Akodo Dagger

Legend of the Five Rings card from Hidden Emperor 5

Card Type

Item

Force

+1

Chi

+1

Gold Cost

3

Card Text

This Personality will not be dishonored.

Focus Value

4

Legality

Hidden Emperor (Jade)

Deck

Fate

Printings

Rulings

• Truly is not a Weapon. [DW, l5rinfo, 10/29/98] Accumulated Rulings, February 8, 2000, p. 13

Rules Q&A

• Q: I personally dont see the part of speech as a big hangup.
  My main objection is that the game has been set up with these things not really being atomic. Under such a system, negating one part of an effect would apparently negate the whole verb clause e.g. making Twisting Ravine and Winter Warfare work the same on all "send home bowed" effects and Akodo Dagger cancel the send home of "send home bowed and dishonored". It also makes one guy who cannot be targetted/effected by RA's counter Hosigeru completely. Try to get out of that mess and you are left with a "verbs denote effects except when akodo dagger and co are in play and then it might or might not be...".
  A: All Devil's Advocating aside, here's my firm, personal stance on this particular matter: Twisting Ravine and Akodo Dagger have zero impact on whether Generic Grammatical Construction X should be ruled as one effect or two. Specific card text can override rules and rulings, and that's exactly what these two cards do. Jeff Alexander, "Rulings for 24 March 2001", 29 Mar 2001
• Q: If the Akodo Dagger can separate the "dishonored" part of "send home bowed and dishonored", why can't Winter Warfare separate the "send home" part? There's nothing to say that the "all other effects" text on the Akodo Dagger isn't just useful clarification....
  If that were true it would have already been mentioned. Zen said his ruling was arbitrary, and I think Nick's arguments are well-presented and logical, not to mention correct. As such, an arbitrary ruling should be reversed.
  A: My dictionary has two definitions for "arbitrary":
  1. Decided or fixed at the discretion of an arbiter ("A person having power to decide a dispute") or judge. 2. Fixed or arrived at through will or caprice; decisive but unreasoned.
  I assure you the ruling is arbitrary only in the first sense. This is how rulings have ALWAYS worked in L5R. There's only one head on the top of the totem pole. Dave set things up that way on purpose, and I see his reasons and agree with the philosophy. Any time a final decision rests in the hands of one person, it will be, by definition, arbitrary.
  The current way things work was internally debated for a long time. It involved polling the opinions of not only the Rules Team but top-level players at GenCon 2000. It involved estimations of how comprehensible each ruling would be to new players AND how consistently applicable it would be at the hands and in the minds of existing ones. No coins were flipped. No 8-balls were shaken. Jeff Alexander, "Rulings for 7-9 March 2001", 18 Mar 2001