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, 30 May 2011
I was playing at a small local tournament Saturday and my opponent and I were uncertain on whether or not Stolen Merchandise could copy Gold-producing traits. He read "this card copies one of its base abilities that does not itself copy abilities, or one of its gold-producing traits" to mean that it could not copy gold producing traits. I took it as two separate sections based on the comma. So for clarification does Stolen Merchandise allow you to copy gold producing traits?
The ability in question is:
Open: Target another player's Holding with a base Gold cost of 1-4: This card copies one of its base abilities that does not itself copy abilities, or one of its Gold-producing traits.
As a follow up if it can copy Gold-producing traits, when copying a clan holding from a different clan, for example if I copied a silver mine while not playing a phoenix deck, would it produce two or three gold? I assume two since it copies the trait and I am not a Phoenix player.
Alex Jones (rules official), 31 May 2011
I was playing at a small local tournament Saturday and my opponent and I were uncertain on whether or not Stolen Merchandise could copy Gold-producing traits. He read "this card copies one of its base abilities that does not itself copy abilities, or one of its gold-producing traits" to mean that it could not copy gold producing traits. I took it as two separate sections based on the comma. So for clarification does Stolen Merchandise allow you to copy gold producing traits?
The ability in question is:
Open: Target another player's Holding with a base Gold cost of 1-4: This card copies one of its base abilities that does not itself copy abilities, or one of its Gold-producing traits.
As a follow up if it can copy Gold-producing traits, when copying a clan holding from a different clan, for example if I copied a silver mine while not playing a phoenix deck, would it produce two or three gold? I assume two since it copies the trait and I am not a Phoenix player.
I'm not sure how you parse the text to produce that result. You'd have something like: This card copies one of its base abilities that does not Gold-producing traits. which makes no grammatical sense.
The repeated clause which lets you identify the two halves of the "or" is "one of its": This card copies (one of its base abilities that does not itself copy abilities) or (one of its Gold-producing traits).
Furthermore, traits are not abilities, so it should be clear that the two halves cannot be related, regardless of grammar.
If you copy the gold-producing ability on a Silver Mine, you copy the entire text of the trait; if you're not a Phoenix Clan player it'll only produce 2g.
A player, 17 June 2011
acording to viewtopic.php?f=59&t=91225&p=1210805&hilit=Stolen+Merchandise#p1210805
so it copies the entires text of the holding, i'm right ? for example if it copies War Encampment it will produce 4 for items ?
War Encampment reads: Text Bow this card: Produce 2 Gold, or 4 Gold when paying to bring an Item or Spell into play from your hand.
and if the trait combines farms, ports and/or markets, it will count on what farms, ports and/or markets i have, right ?
Alex Jones (rules official), 18 June 2011
acording to viewtopic.php?f=59&t=91225&p=1210805&hilit=Stolen+Merchandise#p1210805
so it copies the entires text of the holding, i'm right ? for example if it copies War Encampment it will produce 4 for items ?
War Encampment reads: Text Bow this card: Produce 2 Gold, or 4 Gold when paying to bring an Item or Spell into play from your hand.
and if the trait combines farms, ports and/or markets, it will count on what farms, ports and/or markets i have, right ?
Stolen Merchandise copies the entire text of the chosen ability or (gold-producing) trait. It does not copy any keywords or other traits.