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, 30 May 2008
I am a scorpion clan player. On the opposing side there is two crane clan personalities. I play arranged marriage on one of them. He is now crane and scorpion clan. I now play unwanted mediation, bowing both of them. I can also play sowing suspicion on the scorpion one.
Is anything in the above scenario incorrect ?
Cards texts :
Arranged marriage :
Political Limited: A target Human Personality permanently gains your Clan alignment.
Unwanted Mediation :
Battle/Open: Bow 2 or more target Personalities with different Clan alignments controlled by the same player. You may pay Gold equal to one of the targets' Gold Cost, as a cost, to destroy him, if he is Unique. Battle: Destroy a Terrain.
Sowing Suspicion
Open: Bow a target Human Personality who is aligned to a Clan other than his controller's. He can not straighten until his controller's second Straighten Phase from now.
Thanks for your time
Alex Jones (rules official), 2 June 2008
I am a scorpion clan player. On the opposing side there is two crane clan personalities. I play arranged marriage on one of them. He is now crane and scorpion clan. I now play unwanted mediation, bowing both of them. I can also play sowing suspicion on the scorpion one.
Is anything in the above scenario incorrect ?
Cards texts :
Arranged marriage :
Political Limited: A target Human Personality permanently gains your Clan alignment.
Unwanted Mediation :
Battle/Open: Bow 2 or more target Personalities with different Clan alignments controlled by the same player. You may pay Gold equal to one of the targets' Gold Cost, as a cost, to destroy him, if he is Unique. Battle: Destroy a Terrain.
Sowing Suspicion
Open: Bow a target Human Personality who is aligned to a Clan other than his controller's. He can not straighten until his controller's second Straighten Phase from now.
Thanks for your time
See Different and same keywords.
Sowing Suspicion is legal, Unwanted Mediation is not.
The personality targeted by Arranged Marriage "is aligned to a Clan other than his controller's," so he is a valid target for Sowing Suspicion.
The personality not targeted by Arranged Marriage does not have a "different Clan alignment" from the other personality (Crane Clan and Scorpion Clan is not considered different to just Crane Clan), so he is not a valid target for Unwanted Mediation.
Alex
Mod edit: Potentially confusing quotations of changed sections of the Comprehensive Rules removed. If you have any further questions, please do ask them - ALJ.
A player, 10 June 2008
In regards to Arranged marriage and Unwanted Mediation
Arranged marriage Political Limited: A target Human Personality permanently gains your Clan alignment.
Unwanted Mediation Battle/Open: Bow 2 or more target Personalities with different Clan alignments controlled by the same player. You may pay Gold equal to one of the targets' Gold Cost, as a cost, to destroy him, if he is Unique. Battle: Destroy a Terrain.
The example given was a Scorpion player targeting one of two Crane personalities with Arranged Marriage. It is then ruled that they cannot legally be targeted by Unwanted Mediation because they share a clan alignment (Crane). However, they do have different clan alignments as well. One personality is aligned to Scorpion and the other is aligned to Crane, the fact that the first personality is also aligned to Crane doesn't matter IMO.
It seems to me that Unwanted Mediation is checking if the two personalities have different alignments, rather than if they don't share a clan alignment. The interpretation given for Unwanted Mediation makes more sense (at least to me) for a card worded like Righteous Doshin:
Righteous Doshin While this card is in an army with two Human Personalities who both have a Clan alignment, but do not share one, it has +2F, and Ranged Attacks from actions it performs have +2 strength. Battle: Ranged 2 Attack.
Obviously if a Crane and a Crane/Scorpion are in an army they do not trigger Righteous Doshin because they share a clan alignment.
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 10 June 2008
In regards to Arranged marriage and Unwanted Mediation
Arranged marriage Political Limited: A target Human Personality permanently gains your Clan alignment.
Unwanted Mediation Battle/Open: Bow 2 or more target Personalities with different Clan alignments controlled by the same player. You may pay Gold equal to one of the targets' Gold Cost, as a cost, to destroy him, if he is Unique. Battle: Destroy a Terrain.
The example given was a Scorpion player targeting one of two Crane personalities with Arranged Marriage. It is then ruled that they cannot legally be targeted by Unwanted Mediation because they share a clan alignment (Crane). However, they do have different clan alignments as well. One personality is aligned to Scorpion and the other is aligned to Crane, the fact that the first personality is also aligned to Crane doesn't matter IMO.
It seems to me that Unwanted Mediation is checking if the two personalities have different alignments, rather than if they don't share a clan alignment. The interpretation given for Unwanted Mediation makes more sense (at least to me) for a card worded like Righteous Doshin:
Righteous Doshin While this card is in an army with two Human Personalities who both have a Clan alignment, but do not share one, it has +2F, and Ranged Attacks from actions it performs have +2 strength. Battle: Ranged 2 Attack.
Obviously if a Crane and a Crane/Scorpion are in an army they do not trigger Righteous Doshin because they share a clan alignment.
Thanks for your input. The current ruling (http://rules.l5r.com/Card_features#Diff ... e_keywords) stands for now, however. There simply is no intuitive reading of this situation.
Righteous Doshin isn't relevant because the wording is different.