Like a Twig

Legend of the Five Rings card from Road to Ruin

Card Type

Strategy

Gold Cost

0

Card Text

As a Focus Effect, both Personalities use their Force as their duel stat, and the loser is destroyed.
Battle: Bow your target Personality's unit to destroy a target enemy Personality's unit with lower total Gold Cost than your unit's. If the destroyed unit had no attachments in it with 1 or higher Gold Cost, straighten your unit. Lose 3 Honor.

Focus Value

1

Legality

Shattered Empire, War of the Seals (Onyx Edition)

Deck

Fate

Printings

Rules Q&A

• Q: So if the active player wanted Brutal Lesson to resolve last the FE from Like a Twig would completely go away or just the use of current force as the duel stat?
  A: If BL resolves last, it will only supplant the stat used by the player who focused it; the other player would still be beholden to using Force via "Like a Twig"'s effect. Brook Cunningham, "Onyx Lives #rules-questions", 16 Sep 2026
• Q: [ShE] Like a Twig states that I must bow my unit. Does this mean that it doesn't work unless ALL cards in my unit are unbowed. So if even just one card in my unit is bowed, I cannot use Like a Twig with that unit? Or is there some kind of distinction between personalities and attachments, like I can use it even if an attachment is bowed so long as the personality is unbowed, or I can use it even if the personality is bowed so long as at least one attachment is unbowed?
  A: is correct. The entire unit must be unbowed to start. Brook Cunningham, "Onyx Lives #rules-questions", 10 Oct 2025
• Q: I want to get clarification on this cards negate effect. specifically the limits of it. things that I think are within its scope, Negating duels targeting a spider clan personality at the same location, Negating force penalties, bowing or destruction on other spider clan personalities, things which solely target the spider clan personality. this I am more unclear on, like a twig like effects that bow the unit or destroy a unit? would the negate prevent it all or would it simply prevent the targets bowing/ destruction? effects like meditating the mind, it has to target the personality to effect the unit, would it nullify the effect on the unit too or just the personality? like i am not trying to break anything, just want to know what this does spesifically as i thought i knew what churo did and was pleasantly suprised so wanted to get clarification here too
  A: Effects that target a unit target all of the cards in that unit, including the Personality. Shaoru's negate will stop the effects on the targeted Personality only, so the other cards in the unit would still be affected (destroyed, bowed, etc.).
  If it helps to think of it this way, consider that an effect is a change of game state. So, a Personality targeted by the action won't have any changes from the action applied to them, but anything else will.
  (Replying to a player: "So in the example of Like a twig it would destroy all attachments but the personality would remain unscathed, but for meditating mind, the personality would suffer no ill effect and so would do absolutely nothing and so not worth triggering.") I don't have the cards handy, but that sounds correct. Definitely for MM, as I remember it only bows attachments, so your assessment that Shaoru would do nothing is correct.
  (Replying to a player: "for reference. as an additional aside to like a twig, it requires you to bow a unit of fully unbowed cards right?") Yes, everything in the first Personality's unit has to be bowed by that card's effect for the effect after the "to" to happen. And yeah, as you said, Shaoru would stop the Personality's destruction, but the rest of the unit goes poof. Jeff Williamson and Brook Cunningham, "Onyx Lives #rules-questions", 1 May 2024