I talked to the judges following the Kiku Matsuri initial tournament and got an idea of what the most commonly asked questions were. Most are straight forward, and a lot of these questions are answered right in the Learn to Play and Rules Reference, though these might be some helpful tips for those playing for the first time. I heard more advanced questions were asked of the judges in later tournaments (I have not gone into these).

1) The attacking player immediately takes the fate on a ring when declaring a conflict. The attacking player also takes the fate when a ring is changed to another ring.

2) If you have a character in a conflict with a dash as a skill, and the conflict type changes to the dash type, the character is bowed and sent home.

3) Characters with a dash as a skill value cannot have their political/military skills swapped by any card effect.

4) If a province is broken during the conflict phase by a card effect, the conflict does not end but continues to determine the winner (this is also in the LTP FAQ)

5) If a conflict is tied at zero/zero and both players pass, there is no winner, and the ring is sent back to the unclaimed ring pool.

6) You can declare one military and one political conflict per round. If a conflict's ring type is changed, it does not affect what you have to declare. For example, if you declare a military conflict and it is then changed by a card affect to political, you would still only have the opportunity to declare a political for your second conflict.

7) You do not place fate on characters that are 'put' into play (though you may still place fate on those characters through a separate card effect).

8) When you play Endless Plains to break your own province, it does not count as your opponent breaking a province (i.e. 'For Greater Glory')

9) There was a bit of confusion by players around if you 'must' meet what an ability says. Here are the general principles (see RR for actual rules wording):

- To play an ability, you MUST meet the cost and targeting requirements, meaning anything BEFORE the "-" dash in an ability MUST be met. i.e. if a card says "choose two participating characters -" then there must be two participating characters to activate the ability. Edit: A target must also be an eligible target, meaning at the time of targeting the effect could affect the target (not including referential targets).

- Complete as much of an effect as you can given the circumstances (anything AFTER the "-" dash). If all of an effect can't happen, that's OK. For example, if an effect says "look at the top 5 cards of your deck" and you only have 3 cards, that's OK.

- The effect (after the dash) must at least make SOME change to the game state. If an effect doesn't make any change to the game state, the ability can't be activated.

Let's look at an example, as this question was commonly brought up for "Shameful Display: Action: During a conflict at this province, choose 2 participating characters - honor one of those characters and dishonor the other.". First off, there MUST be two participating characters to meet the targeting requirements. Next, assuming both yours and your opponent's characters are dishonored, you are allowed to play this card, as you would be able to honor your character. Because you changed the game state by honoring your character, the fact that you're not able to dishonor an already dishonored opponent's character is OK. Now let's assume you choose two participating characters that your opponent controls, one is honored and the other has no status. You would be able to dishonor the character with no status, and honor the character that is already honored. Because you changed the game state by dishonoring your opponent's character, it's OK that honoring an already honored character can't be fulfilled.

Edit: Autocorrect is not good for Matsuri.

Another edit for eligible targets.

Thanks for posting this. I think the reason many of these questions seem straightforward is because a lot of players on here read the L2P and RR when they were released online. A lot of players in the Kiku Matsuri, however, had just seen the L2P rules for the first time when they were handed their core set (and didn't get to read the RR at all before the rounds began).

I'm sure there will be another wave of that come release time, so I would even recommend anyone running events to print the OP for quick reference at your launch program events and demos.

1 and 4 are the big ones I was curious about.

For no. 7, a character played from hand can have fate placed upon them, but a character entering play from a card effect cannot have fate placed upon them. Example: Hida Kisada played by using charge cannot have fate placed upon him, but a stoic gnso played from hand can have fate placed upon him after paying the cost of the character.

if a card does not state 'once per conflict' or 'once per round' can you play multiple copies of that card if you have multiple copies in your hand. I presume the once per round rule is to prevent people auto playing the same action on a char multiple times.

22 hours ago, LuceLineGames said:

Let's look at an example, as this question was commonly brought up for "Shameful Display: Action: During a conflict at this province, choose 2 participating characters - honor one of those characters and dishonor the other.". First off, there MUST be two participating characters to meet the targeting requirements. Next, assuming both yours and your opponent's characters are dishonored, you are allowed to play this card, as you would be able to honor your character. Because you changed the game state by honoring your character, the fact that you're not able to dishonor an already dishonored opponent's character is OK. Now let's assume you choose two participating characters that your opponent controls, one is honored and the other has no status. You would be able to dishonor the character with no status, and honor the character that is already honored. Because you changed the game state by dishonoring your opponent's character, it's OK that honoring an already honored character can't be fulfilled.

from "Target" in the comprehensive rules:

This ruling seems wrong. Yes, it changes the game state, but you don't have a legal target since you can't target a dishonored character with an effect that will dishonor them.

Edit: answered in another thread

It is legal because, at the time of targetting, it isn't known who will be honored and who will be dishonored. That decision comes later.

That said, this is a terrible example to give for "board state must change" because the only reason it is legal is due to very specific card wording.

3 hours ago, Yogo Gohei said:

That said, this is a terrible example to give for "board state must change" because the only reason it is legal is due to very specific card wording.

I'm glad you feel so strongly about my example. Not only is this an excellent example of changing the board state, it was one of the most commonly asked cards at the tournament (and cleared up by the marshall judge, aka a developer). If neither status could be changed then the ability could not be activated. It also shows that you need to be able to change the board game state and don't need to fulfill the entire effect of a card. The other thread does have a valid point, that the targets need to be able to be affected in some way to be considered a target; though once you carry out the effect, it can result in a target not being affected.

9 hours ago, Matrim said:

if a card does not state 'once per conflict' or 'once per round' can you play multiple copies of that card if you have multiple copies in your hand. I presume the once per round rule is to prevent people auto playing the same action on a char multiple times.

By default, abilities can be activated once per round per copy of the card, and also reactions can only be activated once per round per copy of the card. "Limit X" means that the ability can be used X many times per round instead of the one default. "Max X" means an ability can be used X many times per round by all of the copies of that card per round. The RR says it more eloquently under Limit X and Max X.

Edit: to answer your question, if you have multiple copies of a card without any limitations, each copy of the card can be activated once per round.

8 hours ago, HidaYama said:

For no. 7, a character played from hand can have fate placed upon them, but a character entering play from a card effect cannot have fate placed upon them. Example: Hida Kisada played by using charge cannot have fate placed upon him, but a stoic gnso played from hand can have fate placed upon him after paying the cost of the character.

It's actually the wording 'Put' into play. If anything says 'put', then it has special rules, and characters put into play cannot have fate placed on them. See 'Put into Play' in the RR.

Looks like our meta will have a rules guru. Nice write-up, LLG.

On 8/22/2017 at 10:31 AM, HidaYama said:

For no. 7, a character played from hand can have fate placed upon them, but a character entering play from a card effect cannot have fate placed upon them. Example: Hida Kisada played by using charge cannot have fate placed upon him, but a stoic gnso played from hand can have fate placed upon him after paying the cost of the character.

DUDE! Hida Yama was my first L5R RPG character's name back in the 90's, rock on! (Yama means mountain, so a very appropriate Hida name)

On 22.08.2017 at 0:27 AM, LuceLineGames said:

8) When you play Endless Plains to break your own province, it does not count as your opponent breaking a province (i.e. 'For Greater Glory')

Overruled: breaking Endless Plains for its ability enables your opponent to use For Greater Glory or Shinjo Altansarnai.

http://www.cardgamedb.com/forums/index.php?/topic/37036-endless-plains-reactions-to-you-breaking-a-province/