Rules for July 30th

Last rules post before Gecon, everyone. Those of you going - I'll see you there. Those of you missing out - I'll see you on the flip side.

So, I've attacked, and my opponent has Counterattacked before I can Rally. I play Call To Arms, unbowing all my people. We resolve some battles. His surviving units go home. I play Rallying Cry as a Reaction to the end of the resolution segment of my last battle. Which of my cards unbows? My assumption is that the followers in units which were attacking will unbow, as long as nothing as has been done to bow them (eg old Imperial Favour), but not the people as they've also been bowed by the Call to Arms, which the Rallying Cry doesn't "prevent".

Looks about right to me. Any of your cards bowed after the Counterattack by Call to Arms, or bowed during the Counterattack for any reason (producing a Ranged Attack, Storms of War) will not be straightened by a Rallying Cry played later in the Reaction sequence.

I sit here reading the debate on I.Challenge and DPoS, and I started wondering. Where does the Honor loss from I.Challenge come from? When my oponent says "I refuse" can the targeted samurai feel guilty about it and kill himself to knock the honor loss down?

Yes, by special dispensation of the Seppuku Council of Rokugan. The honor loss is created by the Iaijutsu Challenge action card, but the rules for Seppuku have been extended to cover decisions that a Samurai makes in response to an action.

Hummingbird tattoo, states the unit cannot be "moved" into another battle if the tattoo has been used to straighten the unit.

Does this prevent them from being "assigned" to a battle if there is more than one attack phase? (counter attack etc) or are they free to assign? but just unable move in between battles...

They're free to assign to subsequent attacks, and prohibited from moving into battles. Moving is not assigning.

Surrender, the honor gain/loss is caused by surrender and not the battle itself, correct?

Actually, no. It looks like (similiar to Deeds not Words), Surrender changes the rules for battle resolution temporarily, making it so that instead of gaining 2 honor for each card destroyed, you lose 1. The honor gain from sparing the cards does come from Surrender, though. Weird.

If I am suffering an honor loss from surrender can I play defend your honor in response to the honor loss?

Nope.

Are multiple copies of surrender cumulative? Thus could I play two copies and cause two honor for each destroyed card, and cause them 4 gain for each card spared? etc.

The honor gain would be cumulative, but the honor loss would be a flate 1 for 2 rate.

Goblin Sneaks, my goblin sneaks were destroyed, during my end phase they are returning to play.... do I lose honor for them entering play again?

Yes. Something returning to play is considering to be entering play again. Any honor losses (or gains) that happened the first time will happen again, along with any other entering play effects that the card normally causes.

since attaching them is not being taken as a standard action, can I place them on a personality that cannot normally be targeted with actions? (such as kaagai's journal or crane tattoo)

Yes. They're entering play via a non-action effect, and as the 'no attaching to bowed guys' thing was folded into the normal action rules, a non-action attachement effect doesn't have to follow that rule anymore.

When re-entering play can they be attached to a bowed personality? or are they still subject to normal attachment rules?

See above.

Hi! Is the force doubling ability on the The Citadel of the Hiruma considered a force bonus for actions like Overconfidence etc? Thanks!

Yes!

What is an unconditional Honor loss? ( Shadowlands Stroghold ) And when does it happen?

An unconditional honor loss (in the context of the Shadowlands Stronghold) is one that is an absolute consequence of taking the action in question. Barring card effects or interference on the part of other players, it's an honor loss that will *always* happen. Breach of Etiquette is the perfect example. When you play Breach, the player with the highest honor *will* lose 5 honor. That's unconditional. On the other hand, look at Unrequited Love when it targets an unbowed personality. There is a chance that they'll lose honor, there's also a chance that they won't. There's no way for you to know when you play the card whether or not they're going to gain or lose honor. That's a conditional loss.

How does Chiang-Tsu intereact with the Temples of the Crow?

Very badly? Sensei is a reserved game term, and a personality with the Sensei trait doesn't count as a Sensei card type. Something would specifically have to refer to 'personalities with the Sensei trait' to get past the general rule about reserved game terms.

