Rain of Death and Tangen Sensei (L5R rules board)

A topic from AEG's L5R CCG Rules forum, copied for Oracle of the Void from the Wayback Machine (its copy), so posts 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, 4 March 2005

Thanks for answering these, Zen.

I really am sorry to ask again but I had to rule on this one recently and I still don't understand why cards in the Lion's army are not legal targets for redirection of the ranged attack.

My point was that I think that all units in a battle are technically legal targets for the action "Produce two consecutive Ranged 3 attacks", including cards in the army of the player performing them. Rain of Death is making the Ranged Attack but can never be opposed and therefore is not bound by the DE rulebook restriction of having to target a card opposing the card making the ranged attack (following on from the ruling that Tacticians outside the battle can perform the action).

No player is likely to choose to target his own cards with the action but if his cards were technically legal targets of the original action, one of the ranged attacks could be redirected to them by Tangen Sensei.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning?

Thanks again.

Zen Faulkes (rules official), 4 March 2005

I still don't understand why cards in the Lion's army are not legal targets for redirection of the ranged attack.

Because you can only aim Ranged Attacks at the enemy army. We had Arrows from the Woods for about nine years and nobody ever questioned that before. Expect a new ruling in the Archive soon, something like "Action cards generating Ranged Attacks can only target cards in the enemy army."

This loophole is now plugged.

On: Rain of Death, Tangen Sensei