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, 15 March 2008
This is probably an amazingly simple and/or boneheaded question on my part, but I can't find an answer to this despite remembering, for some reason, a ruling on this issue.
The reactions on Strike the Summit and Strike the Center allow the acting player to fish a Strike the Center or Strike the Base, respectively. Tonight, however, someone played a Strike the Summit, fished a Strike the Center, and then tried to use that copy of Strike the Center as a reaction to his Strike the Summit. I thought there had been a ruling declaring that, in order for a reaction on a card to be played legally, the reacting card had to be in hand when the action it is reacting to was played. My opponent and another player both claimed that this was not the case, and cited instances of this happening at a Kotei they were involved in (Atlanta). Is my memory faulty, has the ruling changed, or were my fellow players trying to pull a fast one on me?
Alex Jones (rules official), 15 March 2008
This is probably an amazingly simple and/or boneheaded question on my part, but I can't find an answer to this despite remembering, for some reason, a ruling on this issue.
The reactions on Strike the Summit and Strike the Center allow the acting player to fish a Strike the Center or Strike the Base, respectively. Tonight, however, someone played a Strike the Summit, fished a Strike the Center, and then tried to use that copy of Strike the Center as a reaction to his Strike the Summit. I thought there had been a ruling declaring that, in order for a reaction on a card to be played legally, the reacting card had to be in hand when the action it is reacting to was played. My opponent and another player both claimed that this was not the case, and cited instances of this happening at a Kotei they were involved in (Atlanta). Is my memory faulty, has the ruling changed, or were my fellow players trying to pull a fast one on me?
A Reaction action card must be in hand at the time its trigger occurs.
In the case of Strike the Centre, this is "After you resolve a Strike the Summit". There is no requirement that the Reaction action card is in your hand at any earlier point.
See http://rules.l5r.com/Timing.