replies to the 6 June digest

Performed Actions (was: replies to 28 May 2001)

There's a rulebook definition (Spirit Wars rulebook, p. 49) more recent than this FAQ entry. To paraphrase, a card performs an action if either the action is printed on that card or the card bows as a cost of the action.

Gift of Fealty does not fit either of these cases. It is not performed by the Personality. Enough Talk! cannot be played.

Just so you know my feelings on the matter, as well as my reasoning: Darn!

I think your reasoning is dangerous. "He's mine!" is performed by the personality who's being replaced in the duel.

No it's not. The bowing is not a cost.

Iaijutsu Challenges, Duels and Arts are not performed - no one bows.

True. I have more to say on this at the end.

Any number of Actions which count as a use of the Tactician trait - default (the actual Action is in the rulebook not on the card), Superior Strategist, Master's Tactics, etc - are not performed by the Tactician.

The Gold Edition rulebook will define discarding for a Tacticial Force bonus as an action performed by the Tactician.

Then there's a whole slew of Battle Actions: a Charge is _surely_ performed :-) The rulebook talks about changes to personalities, but only as costs.

This generally isn't a serious problem - I'm not sure I would agree that Gift of Fealty is performed by the targetted personality, anyway, I just want a way to counter Pekkle bombs - but it does become important with Touching the Soul.

Jeff, you might want to reread what you wrote about this for Zen's Card of the Week. That was in 1998, and you may be standing by the wording in the Spirit Wars rulebook, in which case Zen needs to add some notes to the entry for it!

The definition of "performed" has always been a sticky issue.

Ask yourself this: is Meditation performed by the target Personality? What about Uncertainty? Most people who answer quickly would say "yes" and "no". (I know you'd say "yes" to Meditation because of your attitute towards Charge.)

Consider, however, that they're both actions that can target any Personality belonging to any player. (One is Open and one is Limited, but why should that matter?) There isn't enough mechanical difference between these two cards to support treating one as performed and the other as not. The rulings are inconsistant when compared back to back.

The scope of this problem renders individual intent-based rulings infeasible. The term has been used for a long, long time without a formal definition. Between having too many cards on which to issue specific rulings and the unacceptable subjectivity of the FAQ's guideline ("it's performed unless it does something bad"), the only solution was settling on an objective, easily- defined-and-remembered rule with the full knowledge that it wouldn't apply seamlessly.

Soul's Sacrifice Question

In light of the new ruling on personalities performing actions...

Soul's Sacrifice specifically states that it is the personality that is sending the opposing personality home. Does this mean:

a. The personality does not actually perform Soul's Sacrifice: that bit about the personality sending the opposing personality home is just flavor text.

b. The personality does perform the Soul's Sacrifice, because it specifically says on the card that this is so.

or

c. The Rules Junta is reconsidering this new ruling and we will get back to you when we have an answer.

b.

Also, are personalities now not performing Honorable Seppukku? Honorable Seppukku neither bows the personality nor is it an ability of the personality.

Technically, they don't perform it. What problem did you discover with this?

Rules for 6 June 2001

Fair enough. You answered, supported by the archive, that you cannot play Kamoko's Charge even if you have a cavalry unit in that battle that was assigned during infantry.

This seems to fly in the face of the rather well-established (or so I thought) ruling that allows you to play Evil Portents in a battle if you have a unit there and Portents will affect the stats of units present at that battle.

So, how is Kamoko's Charge so different that it cannot be even if "you have a unit in the battle and this action affects the stats of a card in the battle?"

Evil Portents causes an immediate change to things. Kamoko's Charge doesn't affect anything right away -- it does NOT give a bonus to current Cavalry units that were assigned during Infantry Maneuvers. It gives a bonus to all such units that do so later this turn. That's the difference.

Rules for 6 June 2001

If this personality wasn't meant to be Iuchi Shahai all grown up, or if the designers didn't want this card overlayed on Iuchi Shahai, why give her the name? They could have called her the Bride of Iuchiban or something, and forgotten about the rogue Unicorn. On the other hand, if the story team wanted to present the Return of Shahai, why not as a card that can be legitimately labelled Iuchi Shahai exp 2? Surely someone could have come up with a set of stats that wouldn't have resulted in a broken personality?

Not for Gold Edition. Gold is a base set. Except for the special deck-only cards, base sets contain only reprints. (Shahai and the "Soul of..." cards bend that rule only a tiny bit.) We couldn't do a never-before-seen Shahai Exp2.

Gold Edition Isawa Taeruko Scan

If they had made it a 'Limited Action', it would have reduced her effectiveness to a more balanced level. Killing her ability to pay for the fortification was going overboard, but hey, its what I expect for all the whining done against the Phoenix.

Whining does not result in play balance changes.

A change to a Clan about which much whining was done does not logically imply that the whining caused the change.

Taeruko changed because she was giving a too-good-for-the- game speed boost to a select few Clans in combination with another strong (but not, in my opinion, overpowered) card. Since said other card was not going to be in Gold Edition, and since Taeruko was, and since Taeruko has far greater potential for causing future troubles, she's the one that got changed.

Taeruko Debate

If this were MAGIC, I'd agree with you, they have never asked, or will ask, the opinion of the players for the storyline.

Utterly irrelevant. Really. Taeruko was not changed for storyline reasons. Included in Gold for storyline reasons? Yes. Changed? No.

Legality of older cards

(And don't argue that you can still use your cards in Open because with the rules changes for the favor etc., I would be surprised that there is even a mention of "Open" by the end of the year.)

But that's exactly what I'm going to argue. Because I think AEG is a smart enough company to realize that they cannot let Open disappear. They would lose far more players than they could ever hope to gain by ending their support for Open tournaments. I think your prediction is flat out wrong, and therefore I think all your worry is for naught. Time will tell, I guess, but I didn't see Jade and Jade ex replace Open, and I don't expect to see Gold do it either.

Wizards was going to sanction Open tournaments as freely as they did before. Alderac is going to do it now. If Open tournaments die, it will be because no one wants to play them anymore. So far, this has never happened except locally and temporarily, as a result of a perfectly natural pendulum-swing of player preference. This, despite innumerable cries and wailings of doom exactly like this one when the Jade formats were first introduced. *Exactly* like this one.

In fact, with only one new alternative tournament format instead of two (there will be no Gold Extended), Opens should happen even more often than they did during Jade. If you want my knee-jerk predictions.

Some quick Rules Questions Concerning Fear effects, Fealty

2.) Fear effects-they target a UNIT, correct? Because I also seemed to find an entry in the archive saying that because they target a unit, they also individually target the cards within said unit. Is this the case, or am I misunderstanding the archive? Because if they do, the Asako Towers can be frustratingly immune... :~(

They don't target every single card, but they do target the Personality, since targeting a Personality and targeting a unit are fully equivalent. Those Towers are going to stay frustrating, I'm afraid.