasty deck, revealing Events, or purchasing Personalities, will decrease as your opponent destroys your provinces.
Additionally, there's a special kind of holdings called Fortifications. When you purchased them, instead of joining to your group of holdings at home, they will "attach" to that province and remain there, giving you perhaps some extra abilities that you can use when defending the province. Should that particular province be destroyed, all the Fortifications attached to it are also destroyed.
Some miscellaneous battle mechanics that I am wondering about are when an attacking unit in an army is sent back home (does it bow or stay straightened, including but not limited cards like Fall Back! or abilities like Fear);
The card itself will tell you. If it says "bow the unit as it moves" or something like that (eg Block Supply Lines), the unit is bowed. If it doesn't say anything about bowing the unit that moves, then it does not bow.
if you move a unit/ personality from home to the battlefield after you declare your attacking units for your army, will that unit contribute its force during the battle resolution;
Not sure I understand what you mean here. Please note that assigning units to attack or defend is also NOT moving them.
Whether a unit contributes force to the battle resolution or not, it depends only on the location of the cards (only cards at the current battlefield add force) and the unbowed state (bowed cards do not contribute force either). In rare cases, an effect can modify this, but this is the norm.
If you move a unit to the current battlefield, and it stays unbowed, it will add force during the resolution. It is irrelevant how or when did it join the army there.
and if a personality is bowed in the battlefield, does it return home or remain in the battlefield,
Your units will return home at some point. Being bowed doesn't affect this, however. Only a card effect or the effects of resolution will make your units return home, but bowing has other meaning (essentially, you can't use the abilities on the bowed card, and bowed Personalities and Followers won't add force to your army)
If you're attacking, they will return home after the battle resolves. If you're defending, they will return home when the Attack Phase ends. If the Attack Phase ends and there are still (somehow) units at a battlefield, all unit return home at any case.
and if so, does it apply damage.
L5R has no concept of "damage". However, bowed Personalities and Followers will not add force to your army. So when the time comes of counting each army's force, your bowed Personalities can be an issue. Note that, if you lose the battle (ie, if your opponent's army has more total force than yours), you'll lose all your units there, so a bowed unit is running the risk of being overrun by the enemy without helping you much to win the battle.
Also, am I correct in saying that, when an ability activates, that it first resolves before the player who is passed priority can activate an ability?
With the exception of Interrupts, you are more or less correct. Other players can't use their Open, Limited, Battle or Engage actions while you're using yours. Once your action resolves, then the turn of playing a relevant action goes back to them, and so on. Please note that Interrupts are special.
What about bowing a holding for gold? Does that action pass priority to the other player to respond; if so, can you bow multiple holdings at once as a single action before priority is passed to your opponent to respond (relevant to know for cards like Coastal Pearl Bed when you bow a holding for gold)?
Please note that bowing holdings for gold is not an action. Also note that Coastal Pearl Bed doesn't affect gold production for that very same reason. Yes, you can bow as many holdings as you want. Opponents can't interfere with this process.
Although there is a lot more I don't know about, these are the most pressing questions I have. My friends and I spent hours online last night trying to find out how these things worked because neither rule book explained any of it, and the game is so cultish that resources are difficult to find to help answer our questions, especially with how many changes L5R has had recently. Thanks.
I'm afraid that you may be borrowing a couple of wrong assumptions from other collectible card games, but I hope my answer does clarify you some things.
A player, 28 April 2014
NOTE: I had posted this post as a thread as "RE: New Player Trying to Figure Out Some Mechanics," but it somehow ended up in the original thread. Not sure how that happened, or if a moderator moved it here.
This is a follow up to the other thread I had posted yesterday. I will be highlighting the moderator responses in bold text to act as a quote (because I cannot quote posts in a section I do not have permission to respond to). Thanks for addressing my questions in the other thread, Bayushi Mamoru. Link to the thread: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=108006
Recruiting a Personality in play would make no sense. I had meant recruiting a face-up personality as being face-up as a Province, since provinces can be face-down. Didn't mean to make it seem as though they were already in play.
