post for 4 December 2001

Onisu == Oni? [Vaughn, et.al.]

In a message dated Mon, 3 Dec 2001 3:15:20 PM Eastern Standard Time, "Wilson, Mike" writes:

I kind of figured that Onisu didn't count as Oni, but I wanted to ask because "The Wind's Truth" does count as a wind card even though it's in its posessive form

I thought the Wind's truth did count as a wind card. Can we have a ruling on this vaugh, I have nothing in the archives to say otherwise.

It's not in the archive. It's in the rulebook. "The singular, plural, and possessive forms of a word are all equivalent." [p. 33] The Wind's Truth is a Wind card.

Open enviroment / Gaijutsu no Shiryo

Is Gaijutsu no Shiryo really missing the text 'This card is considered Togashi Gaijutsu for Uniqueness.'? If so will there be an errata or was that done on purpose or has AEG completely forgotten all the cards which are not gold legal?

It was done on purpose so there'd be less potential confusion among new players ("Do I have any Togashi Gaijutsus in my deck? Let me check. Was he in Perfect Cut?") and because not printing it gives us a lot more room on the card.

Rules questions

Does stand against the waves target or not, refering to the targeting limitation of Yodin Sensei. I think it s a global effect, so it doesn't target but many people argue with me, I want to be sure

It targets the leader of the opposing army under Gold Edition rules. That player then targets units in his or her own army to bow. If not enough can be bowed, there is an untargeted effect of bowing all of those without Followers.

Stand Against the Waves is therefore legal under Yodin Sensei. Yodin Sensei prohibits you from targeting other players' cards, but Stand Against the Waves targets another player (which is allowed) and then makes that player target his own cards.

Let me emend that. Stand Against the Waves is legal under Yodin Sensei in a two-player game. There IS a case where Yodin Sensei impacts it in a multiplayer game. If you have Yodin Sensei in play and someone else plays Stand Against the Waves against YOU, by virtue of you being the Attacker or Defender, you are not allowed to bow your allies' Personalities. (Ordinarily, they may be valid selections.)

Rules questions

Sometimes it targets, sometimes it doesn't. If you play a Stand when you have fewer (or as many) personalities in the battle than your opponent does, it targets all of the people that your opponent chooses to bow. If you play a Stand when you have more personalities than your opponent, then it doesn't target.

Actually, Vaughn, Dave pointed out to me that by the Gold Edition wording (at least how he interprets it), bowing all Follower-less units is an additional effect of the card, not an alternate one. So Stand always causes some targeting of Personalities on the opposing player's behalf.

Daidoji Enai, and "-" honor requirement

I know about the gold penalty...I was refering to a further 2 gold penalty.

I don't think one is necessary. I think being forced to pay full price and never gaining honor are sufficient deterents against widescale use of out-of-Clan Personalities, and I'll state right now, out in the open, that I have nothing against the use of other Clans' people where mechanically appropariate to a deck.

Discard question:

Is any time you "Use a card in your hand for it's focus value", considered discarding (Duel, Merchant Caravan, Moto Wardogs, Bayushi Ambushers, etc)?

I don't think I can safely generally rule that its a discard "any time". I can confirm that it is for duels and for the Merchant Caravan.

Questions on canceling

I've got a couple of questions.

The first one deals with canceling actions. If I cancel an action that can only be preformed once be turn can my opponent use the action again? I always took the once per turn to be a cost.

Rulebook p. 45. "If an action is *canceled*, it does not count as having been taken (or even attempted), although no costs are refunded." It can be attempted again later that turn if the cost can still be paid. If the Reaction has no costs at all, only a limit on uses, then outright canceling it has no effect besides a possible delay.

An example would be my opponent bowing for the favor and I canceling it with Outmanuvered By Force. Can he bow someone else to get the favor?

Yes, at his next opportunity to perform a Limited action.

Along the same lines what happens with I cancel a reaction from a card in play? Would my opponent be able to react again with the same reaction or does the rule of only being able to react with a printed action once per trigger stop them from doing this? An example would be my opponent uses the Towers of the Asako to cancel my sending his Samurai home and I cancel it with Fall to Your Knees. Can he just react to my Send home action again even though he's already used the printed reaction once already for the trigger?

If it's canceled it doesn't count against the once-per-printing limit. He can bow another shugenja to cancel your original action because he has not yet used his Stronghold ability.

LOL.

So what we have here is YET ANOTHER accumulated point system favoring the people who play 3 tournaments a week. "Playing often" always offsets "playing well" since even the sun shines on a dog's behind some days.

It makes me sad that ELO isn't used, a ranking system that benefits skill players before it starts the slow crawl of accumulated point syndrom. It makes me just as sad that the ATP system isn't used, which benefits players who travel to larger venues and always do well. It makes me sad that we're benefitting players for sheer frequency of play rather than quality of finish.

We are trying to reward both. What we want is a system where taking first place in just one moderately-sized tournament will give you more points than you could possibly acquire by entering even dozens of similar tournaments and getting knocked out in the first round, yet that same record of dozens of performances will give a much higher rating than entering just one tournament and getting knocked out in the first round.

It's a tight rope to walk. Systems like ELO that sound great at first turn out to have very real shortcomings when applied to the task of ranking CCG performance, like that fact that you can't get a high ranking unless you play against others who already do. (No big regular tournaments around you? Sorry, Florida. Sorry, North Dakota. Sorry, Entire Country of Italy.) We're trying to get the benefits of both systems.

Strategic L5R

Does anybody have any idea what the rules are for this yet?

Rules for Strategic L5R are in the Season of the Crane tournament kits. They will also be made available on our web site after the Season has run its course, both to give us a chance to correct any flaws that might be found and to reward organizers who've purchased a kit with a bit of exclusivity.