_Legend of the Five Rings_(tm) Frequently Asked Questions Version 1.1 / 16 November 1995 Note from the FAQ-Keeper: Hi there. Since I did the final edit on the cards and the rulebook, any inconsistencies and/or errors are my fault. My penance is to maintain this FAQ. It'll be available not only periodically on rec.games.trading-cards.misc, but also on the L5R web page (the address is at the end) and possibly elsewhere. Any questions? Email l5r@lightside.com. -D. J. Trindle Notes for version 1.1: "I hear the talking of the DJ Can't understand just what does he say?" -"Mexican Radio", Wall of Voodoo Updates and new entries are marked with +++'s. They include: Honor for destroying Fortifications Effect permanence The infamous Earthquake and Wind Born Speed ruling Rulebook contradictions on Ranged Attacks and Fear Animating discarded Followers Loss of honor for controlled cards and more Fun With Errata! -DJT Section One: The Fundamentals Q: Rings? Oh, boy! Frodo and Gandalf! A: No, you want I.C.E., next door. Q: Where did *your* rings come from, then? A: _The_Book_Of_Five_Rings_, by Miyamoto Musashi. Imagine warring clans in feudal Japan, then throw in wizards, dragons, and all sorts of beasties. Some of our other influences were Sun Tzu's _The_Art_Of_War_, the _Tao_Te_Ching_, and a bookshelf of Japanese and Chinese history and mythology. Q: You mean like _Shadowfist_(tm)? A: Not exactly. If _Shadowfist_ is John Woo, _L5R_ is Akira Kurosawa. Q: How can I get some? A: Find a game store. The official release date was October 20, so it's out there. There are 15-card Destiny Packs, which have random cards in them, and 60-card Clan Decks, which are semi-sorted. Q: "Semi-sorted", huh? Sounds dangerous. I think I'll just go pick up a bunch of boost--uh, Destiny Packs instead. A: Bad idea. You need at least one Clan Deck. First of all, the Clan Decks have a Stronghold on them, which you use in play to determine your clan affiliation and to generate gold and whatnot. Second, the semi-sorting is a good thing: 25 of the cards are predetermined in each Deck so that they'll play well right out of the box. You also get 35 random cards in each Clan Deck; your rares and most of your uncommons are random. Third, the Clan Decks have rulebooks in them. Finally, the only way to get the Ancestral Swords is to pick up Clan Decks; each one has a Sword in it. You won't get an Ancestral Sword in a Destiny Pack. Q: So does the semi-sorting mean you can play the game from just a Clan Deck? A: Yup. Now that we finally have cards, it's become a favorite method of play around the office. Break the seal, sort your cards, and have at it! Q: What's the rarity distribution like? A: That would be telling. --Oh, OK. There are four levels of rarity that we'll currently own up to: common, uncommon and rare, plus the Ancestral Swords, which are sort of a special case (being Clan Deck-only and all). There's one Sword for each clan, and there are about a hundred different cards in each of the other three levels. The October '95 _Conjure_ has a mostly-correct list (and although they say there are only 253, they do list all 308 cards. Go figure). Q: Does that include the promo sheet cards? A: Er, no. We ran a 100-card sheet (with about eighty different cards) in early August, so we'd have something to show at GenCon(tm). Almost all of the promo cards came from the Imperial Edition; some of them were changed (see Section Six). Promo cards were printed at a lower line screen than the Imperial Edition, so they're a bit fuzzier. Q: "Almost all," huh? How can I get hold of the others? A: Aside from bribery or violence perpetrated against an AEG employee, your sole recourse is to send us a self-addressed stamped envelope. Include a note telling us that you're participating in the Legend of the Five Rings Promo Card Giveaway. (And say "please.") We'll stuff the cards in whatever you send us, so if you want your promos protected from the depredations of the U.S. Postal Service, include a card holder or something for us to put your cards in. Section Two: Magic Q: I'm a little fuzzy on this whole magic thing. A: OK. It works like this. Only the Personalities which have the trait "Shugenja" get to do magic. Ordinary samurai and the like can't read the scrolls. You have to attach the spell scrolls (cards) out of