post for 20 March 2002

Gensaiken Qstn.

Just a quick question about the latest card to be revealed at the main site. Miya Gensaiken has the ability: Political Reaction: Bow Gensaiken and destroy one of your personalities to pay the cost of using the Imperial Favor for one of your Wind's actions. This counts as a Lobbying attempt. You may use this action and your Wind action regardless of stronghold restrictions. This seems to indicate, to me, that this use of the favor could not be canceled by Confusion at Court, as it is a LOBBYING attempt, not a use of the Favor. Thus the Scorpion Distractor could cancel it, but Confusion couldn't. Am I misreading this?

Yes. It's both: a use of the Favor and a lobbying attempt. Using it precludes your one normal lobby attempt for the turn (which Shadowlands players won't care about, but others will), plus it's affected by things that affect lobbying.

post for 19 March 2002

Jeffsama, I have to disagree with you. Although it may be commons sense to you and me, nowhere in any of the current gold edition rule books does it say that the Term "Duel of Force" is a duel that does not compare chi and uses force instead.

I think you'll find it more than a little difficult to locate someone who knows that duels can involve stats other than Chi yet not believe that a "duel of Force" is one of them -- particularly since we made sure the "F" was capitalized, as it should always be when referring to that card statistic.

Now, something I think you CAN conceivably do is find someone fairly new to the game who does not know that duels can use stats besides Chi, which can happen if he hasn't sat down and gone through that intimidating rulebook (*) page by page. But in this case I still think it's more than a little reasonable to expect that capital "F" to tip him off that something is up.

(*) NOTE: No sarcasm whatsoever. It IS intimidating.

In fact your page 62 reference contradicts you.

Now lets read the sentence right after that on the same page that contradicts the honorable Jeffsama. "Effects that make no mention of adding as Focus cards always raise or lower Chi."

And yet, no one has ever claimed that their +6/+7 Celestial Sword adds +13 Chi in a duel. After all, the +6 Force bonus is an "effect that makes no mention of adding as a Focus card", therefore, BY THE RULEBOOK, it "raises Chi". Don't ask me how it does. It just does. Says so right there in black and white.

I could use a term a duel of might, or a duel of strength, or a duel of honor, or even a duel of crane jerky,

You could, but none of those terms are defined within the game except "honor", and THAT term wouldn't get through editing without being changed to "Personal Honor", at which point it's at least as clear as the phrase "duel of Force". Your other examples are poor because they're not analogous.

Duel of (stat X)

On the other hand, I'd just like to clarify a handful of cards:

- Kharmic Strike

Doesn't specify. But it says "The duel results in a tie". If used in a head-punching duel, I'm not sure whether it's automatically assumed to "result in a tie", but if a Duel Of Force is a Duel proper, then I assume it results in a tie (help us Jeff!).

Kharmic Strike's effect is to change how the duel gets resolved. The actual post-focusing values of any stats are ignored.

Also, Ring of Fire: I couldn't find this in the rulings or the AoF book, so please enlighten (oh the pun is bad, but it's not even 9am):

- Ring of Fire

Can one win a "duel" of *any stat* against someone of higher *Chi*?

And then play the Ring afterwards, I assume? Yes.

Test of the Champions cards Q.

Are test of the Jade and Emerald Champion cards considered challenges, and therefore duels by extension? because they both have weird wording.

Test of the Emerald Champion results in one challenge being issued to each other player, and a duel for each challenge accepted.

Test of the Jade Champion is neither a challenge nor a duel.

Miya Gensaiken; wording question

Your Wind might have more than one ability. Naseru, in fact, has two. The truly grammatically anal would point out that having the apostrophe before the 's' instead of after indicates a single Wind, but that rule of grammar is broken so often that most people don't even realize it exists.

That, or they confuse it with the one that says an apostrophe-s is a fancy way to make a word plural.

Jeff "TRY" our HOT DOG'S! A.