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, 14 August 2009
Hi there,
the last answer to this question : " Per the Black Silk Castle VS Hall of Ancestors ruling, where the word "removed" was revealed to still count people that couldn't be removed, but tried to be, does Tempered Ressurection provide a Cost Reduction when used in Hall of Ancestors, when you *attempt* to remove one of your honorably dead personalities, but fail due to the trait?
Tempered Ressurection Relevant Text: Fire Open: Bow this Shugenja unless he has the Fire keyword: You may remove an honorably dead Personality you own from the game. Target a face-up Personality in one of your provinces. Reduce his Gold Cost by the Gold Cost of any Personality you removed. Bring the target into play (paying all costs).
Hall of Ancestors Relevant Text: "Dead Personalities you own can not be removed from the game." "
was :
" Still under discussion. "
by AkodoGilador/Alex since Thursday, May 14th 2009.
Any news on the matter ? The Kotei season is waaay over, now.
Thanks.
[Mod edit: Thread title. -ZF]
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 14 August 2009
Your quote of Alex (Akodo Gilador) is incomplete. After "Still under discussion" he goes on to say,
Alex Jones wrote:However, the rationale for current ruling is that Tempered Resurrection is worded such that the cost reduction is dependent on the removal, since you can always choose not to remove a dead Personality from the game anyway; Black Silk Castle is perhaps poorly worded, but uses removed purely to reference a card selected earlier in the text (without using incomprehensible "party of the first part" style language) for some effect, without regards to whether that effect actually occurred.
And I said, in a later thread that wasn't merged with the one you're quoting (but the following should be a given):
Brook Cunningham wrote:Just because a ruling or the reasoning behind it is "Under Discussion" does not mean the ruling is invalid.
The most recent given ruling on a card is valid until we reverse it, if or when that even occurs.
So, here's the final story on Tempered Ressurrection versus Black Silk Castle:
These days, the Rules Team feels we do our best to not rule on fiat alone. Things don't work "just because we say so" and are left at that; the Rules or card text have to support our rulings, or the ruling, Rules, or card text have to change (in that exact order of priority). A decent recent example would be Hida Kuon Exp 6.
Alex admitted, in the ruling I quote above, that "Black Silk Castle is perhaps worded poorly". But, given the timing of the issue, the fact is that the discussion on how to fix that problem outlasted the need to do so. Therefore, the ruling simply stands as-is. As I said, we endeavor to not allow this to occur; however, Black Silk Castle and Tempered Ressurrection have now passed into the realm of Legacy Format. And there, BSC/TR's ruling is not the abomination it would be under current Rules Team practices and policies, but rather in fairly good company.
I'm sorry that time didn't allow for this to be resolved completely to everyone's (including RT's own) satisfaction.