Say I'm in a duel with someone and they focus a card. Since I can look at the cards that I focus off the top of my deck, if I see that the card I focus is Smoke and Mirrors, can I flip it face up to get the effect off of it?
Thanks!
Top Deck focusing and Smoke and Mirrors
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.
Say I'm in a duel with someone and they focus a card. Since I can look at the cards that I focus off the top of my deck, if I see that the card I focus is Smoke and Mirrors, can I flip it face up to get the effect off of it?
Thanks!
The Comprehensive Rules needs a slight tweak here, as it currently says "the player ... takes the top card of his or her Fate deck without looking at it, and puts it face–down in a special focused cards area."
The "without looking at it" is misplaced: you may not look at the card before you decide whether or not to strike or focus from hand, deck or elsewhere. Once you have made that decision - and have decided to focus from the top of your deck - you take the top card of your fate deck, and may look at it. If, like Smoke and Mirrors, it has a trait that allows you to focus it face-up, you may do so.