Rules for November 27th

First on Hantei the 16th.

Is taking control of him an action that targets him? Can I put Kitsuki's Journal on him and keep him for the rest of the game?

Taking control of him doesn't target him. He's the only possible Hantei the 16th you could take control of, so there's no choice.

What if he has been egged him? Then you have a choice.

Nope, you still don't have a choice. There are two seperate actions you can use, one for each Hantei. Using one of the actions will always give you control of the Hantei it's assiociated with, and the same for the other one. It still wouldn't be targeted.

Hi, some questions from an inquiring mind:

1. Seppun Toshiken exp2 reads: "When a player's card effect destroys of your personalities..."

Must the card effect explicitly destroy the personality?

Either explicitly destroy it, or create an effect that explicitly destroys it.

So, in order of explicity, which of the following situations would trigger Toshiken's reaction?

a. Kolat Assassin

Yup.

b. Arrows From the Woods on say, Kakita Ariteko

Yup.

c. Wounded in Battle on Ariteko

Yes.

d. Wasting Disease on Ariteko

Yes. BTW - what do you have against Ariteko? You've killed her three times in this question!

e. Your opponent playing Frenzy on Lady Kitsune

No. Your opponent's card effect didn't destroy her, her own card text did.

2. If Fields on the Sun is destroyed along with your cards in the battle (say during resolution) do you still gain the honor from the card?

Yes.

3. Can you retrieve Path of Wisdom from your discard pile when you are using Uona Sensei? Can you use Augury and cards like it to set the top card of your deck?

No, and no.

4. If Emperor's Under- Hand is considered completely political, then a Shadowlands Horde player can't even use it to look at his opponent's cards right? Also, what makes discarding the Imperial Favor political and a use of the Imperial Favor, when the card doesn't state that it is a use of the Imperial Favor?

Any action that requires the discard of the Imperial Favor as a cost is considered Political (glossary). As an extension of that, any effect that requires discarding the Favor as a cost is also Political. The Underhand clearly requires discarding the Favor as a cost to discard a card, and any action with a Political effect is entirely Political (Battlefield of Shallow Graves).

So, the Underhand is a Political action, and is *sometimes* a use of the Imperial Favor. Using C@C will only cancel the discard a card effect, not the whole action.

5. If you run Shirasu Sensei and play with Lady Kitsune, if Lady Kitsune is dishonored, does she commit seppuku (and die honorably) or is she just destroyed (and dies dishonorably)?

Active player's choice.

6. If you name Shinjo Shono exp as your Soul of Thunder, does your opponent have to discard 2 cards to challenge him? If you play Defend Your Honor or Test of the Emerald Champion and your opponent chooses Shono to accept your challenge, do you have to discard two cards? What if you don't have two cards to discard, can you just null the challenge?

For the first question, yes. Soul of Thunder is a direct challenge to Shono, and you would have to discard two cards to challenge him.

For the second question, no. Challenges that go to someone other than Shono specifically, but that could be accepted by Shono (e.g., challenges that can be accepted by any personality a player controls) do not trigger his trait, even if you do wind up dueling him.

7. Does the personality with the Snow Crane Tattoo have to be the one focusing to increase the focus value? The wording on the card lets the personality raise the focus value even if he is not involved in the duel.

Yes, that's fine. Snow Crane Tattoo only works on Focus values in duels, but it will work on the Focus values of any personality you control, not just the Tattooed one.

8. A player must renounce his honor victory to benefit from Severed From the Emperor. I think either a Horde player would be unable to renounce to Severed From the Emperor, or else when they renounce they should be targetable by Sign of Weakness. Is this correct?

Renouncing your honor victory is not a cost of the effect on Severed, just another effect. Also, a Horde player resolving Severed is not a legal target for Sign of Weakness (though a player with an actual honor victory is). You can't lose what you don't have.

9. The accumulated rulings state that a Samurai can commit seppuku in any situation where they are "involved in a loss of honor to your family." The Spirit Wars rulebook (page 58) say that the samurai must "take an action or is targeted by one that causes you to lose honor." I think the Accumulated Rulings is the right one, so please reword the rulebook to reflect this distinction next time it is revised.

The rulebook overrides the Archive, not the other way around. In general.

In this specific case, use the Spirit Wars rulebook's definition, because it's more specific and uses actual game terms, instead of the generic 'involve'. 'Involve' is like 'change', a word that has no real game definition, but could possibly mean a lot of different things. Those words are bad juju.

Hey all this came up in several games this week. What traits are lost when a personality swears fealty to your clan from an oath of fealty? Would Toku Exp3 loose the Monkey Clan and TA trait or would he loose the Monkey Clan Champion and TA trait?

The only traits that are lost to Oath of Fealty are game recognized Clan traits (Crab, Crane, and so on). Minor Clan names and all the Clan traits that are specifically unaffected by swearing fealty (Naga, Ninja, etc.) are unaffected.

In the example case, Toku would lose his TA trait, but keep his Monkey Clan Champion status.

One of the main reasons I definitely want to stay away from considering these as actions that are sorta printed on the personality is all the problems that come with printed actions and shugenja. Would the Lessons action be considered an innate ability? Can you use Fires of Retribution in response to it? Does it count for Ring of Air? Things really start to get messy at that point, and I think it's just much simpler to make the floating actions (other than Tactician) target their performers.

Does this imply that a Shugenja/Tactician (of which I believe there is only one naturally occurring in the game, Moto Notu) is performing an innate ability when he uses his Tactician trait?

No! That's exactly what I was trying to stay away from! Tactician is *not* an action printed on the card of the Tactician, it's just a floating action that can only be used to give that personality a force bonus. Doesn't target, isn't printed on the personality.

