Rulings for 24 March 2001

Rulings for 12-14 March 2001

In a message dated 3/22/01 5:20:53 PM Atlantic Standard Time, writes:

When I first saw Nightmare I thought this was a card that would allow a player to play fear against a Naga or Shadowlands player. Am I incorrect? Did I misread the card?

IF you somehow produce a Fear effect that gets applied to Personalities, and IF said Personality is "immune to" or "unaffected by Fear", then, yes, Nightmare will override the immunity. It will not allow normal Fear to bow Personalities.

If a Nightmare fear does not bow personality immune to fear what "affect" does it have on that personality? Losing it immunity to Fear attacks?

Fear targets one unit and then affects all Followers below a certain force in that unit -- that's how it's defined in the rulebook. That unit's Personality, his Spells and Items, the Personality next to him, the Stronghold of the second player to your right, and all sorts of other things aren't "immune" to that Fear in the game's definition of "immune". Fear doesn't try to bow them in the first place because of how Fear works, not because of text that says "card X is immune to Fear".

So again, I say: IF you somehow produce a Fear effect that gets applied to Personalities (and there are ways of doing this), and IF said Personality is "immune to" or "unaffected by Fear" (there are also ways of accomplishing this), then, yes, Nightmare will override the immunity. But such situations rarely occur.

L5R marriages, effects

I personally dont see the part of speech as a big hangup.

My main objection is that the game has been set up with these things not really being atomic. Under such a system, negating one part of an effect would apparently negate the whole verb clause e.g. making Twisting Ravine and Winter Warfare work the same on all "send home bowed" effects and Akodo Dagger cancel the send home of "send home bowed and dishonored". It also makes one guy who cannot be targetted/effected by RA's counter Hosigeru completely. Try to get out of that mess and you are left with a "verbs denote effects except when akodo dagger and co are in play and then it might or might not be...".

All Devil's Advocating aside, here's my firm, personal stance on this particular matter: Twisting Ravine and Akodo Dagger have zero impact on whether Generic Grammatical Construction X should be ruled as one effect or two. Specific card text can override rules and rulings, and that's exactly what these two cards do.

L5R marriages, effects

What you could do with Nick's idea though is to make a general, universally applicable ruling (and RULE in the book) that any effect that isnt a verbal form is a dependant effect upon the verb effect. That WOULD work fine IMO. E.g. Block Supply Lines and Winter Warfare. The bowing is dependant so it doesnt happen. Twisting Ravine and BSL:

"Bowed" IS a verbal form. It is a participle, a verbal adjective, in that it is derived from a verb directly. I still like the idea, though.

And you expect newbies to know this???

I can just see it now: passing out grammar pre-quizzes at the L5R demo booth next GenCon.

L5R, Tides of battle

Is ToB leagal to be played in a 1 on 1 match? Can I have a unit on both sides of a battle?

Tides of Battle can't be played by the Attacker or Defender. Assigning or moving a unit into both sides of a battle is something the card text has to crystal-clearly, explicitly allow.