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, 19 May 2008
Question #1: If I copy a region like for example "Bamboo Forest" with "Exile's Road", which doesn't have the Forest bold trait on the card, but has it implied from its name, does Exile's Road have the Forest trait?
And if yes: Question #2: Can I use "Dark Harmony" to remove the Forest trait from cards like "Bamboo Forest"?
This line of questions basically comes down to the question whether we can manipulate traits implied by the card title.
Exile's Road When Exile's Road enters play, target a Region in play that is not one of your Unique Regions. Exile's Road permanently becomes an exact duplicate of the target Region except for the name. If no Regions are in play, the text box of Exile's Road is permanently considered blank.
Dark Harmony Limited: Bow a Ring you control or discard a Ring from your hand: Permanently remove a boldface non-faction trait from a target Personality.
[Mod edit: Thread title. -ZF]
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 19 May 2008
This line of questions basically comes down to the question whether we can manipulate traits implied by the card title.
Depends. For old cards printed before Khan's Defiance, the answer is often yes, but a lot depends on the specific card text.
http://rules.l5r.com/Older_Cards#For_ca ... S_DEFIANCE: "Card titles also count toward determining keywords. This is true when determining an older card’s keywords and when an older card is looking for keywords. (For example, a card titled 'Cavalry Reserves' is a Cavalry card. Likewise, the Holding Shokansuru will pay for the Samurai-legal card Summon Maseru no Oni). This does NOT apply to the 'Tactical' keyword."
So it is possible to remove the effect of the Cavalry trait from Cavalry Reserves while leaving the title intact.
In the case of Dark Harmony, however, no. Dark Harmony specifically refers to "boldface non-faction trait", so that is all it can affect. It can't touch any keyword implied by a title.
[Clarified.]
A player, 20 May 2008
Previous Thread: http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=68235
It seem that Zen forgot to answer the first bit of the question. So I'll restate it: Does "Exile's Road", which copies a region, but not the title, copy the traits implied by the title? For Example, "Bamboo Forest" doesn't have the printed Forest trait, but it is implied by its title. If copied by Exile's Road, does it have the Forest trait?
Exile's Road When Exile's Road enters play, target a Region in play that is not one of your Unique Regions. Exile's Road permanently becomes an exact duplicate of the target Region except for the name. If no Regions are in play, the text box of Exile's Road is permanently considered blank.
Alex Jones (rules official), 20 May 2008
Previous Thread: http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=68235
It seem that Zen forgot to answer the first bit of the question. So I'll restate it: Does "Exile's Road", which copies a region, but not the title, copy the traits implied by the title? For Example, "Bamboo Forest" doesn't have the printed Forest trait, but it is implied by its title. If copied by Exile's Road, does it have the Forest trait?
Exile's Road When Exile's Road enters play, target a Region in play that is not one of your Unique Regions. Exile's Road permanently becomes an exact duplicate of the target Region except for the name. If no Regions are in play, the text box of Exile's Road is permanently considered blank.
Under discussion.
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 21 May 2008
The Rules Team seems to be in agreement that you would not get keywords implied by a title if the actual card does not have that title (e.g., through copying text).
Sorry for missing this one on the first go-round. Quite often, people ask a series of specific questions that are covered by answering a general "In other words..." question at the end of the post. So I tend to look for those nice general questions that I can answer once instead of answering 2 or 3 specific card interactions. But this risks missing an different question at the beginning of the list.