your hand to the shugenja. The more spell scrolls they have, the more versatile they get. However, you can only give a shugenja as many spells as he has Chi. (For instance, Isawa Tadaka, the Phoenix Clan's Master of Earth, has a Chi of 2, so he only gets to carry two spells.) You can't cast a spell straight out of your hand. You have to bow the shugenja to produce any of those cool effects. However, the spells don't go away unless they say so. Most spells stick around the whole game, or at least the lifetime of the shugenja--which is often short. +++ Q: I have a spell card which doesn't specifically say to bow the Shugenja it's attached to. Can I use it and then another spell on the same Shugenja? A: No. *All* spells bow the Shugenja who's using them. Most of them say to do so, but we missed a couple. (Earthquake and Wind Born Speed, for instance.) +++ Section Three: Provinces Q: OK, I've got magic. How about provinces? A: Such as? Q: Well, first off, what are they? A: A province is an area on the table with a Dynasty card in it. You start the game with four of them. They represent the resources you can call upon as the Daimyo of your house. Provinces have been described as "resource windows," and that's not a bad way of looking at them. Assuming you live long enough, your entire Dynasty deck will eventually show up in one province or another, but you can't always be sure that the card you want is going to be there at the right time. Q: If my opponent attacks one of my provinces, what effect does the card *in* the province have on the battle? A: None. None at all. Cards in Provinces aren't "in play", and cards not in play don't have any effect on cards which are in play. Q: When I bring out a card from a province into play, does it stay associated with that province? A: Nope, not unless it's a Fortification, which explicitly tells you to attach it to the province it came from. Personalities and non-Fortification holdings roam freely about your Fief, defending any of your provinces, beholden to none. Q: So if my opponent destroys my province, I don't lose all the cards that came out of it? A: Right. Q: OK, so let's say I destroy an undefended province. Do I get 2 Honor for destroying the card that was in it? A: Nope. You didn't destroy the card, just the province it was sitting in. The card's being discarded is a byproduct of the province going away. Moral: Get yourself a Famous Poet or three. +++ Q: How about if I destroy a province with a Fortification card attached to it? Do I get 2 Honor for destroying the Fortification? A: No. You only get honor for destroying cards in the opposing army. (p. 32). +++ Q: If my opponent attacks my province with a zero force, and I defend with a zero force, is everything destroyed? A: Sometimes. If there are two actual armies engaged in combat, and they've both been reduced to zero force (e.g. by becoming bowed), then yes, it's a tie and both sides are destroyed. If, however, there's only one zero-force army involved--the other side just doesn't show up--then the army survives. Zero to nobody is not a tie: both sides have to show up to a battle in order to kill each other off. Q: My opponent is playing a Crane deck with a wimpy Province Strength of 5. I attack his province with a Personality who has a Force of 5. If he doesn't defend it, do I destroy the province? A: Not unless you've got some Battle or Open actions to pump up your attacker. Once you've destroyed the defending army, the force left over must *exceed* the Province Strength. There were no defenders here, but your Force of 5 has only *equaled* the Province Strength. Better Frenzy or Charge or something. Q: What happens if I use the Explosives Master to reduce a province's Strength to zero or below? A: It can't go below zero. Nothing special happens to a zero-strength province except that it's really easy to kill. Hold back a 1-point cavalry unit in your next attack and watch your opponent sweat! Section Four: What's Legal in a Battle Q: I had some questions on the way to destroying those provinces. A: Such as...? Q: When can I do an Open or Battle Action? A: Go get your rulebook and follow along. On pp. 30-31, we have the dissection of the Battle Action Segment. You'll want these pages for this whole segment. "If a player does not have a unit in the battle, he