Regarding the Counterattack/Rallying Cry ruling:

Last I saw, the reason that Counterattack was played before Rally on the last battle was because the active player got to react first. Doesn't that mean that if I'm attacking, I should get to play my reaction, Rallying Cry, before the defender can react, as I am the active player?

Wait just a second. It would be true that Rally beat Counterattack...if the active player got to React first. That's the old rules. Post-Gold, the player to the left of the active player gets first chance to React to a game state event. That's why Counterattack now beats Rally at the last battle *always*, whereas you used to need an attack/Rally/Counter situation to create the same sort of situation, where Counterattack got played before Rallying Cry.

if i try to kolat master my opponents (unicorn) personality, can he play shinjo technique and target one of my people or another personality. i don't have either card from gold edition so i am not sure.

No, Kolat Master can't be redirected with Shinjo Technique. When you play Shinjo Tech, you have to redirect the orignal action to a new, legal target controlled by the player who controlled the redirected action. For actions that specifically target an opponent's personality, that's not possible.

Depends on the deck that needs to guard against the favour. Severed from the Emperor and Kachiko's Kiss give strong protection against it and are useful otherwise, but really only in SL.

Just a note here. Severed from the Emperor will *not* protect your cards from the Underhand. Discarding a card from an opponent's hand doesn't count as a use of the Favor. Same reason you can't play C@C against an opponent's Arrival of the Emerald Champion, you can only play it against his discard of the Favor as a cost. Just because the Favor is discarded as part of a card's effect doesn't make it a use of the Favor (Command of the Kami, anyone?).

Is it true that less experienced versions are not legal in gold unless they the jade bug? I just heard about this. I was under the impression that the old Jade ruling applied to the Gold one.

It's true. The Grandfather Clause was one of the worst parts about the rules for Jade. Originally instated so that Clans without enough Unique personalities in the basic set could fill out their decks a little bit, the rule was never revoked, and wound up being a chink in the armor of the set. Sometimes, you just wanted to print an experienced version of a personality without bringing in all of their lesser versions. With the Grandfather Clause, that was just impossible, and the environment suffered as a result of the uncontrolled card inclusions. So, for Gold, the Grandfather Clause was one of the first things to go *right* out the window.

Someone claimed that Jeff said a Celestial Sword would still give a 1F Bonus after In Search of the Future was played. Is this true, and if so, why?

Not true. The Sword still gives a +1 Chi bonus, but it's entire force bonus goes right out.

A couple of reasons:

First: ISotF says "except for bonuses from attached cards" and the Celestial Sword is an attached card.

Not to itself! The Sword gives itself a bonus before passing that bonus on to the attached personality. The first bonus is wiped out completely.

Second: The sword doesn't give a one time bonus. It is constant. If you played ISotF (forgetting that attachment clause), they bonus would go away...then the sword would immediately check for relavancy, and give the bonus again.

*sigh*

File this one under often misunderstood. The whole deal with In Search and conditional force bonuses relies on the condition *ceasing* to be met, and then being met again. Take Takuan. He gives a force bonus to all TA personalities in his army. If he's attacking, and In Search is played, his bonus is *still there*, but reduced to zero. Now, if he uses a SupTac to move to a different province, the 0f bonus he was giving everyone goes from 0 to nonexistant. Now, if he uses *another* SupTac to move back in, his bonus gets reapplied at full strength, due to the fact that it ceased existing for a second, and then got reapplied. That is *not* the case with an attached Sword. In order for something like that to happen with the Sword, you'd have to remove either a) the Sword or b) lots of your personalities from play, and then bring them back in. *Then*, the conditional force bonus thing would work, and the bonus would get reapplied.

*gasp*

Got it?

Streets of Otosan Uchi - "Unique. Each player may as a battle action once per battle per each of his or her Personalities, have one of his or her Personalities challenge an opposing Personality. The challenged Personality's controller may refuse the challenge by discarding a card from hist or her hand." The MRPed text does not appear to require that the challenge be performed by the same Personality as the "per each of his or her Personalities" Personality, so that one Personality can issue multiple challenges. The Scorpion Clan Coup version of this card unambiguously permitted each Personality only 1 challenge.

The text is close enough. Without specific idea of intent overruling a previous version, stick with the intent of the previous version. One challenge, per personality, per battle.