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.
Doji (Kami) reads:
"While you control Doji, cards focused by Personalities you control return to your hand instead of being discarded when the duel ends."
Using legacy rules, do cards focused from the focus pool also go to your hand, or just the card(s) focused from the hand (since it says return to your hand)?
Doji (Kami) reads:
"While you control Doji, cards focused by Personalities you control return to your hand instead of being discarded when the duel ends."
Using legacy rules, do cards focused from the focus pool also go to your hand, or just the card(s) focused from the hand (since it says return to your hand)?
The latter.
A card can't "return" to somewhere that it never was.
See Strike Without Striking.
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=74727#p978363
So, if they can't return to the hand, where do they go? Nothing in the legacy rules appears to change or modify how "X instead of Y" works, so shouldn't http://rules.l5r.com/Glossary_I-J#Instead apply? "If the new X is negated, or fails to happen for a reason other than negation (“do not” wording, absence of relevant game elements), the old Y doesn’t happen."
Do they just hang out in the focusing area forever, existing (or not) while the focusing area exists? Do they get removed from the game when the focusing area ceases to exist? Some other option that isn't as amusing to me? What happens if a card gets stuck in a 'temporary' game area?