cannot conduct any actions. The only exceptions are cards which specifically allow him or her to bring a unit into the battle, such as Superior Tactics." Remember, also, that card text supercedes the rules, so any card which says "You can do this even if you don't have any units in the battle" are also OK. So the upshot is that if you don't send anybody to the attack or defense of a province, you don't get to play cards there, unless a card says "Play me anyway!" or you're bringing in a unit. Q: So I can't use a Terrain card either? A: Nope. Terrain cards are Battle Actions, too. Q: Well, how about Traversable Terrain? A: Traversable Terrain is kosher. I quote: " Battle: Terrain. Defender may move one unit he controls from an unattacked slot into this slot. Terrain effects are resolved at the end of the Battle Action Phase." It's an action which brings in a unit, so you're clear to play it. This does *not* mean that you can then merrily begin playing more Battle Actions in that battle. That last bit says, in effect, "The last thing you get to do before starting to add up Force Totals is move in one of your units." It doesn't say that they move in immediately. For that you need Superior Tactics or something similar. Q: How about if I move a unit out of a battle at one province into a battle at a province which has already been resolved? A: It just sits there. You don't recompute Force Totals just because somebody showed up too late to do anything but bury bodies. This *is* a good way to save a valuable Personality whose army is about to become dogmeat, though. Q: Boy, do I not understand the example with Heart of the Inferno in the rulebook. My card says " cast a firey bolt at *the opposing* Army", while the rulebook says "cast a firey bolt at *an* Army". What's going on? A: Er, well. The example was written at a period in time when the card did, in fact, read that way. The card changed, invalidating the example; the example inexplicably lived on to get into the rulebook. The culprit has confessed and has been brutally beaten; this may delay the next couple of expansions a bit, but we knew that you confused gamers wouldn't be satisfied with anything less. In short, the shugenja with Heart of the Inferno does, indeed, now have to be at the battle. The card says "opposing army," and therefore the card producing the effect has to be in the battle. Next time we print the rulebook, that's getting changed to something innocuous like Biting Steel. Q: How about a preview of that example? A: Least I could do. Ahem... Biting Steel reads "Open: Bow this Shugenja to give a 3F/3C bonus to target Dragon Personality or a 2F/2C bonus to any personality until end of turn." Since Biting Steel does not refer to opposing Personalities, armies, units, or any opposing cards at all, the shugenja with this spell may provide his bonus without having been assigned to an attack or defense. Q: Hey, does that mean I could use the Biting Steel effect on one of my opponent's Personalities? A: It sure does, although why you would want to escapes me. Unless a card effect says it can only affect your Personalities, everybody on the table is fair game. Section Five: Rules Clarifications +++ "Who makes the rules? *Someone* *else!*" "No Spill Blood," [Oingo] Boingo Our crack squad of rules lawyers is perpetually busy hammering out general applications of rules under which entire classes of questions can be answered. These general rulings will make it into the Emerald Edition Rulebook, but until then they'll be here. If you have a question, check to see whether the same question about a similar card is here. -DJT +++ Q: The "Jade Works" card says "Bow to produce 5 Gold if paying for a Jade card." Does that mean those cards with the jade backs? A: Nonono. Those are *Fate* cards. And the backs *aren't* jade, they're green. (This is an Official Ruling on the card back colors. Sucker your friends into bar bets!) *Jade* cards have the word "Jade" in the title. In the Imperial Edition, the only cards which qualify are the Jade Works itself, the Jade Bow, and the Jade Hand. Sorry. Q: If one of my Personalities is dishonored or otherwise has his Personal Honor reduced, do I need to check his Followers' Honor Requirements to see if they drop off? A: Nope. Once you start working for someone, you're