Something came up in a game today that I'd like a ruling on. One of our players claimed that Ruthless Advance could be played during a Naval Invasion as the first action, so long as Yoritomo Tadame helps to pay for the action.
Naval Ability
Reaction: If you are the Attacker and your current army has more Naval cards than the opposing army, once per battle after engaging: You have the first opportunity to take a Battle action, which must be performed by a target Naval Personality or one of his Naval Followers.
In cases where multiple cards perform an action, only one need be Naval.
(emphasis mine)
Perform A Personality or Follower is performing an action if its controller is the player taking the action, and any of these things is true:
* The action comes from an ability on the Personality or Follower. * The action comes from an ability on an Item or Spell in the Personality’s unit. * The Personality or Follower was targeted by targeting in the ability’s constraints block (between the two colons).
Costs or other restrictions that are added to an action, and involve targeting a Personality, do not mean that the Personality thus targeted is performing the action. The targeting must come from the base wording of the ability.
Since the Ruthless Advance action does not 1) come from an ability on Tadame (it comes from its own card), 2) come from an ability on an item or spell in Tadame's unit (again, it comes from its own card), or 3) does not target Tadame in its contraints block, Tadame does not perform the action, correct?
Yoritomo Tadame Reaction: When paying a Gold cost during the Combat Segment: Produce 3 Gold.
Ruthless Advance: Battle: Pay Gold equal to the target unit's total Gold Cost minus 2: Destroy a target defending unit.
If Tadame makes some gold to pay for Ruthless Advance, he isn't performing the action (he fails to meet any of the criteria for 'performing' it), right? And thus, Ruthless Advance cannot be used as the first action created by the Naval ability, right?
Thanks for your time.