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, 24 September 2007
Dear Rules Team,
with all due respect to the work you are all doing to help us organize and enjoy our game, I want to write this to you in the freedom you provide us all to express ourselves in this forum to formulate my difference of opinion regarding the Adeiko ruling.
In page 51 of the rules glossary (Samurai Edition) it is said: "An action ... stops resolving when the last effect (apart from delayed effects) has been applied". Clearly, in the natural order of things, the delayed effects of the action will resolve later, at a moment in play when the action that produced them will have already resolved before them. Here, there is a difference in the timing of action resolution and effect resolution.
Shosuro Adeiko says:"After the effects resolve of a battle resolution, action or trait...." (emphasis mine). It is clear that Adeiko's reaction is triggered by the resolution of the action's effects and not by the resolution of the action.
This is not only clear by the interpretation of the rules and the card, but also from the first impression players get by reading both. With the ruling that excludes the delayed effects from the above interpretation (which effectively constitutes an errata for the card) you not only rule against the logical interaction between the card and the rules (as is, of course, your right and within your power), but you also interfere to tone down the power of said card. In my humble opinion, that is both unnecessary and harmful for the game.
It is unnecessary for the reason that Shosuro Adeiko was not a card that exercised so huge an influence on neither the outcome nor the play experience of l5r games, as are many cards in the current edition. I read in the last Herald and I recognize in the sets of the Samurai Edition the (successful in the most part, as far as I'm concerned) effort to make the game more fun to play, more balanced and more accessible to new players. There are cards, though, that prove themselves to be an exception to the rule. Moto Chagatai is the more accentuated example, as the experience of a new player who sits opposed him with his first deck in hand, ready to play and "interact" in a battle is "ok, you break the province unopposed because you are cavalry, I cannot play Outer Walls because you are a tactician and I cannot play refugees because I cannot move you; oh, you move into a second province, again unopposed... and you straighten with the ring of air. Ok, you have a second province. Now can I play?" It is some times too much to ask of a new player (probably young in age as well) not to dissemble his deck and build a "more powerful" one with this "untouchable" card, in the case he doesn't dissemble his deck period. This is only one of the examples including Governor's Court (you have no personalities, so I bow my 2 Governor's Courts to gain 4 honor, going to 11 and buy a personality and a holding - this goes to 2 bows as an open action or the Lion honoring out in five turns), Akodo Hachigoro - worse case scenario against a passive honor / dishonor deck (but I only bought two personalities, if you kill them both how can I play? I cannot have so many battle actions, it will ruin my play... ok, you win) who cannot be get rid of by any means nor removed from the discard pile and the other multi-targeting personalities (e.g. Doji Doukohito). More will be said after StS is released about the Phoenix SH, which produces the same effect as Mak'irtch that you (wisely) banned: a free follower (will prove to be bad for the game) protects the shugenja from range attacks, from cards targeting personalities without cards attached, guarantees the effectiveness of consumed by five fires and offers free peasant vengeance and few against many... at no cost, every turn. That, can be safely said, is too much and its imbalanced nature will be made evident in the game. Your effort to improve the game and the play experience is to its larger extent successful, as more and more older players admit. The Adeiko ruling can be harmful to that effort, as the new player will ask himself: "But it is an effect that destroyed the personality, as the card says! Why can't I play it?". I understand that you know that errata are bad for the consistency of the game, but sometimes they are necessary to improve it. After the large discussion and the dozens of questions about MSD, it was obviously necessary; in Adeiko's case it isn't.
Thank you for your attention and for your time. I really hope for a constructive discussion and criticism.
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 24 September 2007
Dear Rules Team,
with all due respect to the work you are all doing to help us organize and enjoy our game, I want to write this to you in the freedom you provide us all to express ourselves in this forum to formulate my difference of opinion regarding the Adeiko ruling.
In page 51 of the rules glossary (Samurai Edition) it is said: "An action ... stops resolving when the last effect (apart from delayed effects) has been applied". Clearly, in the natural order of things, the delayed effects of the action will resolve later, at a moment in play when the action that produced them will have already resolved before them. Here, there is a difference in the timing of action resolution and effect resolution.
Shosuro Adeiko says:"After the effects resolve of a battle resolution, action or trait...." (emphasis mine). It is clear that Adeiko's reaction is triggered by the resolution of the action's effects and not by the resolution of the action.
This is not only clear by the interpretation of the rules and the card, but also from the first impression players get by reading both. With the ruling that excludes the delayed effects from the above interpretation (which effectively constitutes an errata for the card) you not only rule against the logical interaction between the card and the rules (as is, of course, your right and within your power), but you also interfere to tone down the power of said card. In my humble opinion, that is both unnecessary and harmful for the game.
It is unnecessary for the reason that Shosuro Adeiko was not a card that exercised so huge an influence on neither the outcome nor the play experience of l5r games, as are many cards in the current edition. I read in the last Herald and I recognize in the sets of the Samurai Edition the (successful in the most part, as far as I'm concerned) effort to make the game more fun to play, more balanced and more accessible to new players. There are cards, though, that prove themselves to be an exception to the rule. Moto Chagatai is the more accentuated example, as the experience of a new player who sits opposed him with his first deck in hand, ready to play and "interact" in a battle is "ok, you break the province unopposed because you are cavalry, I cannot play Outer Walls because you are a tactician and I cannot play refugees because I cannot move you; oh, you move into a second province, again unopposed... and you straighten with the ring of air. Ok, you have a second province. Now can I play?" It is some times too much to ask of a new player (probably young in age as well) not to dissemble his deck and build a "more powerful" one with this "untouchable" card, in the case he doesn't dissemble his deck period. This is only one of the examples including Governor's Court (you have no personalities, so I bow my 2 Governor's Courts to gain 4 honor, going to 11 and buy a personality and a holding - this goes to 2 bows as an open action or the Lion honoring out in five turns), Akodo Hachigoro - worse case scenario against a passive honor / dishonor deck (but I only bought two personalities, if you kill them both how can I play? I cannot have so many battle actions, it will ruin my play... ok, you win) who cannot be get rid of by any means nor removed from the discard pile and the other multi-targeting personalities (e.g. Doji Doukohito). More will be said after StS is released about the Phoenix SH, which produces the same effect as Mak'irtch that you (wisely) banned: a free follower (will prove to be bad for the game) protects the shugenja from range attacks, from cards targeting personalities without cards attached, guarantees the effectiveness of consumed by five fires and offers free peasant vengeance and few against many... at no cost, every turn. That, can be safely said, is too much and its imbalanced nature will be made evident in the game. Your effort to improve the game and the play experience is to its larger extent successful, as more and more older players admit. The Adeiko ruling can be harmful to that effort, as the new player will ask himself: "But it is an effect that destroyed the personality, as the card says! Why can't I play it?". I understand that you know that errata are bad for the consistency of the game, but sometimes they are necessary to improve it. After the large discussion and the dozens of questions about MSD, it was obviously necessary; in Adeiko's case it isn't.
Thank you for your attention and for your time. I really hope for a constructive discussion and criticism.
Thanks for your input.
Please note, however, that this forum is for rules questions.
There is a designated Samurai Edition rules troubleshooting thread in the main CCG Strategy forum.