sworn to them, and can't quit of your own free will. Q: So if I recruit a Personality who requires me to have some amount of Family Honor, and I go below that amount, he keeps working for me, just like his Followers would keep working for him? A: Right. Q: Can I use Biting Steel on a Personality who is on his way into a duel? A: Nope. L5R was expressly set up so that "timing questions" of this sort wouldn't arise more than once. Here's the secret: it's always somebody's turn to do something. Here's an example. Let's say that during my Action Phase I bow my Hawks and Falcons to gain Honor, which is a Limited action. Before I get to do another Limited or Open action, I have to give you, my opponent, a chance to do Open actions of your own. If you have a Shugenja with Biting Steel ready to go, you could bow him now to give that bonus to somebody. However, if you pass, and don't do any Open actions, then I can play an Iaijutsu Duel and initiate a challenge on one of your Personalities. You don't get a chance to do anything else: my action has to resolve before it becomes your turn to act again. So: the duel starts up, and as the challenged party, you get to choose first whether you want to focus or strike. Once the duel is over and the body is carted away, my action (the Iaijutsu Duel) has resolved, and it's your turn to do an Open action again. +++ Q: Does [some card] give its bonus permanently? A: If it doesn't say so, no. Any permanent bonuses will state that they are, in fact, permanent. All of these effects will mention permanence or award a token. Any effect which doesn't state its permanence or award a token will *expire* at the end of the turn. Oath of Fealty, for instance, says its effect is permanent; and the Bloodsword gains tokens. +++ Q: What's up with Hida Yakamo? A: The Crab Clan Oni swiped his name. "Hida Yakamo" is the Crab Clan Hero, the guy with the claw where his left hand used to be. The Crab Clan Oni has been misidentified as Yakamo; that's not his real name. He's an Oni--he may not have one. At any rate, for game purposes these are distinct cards. Q: Can't you people add? A: Yeah, yeah, I know. For the record: on page 36 of the rulebook, the last paragraph should have Shinjo winning by a total of ten to nine, not nine to eight. Sorry. Q: My opponent just used Call Upon the Wind during his turn to turn over one of my Dynasty cards, and it was an event. Does it go off now? A: Nope. Events only go off during the Events Phase. It'll occur the same time it would have if it had been left alone, viz. during your next Events Phase. Q: I've successfully attacked a province and am going to destroy the army and the province. If I play Mercy, do I still destroy the province? A: Mercy doesn't say anything about sparing the province. It's toast. Q: Can I use Alliance on the Unaligned Personalities? A: Nope. "Unaligned" isn't a clan. (Neither is Naga. Yet.) Q: I just destroyed an opposing army, but I didn't destroy the province they were defending. Can I still use the Famous Poet? A: Sure. You destroyed an opposing army, and that's one of the two times you can use the Poet. Q: I have a Goblin Warmonger (2F/1C) with a Goblin Mob attached. My opponent bows his Bayushi Kachiko and puts a -1C token on him. Does he die? A: Yup. Here's why. The rulebook says that a Personality with a zero Chi dies. The token drops him to 0C, so ordinarily he would die right away. The Warmonger, however, can't die while he has followers attached; they die instead and he becomes bowed. But now he's bowed, and doesn't have any followers attached, and still has that -1C token. He's doomed. Q: I have a bunch of questions about Blazing Arrows... A: Fire away. Q: The card reads (in part) "The gold cost of Blazing Arrows is 1G per card that can use the Ranged Attack bonus." Does this mean I have to pay for every cards that can do a ranged attack, whether or not I intend to use them that way? A: Yup. That's what it says. Q: How about my shugenja with the Fury of Osano-Wo? Do I have to pay for him too? And do I have to pay 1G for each counter on the spell? A: Yes and no. He is ranged attack-capable, so you have to pay for him, but he can only use one of those tokens this turn, so you only have to pay 1G. Q: What if I don't have any ranged attack cards in my army when I play Blazing