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, 6 December 2007
in regards to viewtopic.php?f=59&t=63898 how does Shiba Aikune xp3 get away with using his battle ability?
Shiba Aikune: Battle: Any number of times per turn, destroy a Personality in Aikune's army: Destroy two target cards opposing Aikune with no attachments.
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.
Naval: 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.
emphasis all mine.
So if I'm not mistaken, Aikune never actually targets your guy hence it cannot be a naval action, no?
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 6 December 2007
in regards to viewtopic.php?f=59&t=63898 how does Shiba Aikune xp3 get away with using his battle ability?
Shiba Aikune: Battle: Any number of times per turn, destroy a Personality in Aikune's army: Destroy two target cards opposing Aikune with no attachments.
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.
Naval: 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.
emphasis all mine.
So if I'm not mistaken, Aikune never actually targets your guy hence it cannot be a naval action, no?
Though my initial post did have the qualifier, "providing it targets...", I totally missed that Aikune's ability doesn't target. Sorry. Fixed now.