I hate to be 'that guy', but I am confused by the following two rulings regarding searching for and not recruiting a Legacy holding while there is still at least one legacy holding in the deck.
Dynasty, (*): Remove a card in your hand from the game to search your deck and Provinces for a Legacy Holding and Recruit it. If you fail to find one, you lose the game.
First Q&A: You do not lose when you fail to Recruit a Legacy holding; you lose if you fail to find one. (Question asked about situation with < 3 Gold Production available but a Legacy holding still in the deck). Answer appears to permit for finding, but failing to Recruit, a Legacy holding.
The new rule looks to state that you lose the game strictly on the purpose of not finding a legacy holding when using the legacy dynasty ability. Was this meant to be the rule, or is the intent to lose the game if you do not recruite a legacy holding? What if you have no gold or at a minimum not three gold and search find the holding but cant afford to play it. You still have the holding, and found it. You just cant recruit it, but the game lose is not on a fail to recruit or is this a misinterpretation of the letter of the rule.
If the rule wanted you to lose if you do not Recruit the holding, it would say so. You only lose if you fail to find. The card is removed from the game either way.
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Second Q&A: You can only Recruit a 3 gc Legacy Holding. You can also only find (and, by extension, search for) a Legacy holding with gold cost = the gold paid for the action. Accordingly, you cannot safely find, but fail to recruit, a Legacy holding.
recently:
I anounce the Legacy Dynasty action. 2. I pay 2 gold. 3. No targets 4. No interrupts 5. I search my deck for a 2 gold Legacy holding, but only find a 3 gold Legacy holding. Do I lose the game in this scenario?
I ask because of the "and Recruit it." Since the gold I payed refer to this part of the action in combination with the 'and' conjunction implies, that the only holding I can search (and therefore find) is a 2 gold Legacy holding. Since I did not find a 2 gold Legacy holding, I lose the game.
Am I right? Or do I miss something?
In this case "one" in "if you fail to find one" refers to the Legacy holding you've paid the gold to Recruit. If you pay an incorrect amount of gold, you will not be able to find a Legacy holding to Recruit, and therefore you will lose the game.
There's only one Legacy holding currently legal. It costs 3. Always pay 3.
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=113411&p=1465371
My Questions:
1. These answers seem contradictory to me. Which is correct?
2. If Q&A no. 2, why can you not pay < 3 gold for the Legacy action?
The only references to find in the Comprehensive Rules relate specifically to "Search", so there would seem to be nothing inherent in "find" tying it to gold previously paid:
To look through a deck or other area for a card of a specified kind. After a player searches a deck, he or she must reshuffle it after taking any card(s) searched for.
If multiple areas are searched, such as discard pile and deck, the player must declare whether he or she found any searched-for cards in one area before moving to the other, and cannot go back to a previously searched area. Once the desired number of cards are declared to be found, the search procedure stops and the player shuffles any decks that were actually searched.
If the effect directs the player to do something with the searched-for card (for example, Equip or play it) and that effect fails, discard the card.
A player may choose to have a search fail even if he or she is able to find the card searched for.
The Good Faith rule spells out when a player can legally announce actions:
To legally announce an action, a player must be able to:
0.1 pay its costs, 0.2 meet any targeting of the action that is not optional, delayed, or done by another player, including targeting in Ranged and Melee Attacks and Fear effects; ... 0.5 Actions that base their required targeting on a variable Gold cost paid require that the player can, and does, pay the Gold cost that corresponds to a legal target. 0.6 The rulebook Equip and Recruit actions, likewise, require that the player can and does pay the Gold cost that corresponds to a legal card to bring into play. ...
Otherwise, a player may announce and take an action even if it will have no effects.
The Good Faith rule takes into account future changes in the game state that are known to the player. Example: if Bob plans to play an Interrupt that gives the action a target it wouldn’t have when he announced it, this allows him to play the action, but also requires him to play that Interrupt having announced it.
