Say I play an Unexpected Betrayal on a guy in my opponent's army. My opponent then removes all of my units from the battle. Does his unit still add force to my army if I have no one at the battle?
Unexpected Betrayal
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. Compare the total Force of each army. Whichever army has the most Force wins (see Force total). A side with no units has zero force for purposes of this comparison, and does not count as an army for effects that alter the force of an “army”.
Unexpected Betrayal would qualify as an effect that alters the force of an "army," and thus there is no army on your side for Unexpected Betrayal to cause that Unit to contribute to. The new effect would fail.
This would not, however, cause the Betraying Unit to revert to contributing to the original army, as per the Glossary:
nstead of
1. “X instead (of Y)” refers to the substitution of an old targeting, effect, cost or other game element (Y) with a new one (X).
2. If the old Y is negated, or fails to happen for a reason other than negation (“do not” wording, absence of relevant game elements), the new X doesn't happen.
Example: In “you may bow a personality instead of losing Honor,” you cannot use this to bow a Personality if the Honor loss has already been negated, or if an existing trait says that you do not gain or lose Honor.
3. If the new X is negated, or fails to happen for a reason other than negation (“do not” wording, absence of relevant game elements), the old Y doesn’t happen.
Example: In “target enemy unit adds Force to your army instead of the enemy army,” if you have no army (i.e. no units) then the unit still does not add Force to the enemy army.
- Marty Lund Deputy Rules Monkey
Edited for correctness in regards to what happens if something you try to do "instead of" something else is Negated or otherwise fails to happen.
- Marty Lund Deputy Rules Monkey