Determination + Michio XP

Michio exp: Reaction: After an action resolves: Bow or straighten a target Personality who performed it.

Determination: Dark Virtue Reaction : Before you announce an action, target one of your Samurai: The action can not have its effects negated or have its targeting changed. After the action destroys any Personality, remove him from the game.

The situation is: I control a bowed samurai and an unbowed Michio XP, and I have a copy of Determination in my hand. I have no other cards with actions that could be legally announced.

My evil plan is to announce a Determination and target my bowed samurai (hence he's performing it), then I announce Michio XP's reaction and straighten my target samurai who performed the Determination. Ie What I'm doing is reacting with Determination to Michio XP's reaction. But the trigger for Michio XP's reaction is the Determination itself. In Good Faith I know that after playing the Determination Michio XP will have a legal trigger and only other player's interference (such as True Strength) could prevent that from happening?

Is this loop of mutual-triggering reactions legal (and therefore my samurai will straighten)? Or is there a way to prevent this paradox? So far I haven't found a rule preventing it but I bow to your wisdom.

Not legal.

You can't legally take an action right now (you'd need a Limited, Open, or Battle), so you can't play Determination.

Does that mean that you can't react with Determination before you announce a Reaction?

No, that's not what that means.

This is a case where I'm exerting Rule Guy powers -- at least temporarily -- to stop scenarios that are dramatically counter intuitive. Determination is already a confusing card, and this sort of "snake eating its own tail" situation is not helpful.

We may have chats about this in the Rules Team about whether we want to open this bag of snakes, but for now: Reactions can react to Reactions, but no Reaction chain can exist without some other kind of action (Limited, Open, Battle) or non-Reaction effect (Events, etc.) triggering it.

A little more on the Michio Xp. + Determination.

What would happen in the following situation. I have a Hired Killer and I want to make sure it goes through. I target my bowed samurai. The samurai has now proformed an action and is now a legal target for Michio's reaction. Does Determination now guard Michio's reaction or the next action that I perform (ie Hired Killer)? In other words, bowed samurai + Determination + Michio Xp is legal as long as I don't pass priority and perform an action?

Thanks!

As described, you are playing Determination in response to Hired Killer.

To get Determination to affect the Experienced Michio's ability (which is possible), Michio would need to be responding to some other action. Or you would need a second Determination: one for Hired Killer, one for Michio. It would look roughly like:

Determination #1 played in anticipation of Hired Killer.

Personality targeted, providing trigger for Michio (Exp.).

Determination #2 played in anticipation of the ability of Michio (Exp.).

Experienced Michio's ability resolves, affected by Determination #2.

Hired Killer resolves, affected by Determination #1.

Why wouldn't using Determination on Michio's reaction be a violation fo the Good Faith Rule?

There's a lot in the link in your post to which you could be referring. Let me assume that you mis-typed and meant, "Why would using Determination on Michio's Reaction be a violation of Good Faith?" and are curious about the original ruling, that Determination and Michio Exp's Reaction cannot be used in a vaccum with no other actions occurring. I'll try to explain this again as Zen has above:

The trigger for taking Determination is "Before you announce an action"; this means that it has to be pre-determined that you will be announcing an action before you can meet its trigger and announce ITS action. So, if you cannot announce Determination before meeting Michio's trigger to announce HIS action, and you have nothing with which to trigger Michio except Determination resolving, then the sequence can never begin.

Good Faith allows a sequence to begin that at first appears illegal but becomes legal over the course of the sequence. Two examples of that would be: 1) announcing a Ranged Attack with no legal target enemy card defending the province you're attacking, then reacting with Burn It Down to change the nature of the required targeting for the Ranged Attack, or 2) announcing Temple to Shinsei's action with no unbowed Shugenja to pay its cost, bowing the Temple first and Reacting to its bowing with Kyuden Asako to straighten a Shugenja and pay the action's remaining cost.

However, Good Faith only applies to required targeting, meeting conditions, and paying costs, NOT Reaction triggers. You cannot invoke Good Faith to start a sequence of Reactions which will cause their own triggers to occur AFTER you've announced them.

I hope I've made the correct assumptions as to what you were asking and have clarified the issue for you. If not, please try to be more specific as to what portion of the previous questions and answers were concerning you.

My opponent controls a single nameless samurai and declares an attack and assigns him to one of my provinces. I do not defend but I do control an unbowed Michio Xp. My opponent proceeds to play Determination by targeting his lone samurai and I respond with Michio Xp by bowing his samurai. The only battle actions in his hand require him to target an unbowed personality at the current battlefield that he controls as part of the cost. What happens?

http://rules.l5r.com/Abilities_and_acti ... _targeting: "From the point when an action is announced legally, to the point after reactions to a particular targeting have taken place, if anything interferes so that the particular required targeting can no longer be met (including reactions to the targeting itself), the action fails. Its effects do not resolve, further targeting does not take place, and its costs are waived. It is still considered taken, but not resolved. If it was on an Action card, the card is discarded normally."

In response to this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=59&t=70797

1. I have Michio XP in play. 2. My opponent has only Toku in play and, in his hand, only actions that require unbowed personalities (+Determination). 3. My opponent announces and resolves Determination targetting Toku. 4. I bow Toku with Michio XP. 5. My opponent has no valid actions that he can announce at this point (since Determination happens before an action is announced).

In the linked thread, Zen's answer from Oct 09, at 8:47 (since there was more than one) was a quotation from the rules archive that mentions "From the point when an action is announced...", however, when Michio XP's reaction is used, the action that Determination would have affected hasn't been announced yet, since Determination happens "Before you announce an action".

Does my opponent pick an action to discard from his hand that would have been legal if I didn't react with Michio XP, and discard it, even though he technically never announced it?

~Andrew

Ah, good point.

Nothing happens, because nothing can happen. Nothing is attempted. Nothing fails. Nothing is discarded.

This will usually need a judge to confirm in a tournament situation.