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, 3 August 2007
One more quick clarification. I'm teaching a friend how to play, and he wanted me to double check the wording on Ruined City.
"Battle: Bow a target unit with zero total Force or with the lowest non-zero total Force (including ties) among all units at the current battlefield."
If there is an army with a zero force unit and a five force unit, opposing a Spider army with units of 6 force or higher, is the Spider player able to "skip" the zero force unit and bow the five force unit, or must they bow the zero force unit first?
We were also not sure what the "including ties" part meant. If the scenario were that there were two five force units opposing a six force Spider unit, could the Spider then choose one of them to bow?
Thanks in advance.
Martin Lund (rules official), 3 August 2007
One more quick clarification. I'm teaching a friend how to play, and he wanted me to double check the wording on Ruined City.
"Battle: Bow a target unit with zero total Force or with the lowest non-zero total Force (including ties) among all units at the current battlefield."
If there is an army with a zero force unit and a five force unit, opposing a Spider army with units of 6 force or higher, is the Spider player able to "skip" the zero force unit and bow the five force unit, or must they bow the zero force unit first?
We were also not sure what the "including ties" part meant. If the scenario were that there were two five force units opposing a six force Spider unit, could the Spider then choose one of them to bow?
Thanks in advance.
You do indeed have the option to choose between any unit with 0 Force or a unit with the lowest non-zero total. That's what the "or" means - you choose one target from a pool made up of two types of units (0 Force units and the lowest Force non-0 Force unit).
The "(including ties)" statement means that even if there are two units with 1 Force, you can choose either one of them to be your target with the "lowest" Force. It is just there to clarify that if two units are tied for the lowest the ability isn't suddenly useless because neither one is lower than the other.