Rules for 17 October 2004

Your Rules for Sunday, October 17, 2004

Last Province and Honor Loss

My opponent is attacking my last province. He is at -19 honor. I defend with a dishonored personality. Can I rhetoric the honor loss to make my opponent lose by dishonor before I lose my province?

No. You lose your Personality and your Province at the same time. By the time the Honor Loss from your Personality dying Dishonorably would trigger, you are eliminated.

A question about Iuchiban Sensei

A shadowlands player can use de Iuchiban sensei, or with de the starting honor modifier of -2 it loses automatically.

There is entire section in the Accumulated Rulings under the entry "The Shadowlands Horde" with special information about their Strongholds and how they relate to effects that would raise or lower their Family Honor.

The short form is that every Shadowlands Stronghold that isn't "Sepulchre of Bone" completely ignores any "+X" or "-X" Family Honor modifiers from Sensei.

Rules Questions: Targing with actions whose effects wil be negated.

Is it legal to play dying effort on a personality whoe was previously targeted with :

Kiho Reaction: Before a target card in the current battle straightens, target one of your Shugenjas or Monks to prevent it from straightening for the rest of the turn.

There is no rule that prevents you from taking an Action just because some or all of its effects may be Negated. The only time you might have a problem is if having the effects Negated causes the Action to fail to meet Presence or Relevance. In the case of Dying Effort (which fulfills Relevance just by targeting a card in the battle), this won't be an issue.

But if you had a Battle Action that said, "Battle: Destroy all Personalities with a Force greater than 3," and the only Personality with a power greater than 3 was a Personality who could not be destroyed, you'd fail to meet Relevance and could not play the card.

On a similar note, is it legal re-dierect an effect that bows someone like Fist of the Earth to a bowed personality? Fist of the earth doesn't specify the target must be unbowed, so we ruled this was legal at the time, but weren't sure whether or not it mattered that the action would end up not producing a new effect in the end.

You ruled correctly. Bowed cards in the current battle are legal targets for Fist of the Earth's effect, so you can redirect it to them. Again, Fist will meet Relevance because it targets a card in the current battle, even if it fails to have an effect on it.

That should cover everything from Sunday, October 17, 2004 except for a question that I responded to on Monday directly. I'll include that post on the Monday, October 18, 2004 Rules Post. If I missed your question unrelated to Dawn of the Empire, please repost it with the flag [RULES] as part of a Clear and Distinct subject line. I'll get back to you at the first opportunity.