The difference is, that the Rule of Presence is more general and refers only to you. You need to have at least one unit in the current battlefield to take an action, of all kinds, regardless of effects. The opponent isn't concerned by your Presence. On the other hand, the Rule of Location cares of who takes the action and whom it affects. It the action comes from a Personality, Follower, Item or Spell, it has to be at the battlefield. It the action targets one of those, the target has also to be there. So, Rule of Presence is only concerned with you being able to take actions as long as your fulfill the requirements outlined by the Rule of Location -- being able to only do actions in battle if you have presence in the battlefield or being able to use a home ability if you control a personality with the Home keyword at home -- or just exclusively related to being able to do actions in the battle if you have presence within that battlefield? I'm going to assume the former since it does't SEEM as though the Rule of Presence isn't only concerned with the battlefield, but I'm sure someone will tell me for sure.
With the examples of Rule of Presence and Rule of Location provided in the other thread, does that mean that Absent Battle actions ignore the Rule of Location but not the Rule of Presence? For instance, I have Daigotsu Konishi in the battlefield and a personality with reserve and Fear(we'll refer to him as Personality X) in a province. I choose to recruit Personality X because Daigotsu Konishi is being opposed. In this situation, because Personality X is at home, what other influence does it have? It's not in the battlefield, so its force won't be applied at resolution, but is it also then not able to Fear a target personality or follower as well because of the Rule of Location? I think that's how you explained it, but just wanting to make sure. If that's the case, then is the only benefit of Reserve being able to move those personalities into play, or is there more to it than that? I do understand the benefit of being able to recruit at this point instead of during the Dynasty Phase, but it doesn't seem AS advantageous because your opponent knows that you're able to recruit a personality and then move it to the battlefield, so that's why I am wondering if I'm getting all of what was explained because it's both a great mechanic, but also seemingly useless at times since it's very telegraphed.
I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean here. Reserve and Cavalry are completely unrelated abilities. You may use Reserve any time you're opposed and have a Reserve Personality face-up in any of your provinces. Cavalry or not, it is irrelevant. It confused me, as well. The other day when I thought that I had started to actually understand how it worked, I referenced myself back to the Advanced Rulebook and got caught up in a few things that seemed indirectly related to each other.
Here's one of the things that got me caught up: Cavalry: The Cavalry keyword is relevant to the following ability which all players have: Absent Engage: Target your unbowed personality in a Cavalry unit at any location. Move him to the battlefield...." I think I understand it now with how everything was explained to me. There were other things that got me confused, but now I think the confusion with Cavalry, and for the most part, Reserve, has been cleared up, save for the questions addressed in this post regarding Reserve.
...Additionally, there's a special kind of holdings called Fortifications.... I think those might have been what the guy at the comic book/ card shop I went to was talking about, and what a few other places online were talking about when they had mentioned other Dynasty cards being on top of the preexisting Dynasty cards in your provinces. I don't recall reading about Fortifications in the Basic Rule Book, and didn't know that I should have looked for Fortifications in the Advanced Rule Book since I didn't have a concept of what they were. Thanks for that.
Please note that bowing holdings for gold is not an action. Also note that Coastal Pearl Bed doesn't affect gold production for that very same reason. Yes, you can bow as many holdings as you want. Opponents can't interfere with this process. So, because bowing holdings is not an action, cards like Coastal Pearl Bed cannot respond to it. Great. So, for Coastal Pearl bed specifically, its use is majorly to be used whilst transitioning phases so that your opponent doesn't have access to that gold in other phases because of taxing, correct?
I'm afraid that you may be borrowing a couple of wrong assumptions from other collectible card games, but I hope my answer does clarify you some things. I actually hadn't known about this game until the guy at the store had shown us it because we had asked about it. From what he told us, this game sort of has a low following (very few places that actually play it, and a regional event with 40 people, compared to state regional events in other games that have higher turnouts), and it seemed that way with how difficult it was to find answers online relevant to what I was having a troubling time understanding. Not that it dissuades me from wanting to play because this game seems well-constructed, interesting in flavor and play, and how the lore of clans are influenced by the players (from what he told me), but it was an observation.
Thanks in advance to whoever answers these questions. I really appreciate the help your giving my friends and I.
