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, 29 May 2008
Hey,
I was trying to put a Legacy Fox deck together and was wondering whether the Unaligned Fox (Kitsune Aiko, Kitsune Tsutaro, etc) personalities could join a Fox player under the Lady of the Forest Sensei.
The relevant cards are: Lady of the Forest Sensei Your Fox Clan Personalities have your Clan's trait. Whenever a Creature or Forest card is destroyed, lose 1 Honor.
Kyuden Kitsune Fox cards cost 2 less Gold for you. Mantis Personalities will not join you. Other Yoritomo's Alliance Personalities will join you and are part of your Clan.
The Legacy rules say: Any card with the Yoritomo's Alliance keyword is considered to have the Mantis Clan faction alignment keyword.
NOTE: Cards that make an explicit distinction between two keywords above (The Daini, Kyuden Kitsune, Mantis House Guard) take precedence over the above rules. A personality with "Yoritomo's Alliance" is not considered to have "Mantis Clan" for the purpose of determining whether the personality will join a Kyuden Kitsune player, unless the personality has the actual "Mantis Clan" keyword on the card. [edit] p. 24, Strongholds
So would the personalities be given the Yoritomo's Alliance keyword from the sensei or are they Mantis?
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 29 May 2008
Hey,
I was trying to put a Legacy Fox deck together and was wondering whether the Unaligned Fox (Kitsune Aiko, Kitsune Tsutaro, etc) personalities could join a Fox player under the Lady of the Forest Sensei.
The relevant cards are: Lady of the Forest Sensei Your Fox Clan Personalities have your Clan's trait. Whenever a Creature or Forest card is destroyed, lose 1 Honor.
Kyuden Kitsune Fox cards cost 2 less Gold for you. Mantis Personalities will not join you. Other Yoritomo's Alliance Personalities will join you and are part of your Clan.
The Legacy rules say: Any card with the Yoritomo's Alliance keyword is considered to have the Mantis Clan faction alignment keyword.
NOTE: Cards that make an explicit distinction between two keywords above (The Daini, Kyuden Kitsune, Mantis House Guard) take precedence over the above rules. A personality with "Yoritomo's Alliance" is not considered to have "Mantis Clan" for the purpose of determining whether the personality will join a Kyuden Kitsune player, unless the personality has the actual "Mantis Clan" keyword on the card. [edit] p. 24, Strongholds
So would the personalities be given the Yoritomo's Alliance keyword from the sensei or are they Mantis?
At the time Kyuden Kitsune was printed, "Yoritomo's Alliance" was the default keyword for that Faction.
If your Stronghold is Kyuden Kitsune, effects that give Personalities your Faction keyword (i.e. "Oath of Fealty", "Kage Sensei") give them "Yoritomo's Alliance" rather than "Mantis Clan".
EDIT: This ruling is reversed; see below.
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 30 May 2008
I apologize, but after some time to sleep on the matter and think it over, I'm reversing the above.
At the time Kyuden Kitsune was legal, because "Yoritomo's Alliance" was the default keyword for the Faction now known as "Mantis Clan", there was no way to gain the "Mantis Clan" keyword through any "fealty" effect; yours or your opponent's. Also, I've realized that to have Kyuden Kitsune be considered "Mantis" but give out a different alignment than other such players makes for more complicated bookkeeping, which is a bad thing a Format where too many cards don't say what they mean.
For these reasons, I am voiding the above ruling. It is to be replaced with this:
The restriction on Kyuden Kitsune only applies to Personalities with the base "Mantis Clan" keyword.