Arrows, and so don't pay any gold, but then I bring a new ranged attack guy in with (say) Superior Tactics? Does he get the Blazing Arrows bonus for free? A: Yup. Point out to your opponent what a brilliant and thrifty general you are. +++ "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" -Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" Q: The rulebook contradicts itself on Ranged Attacks and Fear, doesn't it? A: It sure does. Ranged Attacks and Fear both work the same way. You can kill a Force 2 follower with a Ranged 2 Attack, and you can scare him with a Fear 2 effect. The main rules and the Glossary are the source of the conflict. The Ranged Attack rules (pp. 44-45) should read "...the target is destroyed if the Force of the attack is _greater_than_or_equal_to_ the Force [or Force Bonus] of the target." The Glossary entry (p. 53) is OK. The Fear rules (p. 46) are fine, but the Glossary entry for Fear should read "Bow all troops in the target unit with Force _less_than_or_equal_to_ the Fear Value." Q: I just discarded a Follower card. Can I use Animate the Dead to attach him to a Personality? A: Nope. Animate the Dead specifically says "...back into play," and discarded Followers never made it into play in the first place. You only get to Animate those cards which are authentically Dead. Q: My opponent just brought a creature Follower into play, and lost Family Honor as instructed by the card. If I steal that Follower with the Lion Clan Beastmaster, do I lose the honor too? A: No. The honor loss is a consequence of bringing the card into play. Shuffling it around doesn't bring it any further into play, so there's no ensuing honor loss. +++ Section Six: Cards. "Oops." Into every 300-card set a few errors must fall. Here are the ones we're currently owning up to: Silver Mine: Text box refers to "Iron Mine." It should read "Silver Mine." Diamond Mine: Has a crimson dragon, yet produces no honor. No big deal, as the dragon doesn't indicate any honor gain. Temple of the Ancestors: Should have crimson dragons instead of green ones. Egg of P'an Ku: Yes, it's an action, not an item. +++ Water Dragon: Missing text. The Water Dragon should read "Can copy the Innate Ability of any Shugenja *in* *play* for one turn." Blackmail: It's a Limited Action, but doesn't say so on the card. Mists of Illusion: should read "...add 5F to one *of* *your* Personalities until the end of the turn." Earthquake and Wind Born Speed: should have explicitly stated "Bow this Shugenja." See Section Two. +++ Furthermore, there were some changes between the promo run cards and the Imperial Edition. They were: Naga Warlord: Changed Personal Honor value (was 0; now 2). Bayushi Togai: Fixed text box. Now refers to "Togai" rather than "XXX". Shinjo Hanari: Changed card art. Yotsu Seiki: Changed name (from Motto Seiki) and card art. Togashi Yoshi: Changed gold cost (from 3 to 6). Matsu Turi: Changed everything but the card art. Now "Matsu Yojo". Hida Amoro: Changed gold cost (from 5 to 7). Togashi Mitsu: Imperial Edition version bows after any battle; promo version doesn't. Frenzy: Changed size of Force bonus (from F4 Crabs/F3 everybody else to F3 Crabs/F2 everybody else). Contentious Terrain: Changed card text: now has completely different effect. (Used to let you draw cards; now gives your Personalities a Force bonus.) Naginata and Dairya were both misspelled on the promo sheet. There is errata to both "Naganata" and "Darya" to that effect. Don't put six of 'em in your deck, three with each spelling. The current ruling on the promo cards is to play them as they're written. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em, folks. Section Seven: Contact Information On the World Wide Web, visit the Official L5R Home Page at: http://www.isomedia.com/homes/aeg/l5r.html Send email to l5r@lightside.com if you have further questions. Keep an eye on the newsgroup rec.games.trading-cards.misc as we post there fairly often, and monitor the traffic for questions and comments. Section Eight: Obligatory Legal Boilerplate Legend of the Five Rings, Empire of Rokugan, Fu'Leng, graphic design elements and all character names and their distinctive likenesses are TM and (C) 1995 Alderac Entertainment Group and ISOMEDIA. All rights reserved. Published by Alderac Entertainment Group and ISOMEDIA.