Look at it this way. Each Tactician generates a floating action that says 'Battle: Once per battle, discard a card from your hand to give this Tactician a force bonus equal to the focus value of the discard.' Each Tac generates one of those, and you choose which action you're using whenever you activate a specific Tactician's trait. It's still not printed on the card, though, so it doesn't count as an innate ability. Better?

4. If Emperor's Under- Hand is considered completely political, then a Shadowlands Horde player can't even use it to look at his opponent's cards right? Also, what makes discarding the Imperial Favor political and a use of the Imperial Favor, when the card doesn't state that it is a use of the Imperial Favor?

It shouldnt be. Technically the Hantei Sword and similar cards shouldn't be stopped at all by Confusion and the like but there's a longstanding ruling that more or less equates "discard" to "use".

It's not just a ruling, it's a rule. Check the SW rulebook, pg. 66.

In a message dated 11/26/00 11:25:37 PM Pacific Standard Time, writes:

<< Basically it means to add something more than you had in the fist place. How can a gian of 0 Fire Tokens be possible. You aren't 'gaining' anything.

Dagnabbit... I knew there was something wrong with my weight gain powder (fine print "gains of zero pounds are possible"). Seriously though, he does have a point. It seems that precedence is dictating that you can gain "zero". If we go by the language, a gain of zero is no gain and therefore should not be legal. The "up to 3" part of the phrase has been focussed on, but there are really two conditions in the phrase: "Gain up to 3 fire tokens" ...the second condition is that a gain must occur.

Completely not true. In L5R, there are 0 point honor gains, 0 point honor losses, 0 point Force bonuses, 0 point Chi penalties, and so on. Simply because something is reduced to 0, or only exists as a 0 point 'something' in the first place, doesn't mean that it's impossible.

I'm not a big fan of the combo, either, but without outright designer fiat, there's no reason why Dragon Tattoo (and Mitsu, as well) shouldn't be able to create 0 Fire tokens as an Open action.

Related question:

We were playing this weekend and the Spirit player brought out Hantie XVI when I (the mighty Crab) was at 38 honor. I didn't wish to lose 20 honor as it might have allowed the crane player to catch me. Instead I used a Geisha Assassin to off the Hantei. Afterwards the spirit player complained that this was illegal. I see no rule to prohibit it. Is that a legal play?

Yup. Killing Hantei is a perfectly legal way to shut off his honor victory prohibition.

Some rules questions

Zen Faulkes writes: Greetings,

Does this mean that Winter Warfare no longer serves as the Doom of the Ninja? [snip] Note: this would make Winter Warfare a great pro-Ninja card...

Only if, while the event occurs, the Ninja player's opponent declares an attack on a province with an army with less than 10 Chi total. You can't make the event work for you, unless your opponent isn't paying attention or doesn't know the rules.

If I'm playing Ninja with some decent Force, and Winter Warfare resolves, I attack, leaving a lone 1F defender. If you attack me when I'm bowed, I kill your army. Sounds OK.

Now, another situation: Winter Warfare resolves. I, as Ninja, play one of the many cards that force you to declare an attack against me.

Like Will of the Emperor, which also happens to be a Ninja action.

Around here, Winter Warfare has been included in decks, in a large part BECAUSE it would spell the doom of the Ninja. If that rule changes, it becomes a pro-Ninja (in the right deck) card; that's an important consequence.

Not as important as it would have been 3 or 4 months ago. Either way, that's the way that the rules work.

Can a personality use The Arrow Knows The Way when doing a rangeattack from a item attached to them (eg Shuriken or Nage-Yari)?

Well, to start with, Arrow Knows the Way won't work on Shuriken anyways. It only works when one of your personalities is bowing to produce a Ranged Attack.

But other than that, sure. Even though the Ranged Attack doesn't come from the personality (it comes from the item), the Personality is still bowing to produce the RA. To dip into hypothetical cards for a second, you could even use Arrow Knows if you had a hypothetical item card that let you bow any personality you control to produce a RA.

Then Wasp Sensei.

It says that you may not lobby for the favor. Can you still contest someone from taking the favor if your FH is higher? If so can you bow people and still give a gift as you yourself are not lobbying for the favor or would you simply contest it till your opponent bows enough people and so on to get it?<<

Just out of curiosity, why does the Wasp Sensei prohibit one from lobbying? Have the Wasp, who last I heard were all Emerald Magistrates, fallen out of favor with the emperor?

Not that I know of, but you also have to remember that the Wasp aren't your traditional Emerald Magistrates. They're a different, more independant sort, and that might have something to do with their unwillingness (or inability) to cury favor with the Emperor.

Imperial Surveyor

He allows you to dig up a region out of your discard and attach it to any province, replacing any region already in play if there is one. And it can only target a region once.

I don't have the exact wording in front of me, but does the target a region only once mean one type of region or just that one card?

Once per Surveyor per Region card. If you have 3 Farmlands, and 3 Surveyors, each Surveyour can bring back each one of the Regions once.

When a unit that cannot be targeted by opponents battle actions receives a force bonus can your opponent play overconfidence?

Sure. Overconfidence isn't a Battle action, it's a Reaction.

But, if you wanted to ask about Overconfidence vs. personalities who cannot be targeted in general, then the answer is yes. Even in situations where several personalities receive a Force bonus all at once, there's still a seperate Reaction window for each Force bonus.

Now that the game is also using Roman numerals, would Night Medallion increase Roman numeral values by 2 as well, or just Arabic numeral values?

Man, the things they don't teach you in Rules Guru school...

I'm going to say no, just because I think the Night Medallion's effect, however wide-ranging it already is, doesn't need to start getting more complicated. I mean, at some point, we could get a personality named Moto Novi or something, and then I'd have to answer questions about whether his name would become Moto Noviii if he got the Night Medallion. Only Arabic numerals.