Daigotsu Gahseng and playing a Dark Virtue

L5R CCG Rules board, 12 February 2010

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, 12 February 2010

Daigotsu Gahseng's text says:

Reaction: After an action's resolution ends, if you discarded a Dark Virtue card as a cost or effect of the action: Put the Dark Virtue in your hand.

Page 24 of the Celestial Edition rules book, under the When Can I Take An Action, Section F: Tidy Up, says:

Finally, if you took the action from a Strategy card in your hand, discard it.

Two questions: A) Is the discarding of the Strategy card considered a cost, or an effect of taking an action on the Strategy card? B) Can I play a Dark Virtue for an action printed on it, and then use Daigotsu Gahseng to return it to my hand after the Tidy Up step? The wording of the rulebook is somewhat ambiguous, as it seems to both permit (use of term discard) and potentially disallow this (no specification whether this is a cost, effect, or other).

Zen Faulkes (rules official), 12 February 2010

Daigotsu Gahseng: Is the discarding of the Strategy card considered a cost, or an effect of taking an action on the Strategy card?

No, it's neither. It's a rulebook effect.

Can I play a Dark Virtue for an action printed on it, and then use Daigotsu Gahseng to return it to my hand after the Tidy Up step?

No, for reasons above.