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, 18 March 2011
Hi,
thats the situation: Ninja personality X is the target for A Stain Cleansed. ¿Can I react with nightwatchers to negate the personality´s destruction? I have the doubt cause A Stain Cleansed can target units or cards without attachtment. ¿The player who plays the card have to tell an option, and then I react with the follower? Or anyway, he can re-pay the cost and destroy the whole unit?
A Stain Cleansed Battle: Choose your performing unbowed Magistrate and pay Gold equal to the target's total Gold Cost minus 2: Target an enemy card without attachments or an enemy unit. Destroy the targeted card or unit.
Night Watchers Reaction: AFter another player's Battle action targets your Ninja Personality, if this card is in your hand: Attach it to the Personality. If he is no longer a legal target for the action, the action's cost are ignored and its effects do not happen.
Cheers!
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 18 March 2011
Ninja personality X is the target for A Stain Cleansed. Can I react with nightwatchers to negate the personality´s destruction?
Negate? No. "Negate" is something very specific in rules terms.
Using Nightwatchers effectively prevents destruction, however, because the effects of A Stain Cleansed do not happen.
The sequence is:
1. A Stain Cleansed announced. 2. Targets with no attachments is chosen. 3. React with Nightwatchers. Original target now no longer legal, so its effects apply.
Correction! I accidentally overlooked part of A Stain Cleansed. So "3" above is actually "The original target has changed the cost of the unit, so it calls under the rules for changing costs, as described in the FAQ (http://rules.l5r.com/CE_FAQ#What_happen ... ld_cost.3F) and Abilities and actions (http://rules.l5r.com/CE_Abilities_and_a ... _Pay_costs).
A player, 18 March 2011
From the previous discussion:
| 1. A Stain Cleansed announced. | 2. Targets with no attachements is chosen. | 3. React with Nightwatchers. Original target now no longer legal, so its effects apply.
Is this necessarily the case, however? A Stain Cleansed targets "an enemy card without attachments or an enemy unit". According to the Judge's Rulebook on conjunctions (p. 38, italics in original), "Effects that check for a condition phrased as 'X or Y' are also satisfied if both X and Y are met. Example: 'Destroyed during a duel or a battle' would apply even if the duel was during a battle, and 'target a Samurai or Shugenja' could target one Personality with both keywords."
Shosuro Bob, the ninja in the example, is an "enemy card without attachments". He is also, presumably (but see below) a unit, and "targeting a unit is the same as targeting its Personality" (Judge's Rulebook, p. 50). When Nightstalkers are attached, he ceases to be an "enemy card without attachments"; however, a unit has still been targeted, and units remain valid targets for the announced action. The cost of that action changes, because the cost of the unit has changed, but that is covered by the rules on Interference with costs and payments (p. 23).
Is the outcome of this situation any different if the player announcing A Stain Cleansed specifically declares that he is targeting Shosuro Bob's unit via the second targeting option, rather than Shosuro Bob's card, via the first?
If this is not a valid targeting option at all, why not?
Note: My questions assume that Shosuro Bob, without attached cards, is considered a unit. I feel this falls in line with the use of "unit" throughout the game's history, and the mechanical functionality of an overwhelming number of card effects. However, the Judge's Rulebook states that "a unit is made up of a Personality and all his attached cards" (p. 50, emphasis mine). However, in the section on Numbers of Things, "'All' does not include zero" (p.38). I believe that this reading, which would result in naked Personalities not being considered units, constitutes "forc[ing] an unnatural reading onto a phrase" (p. 37); Personalities are, as they have always been, units.
EDIT: Linked previous post.
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 18 March 2011
From the previous discussion:
| 1. A Stain Cleansed announced. | 2. Targets with no attachements is chosen. | 3. React with Nightwatchers. Original target now no longer legal, so its effects apply.
Is this necessarily the case, however? A Stain Cleansed targets "an enemy card without attachments or an enemy unit". According to the Judge's Rulebook on conjunctions (p. 38, italics in original), "Effects that check for a condition phrased as 'X or Y' are also satisfied if both X and Y are met. Example: 'Destroyed during a duel or a battle' would apply even if the duel was during a battle, and 'target a Samurai or Shugenja' could target one Personality with both keywords."
Shosuro Bob, the ninja in the example, is an "enemy card without attachments". He is also, presumably (but see below) a unit, and "targeting a unit is the same as targeting its Personality" (Judge's Rulebook, p. 50). When Nightstalkers are attached, he ceases to be an "enemy card without attachments"; however, a unit has still been targeted, and units remain valid targets for the announced action. The cost of that action changes, because the cost of the unit has changed, but that is covered by the rules on Interference with costs and payments (p. 23).
Is the outcome of this situation any different if the player announcing A Stain Cleansed specifically declares that he is targeting Shosuro Bob's unit via the second targeting option, rather than Shosuro Bob's card, via the first?
If this is not a valid targeting option at all, why not?
Note: My questions assume that Shosuro Bob, without attached cards, is considered a unit. I feel this falls in line with the use of "unit" throughout the game's history, and the mechanical functionality of an overwhelming number of card effects. However, the Judge's Rulebook states that "a unit is made up of a Personality and all his attached cards" (p. 50, emphasis mine). However, in the section on Numbers of Things, "'All' does not include zero" (p.38). I believe that this reading, which would result in naked Personalities not being considered units, constitutes "forc[ing] an unnatural reading onto a phrase" (p. 37); Personalities are, as they have always been, units.
EDIT: Linked previous post.
D'oh! I misread A Stain Cleansed. Will fix the above post. Thanks for the catch!