We clearly can pay costs for the Legacy action, since Costs are now defined as bowing, or gold payment, and the Legacy action has only the latter cost. So, we can choose to pay 0 gold, and thus meet condition 0.1 of the good faith rule.
There is no targeting, required or otherwise, with respect to the Search. Targeting must be explicit, as per the Rules:
... The word “target” must appear for the procedure to be considered targeting — just “choosing” something is not targeting. ...
The Recruit action may target the holding searched for (the Legacy action doesn't explicitly state how it modifies the Recruit action, but I'll assume for now that it's just the "face-up... from your Province" aspects of the Recruit action that are amended)...
Repeatable Dynasty, Gold star 20: Bring into play a target face-up Personality or Holding from your Province with Gold Cost equal to the amount you paid, paying 2 more Gold if the Personality has a Clan Alignment but does not have your Clan Alignment. ... Sometimes, as with Equip, “Recruit” is used as an effect in card text. This means that the effects of the Recruit action are activated, and the card’s Gold Cost is checked against the amount paid for the original action. If the original action did not give the opportunity to pay Gold, then before the card enters play, its Gold Cost must be paid or the entering play fails. The original action may modify any of the rules of the Recruit procedure; for example, it may ask you to Recruit a card “from the discard pile.”
Furthermore, any time an effect brings a Personality or Holding into play from an out-of-play area, it is considered Recruiting and follows the Recruit procedure with any stated modifications. This does not apply to created cards because they are brought into existence from nothingness.
So, it seems we have a targeting paradox: a cost (variable gold) depends on a targeting choice before it is actually made.
If a cost or effect depends on a specific targeting choice before it is actually made, the cost or effect instead constrains the targeting choice, so that it must target the thing mentioned if the effect is invoked, and cannot target the thing if the cost is not paid. Traits on cards in play that create extra costs for targeting something also create the opportunity to pay those costs.
Example 1: “Actions on your Spells have Home if you target your Samurai with them.” (Rae Sensei, Ivory Edition.) This trait creates a paradox because the determination of action legality involving Home takes place well before targeting in the action sequence. In practice, it means that 1. by the Good Faith Rule, you can only take an action during battle from your spell at home (unless it has Home by other means) if it can target your Samurai; 2. if you take advantage of the Home-granting trait, you must choose your Samurai to target with the Spell.
Example 2: “Other players’ actions targeting The Abbot cost 2 more Gold.” (The Abbot, Exp. 3, TNO) This trait creates a paradox because costs are paid before targeting. In practice, when the Abbot is in play, all actions that can target him may be taken with an additional Gold Cost of 2; if this is not paid they may not target The Abbot, and if the cost is paid the action must target him.
Again, I note that searching does not, at any point, require targeting (either inherent to a Search, or as a result of the Legacy action). While the subsequent Recruitment of the holding is constrained to Legacy holdings equal to the gold paid, and thus the Recruit effect will fail if we have previously paid 0 gc, nothing requires you to search for/find a 0 gc Legacy holding (as Targeting Paradoxes specifically constrains targeting, and the search effect of the Legacy action does not target). Is this correct?
(Where this train of thought started was around player knowledge. At the time an action is announced, we do not know the contents of our deck.
... Players are not normally entitled to know, without in-game effects, the following things: ... The order or identity of face-down cards in decks or Provinces, even their own. ...
As a matter of practicality, we can 'know' that there are no 0 (or 2, or 4) gold cost Legacy holdings in our deck; we know this because there are none in the game right now. We can also 'know' that there are no more non-Unique Strategies with Battle Actions left in our deck, because we have counted the cards in hand, play, and discard pile. We can even 'know' that there are no more 3 gc Legacy holdings left in our deck, because we have played three already.
That practical knowledge is not, however, imputed to a player searching face-down cards: this is why we can legally announce a Legacy action that fails.
If a player is required to 'know' that he/she can perform later required targeting in the Recruit action before he/she announces the Legacy action and performs a search, how could a player lose the game via the Legacy action when it wouldn't be legal to announce a Legacy action when there were no 3 gc Legacy holdings left in the deck?)