A player, 28 April 2014
I had meant recruiting a face-up personality as being face-up as a Province, since provinces can be face-down. Didn't mean to make it seem as though they were already in play.
Yes, but what I mean is - the Rule of Location can be waived if the card or the action you're taking is either Home or has some kind of waiving clause. In the case of Recruit or Reserve, it specifies that the Personality being Recruited is in a Province, which allows you to fulfill (or mostly ignore) Location.
So, Rule of Presence is only concerned with you being able to take actions as long as your fulfill the requirements outlined by the Rule of Location -- being able to only do actions in battle if you have presence in the battlefield or being able to use a home ability if you control a personality with the Home keyword at home -- or just exclusively related to being able to do actions in the battle if you have presence within that battlefield? I'm going to assume the former since it does't SEEM as though the Rule of Presence isn't only concerned with the battlefield, but I'm sure someone will tell me for sure.
It's the latter. If you have at least one unit, of any kind and nature, in the current battlefield, you have Presence. (Alternatively, if the action is Absent, you ignore this rule for that action.)
With the examples of Rule of Presence and Rule of Location provided in the other thread, does that mean that Absent Battle actions ignore the Rule of Location but not the Rule of Presence?
It's actually the other way round. Absent Battle actions ignore PRESENCE but still would have to fulfill Location (see, for example, Breaking the Rhythm. You can play the card even if you don't have Presence, but you must still target a Personality at the current battlefield.
For instance, I have Daigotsu Konishi in the battlefield and a personality with reserve and Fear(we'll refer to him as Personality X) in a province. I choose to recruit Personality X because Daigotsu Konishi is being opposed. In this situation, because Personality X is at home, what other influence does it have?
Ah, but if you Recruit with Reserve during a battle, the Personality enters play *at the current battlefield*, not at home. This way you have two Personalities in the battle instead of one, that's the point of Reserve.
*Whenever you Recruit a Personality during a battle, it enters play at the current battlefield by default*
It's not in the battlefield, so its force won't be applied at resolution, but is it also then not able to Fear a target personality or follower as well because of the Rule of Location? I think that's how you explained it, but just wanting to make sure. If that's the case, then is the only benefit of Reserve being able to move those personalities into play, or is there more to it than that?
See above
I do understand the benefit of being able to recruit at this point instead of during the Dynasty Phase, but it doesn't seem AS advantageous because your opponent knows that you're able to recruit a personality and then move it to the battlefield, so that's why I am wondering if I'm getting all of what was explained because it's both a great mechanic, but also seemingly useless at times since it's very telegraphed.
*ahem*haste*ahem* I'm afraid I can't enter into the nuances of strategy and mechanics here, but I guess that my paragraph above will soothe your concerns and clarify a couple of things.
Here's one of the things that got me caught up: Cavalry: The Cavalry keyword is relevant to the following ability which all players have: Absent Engage: Target your unbowed personality in a Cavalry unit at any location. Move him to the battlefield...." I think I understand it now with how everything was explained to me. There were other things that got me confused, but now I think the confusion with Cavalry, and for the most part, Reserve, has been cleared up, save for the questions addressed in this post regarding Reserve.
Hopefully I solved them. If you need more hep with Reserve, please post a follow-up
So, because bowing holdings is not an action, cards like Coastal Pearl Bed cannot respond to it. Great. So, for Coastal Pearl bed specifically, its use is majorly to be used whilst transitioning phases so that your opponent doesn't have access to that gold in other phases because of taxing, correct?
No, you miss the point here. Coastal Pearl Bed won't help at all with hindering gold production, that's not the point. Let me illustrate it with another example: Bamboo Harvesters XP Aside of producing 2 gold, Bamboo Harvesters XP has a (very powerful) Limited ability that helps you draw cards. That's the kind of ability you want to stop with Coastal Pearl Bed, since you'll be denying card draw to your opponent. Other examples would be Poorly Placed Gardens or Brilliant Cascade Inn, with interesting abilities that are worth blocking. Just not the gold production.
Thanks in advance to whoever answers these questions. I really appreciate the help your giving my friends and I.
You're welcome, my pleasure to help you with these.