Flanking Action
Legend of the Five Rings card from Khan's Defiance, Samurai Edition Banzai, Three Dynasties
Open in Oracle of the Void
- Card Type
- Strategy
- Gold Cost
- 0
- Card Text
- Battle: If your current army has more units than the current enemy army, bow your performing Samurai: The enemy leader targets and destroys a Personality in his current army.
- Focus Value
- 1
- Legality
- Age of Enlightenment (Lotus), Race for the Throne (Samurai), Three Dynasties
- Deck
- Fate
Printings
Khan's Defiance
- Rarity
- Rare
- Flavor Text
- The Unicorn's assault took the Lion completley by surprise. The border fell within an hour, and the Khol marched into the Lion provinces.
- Artist
- Ed Cox
- Card Number
- 118
- Publisher
- Alderac Entertainment Group
Samurai Edition Banzai
- Rarity
- Rare
- Artist
- Ed Cox
- Card Number
- 67
- Publisher
- Alderac Entertainment Group
Three Dynasties
- Rarity
- Fixed
- Flavor Text
- "This is how it is done, Ikoma." - Shinjo Masahiro
- Artist
- Ed Cox
- Card Number
- 401
- Publisher
- Onyx Lives
- Publisherurl
- https://sites.google.com/view/the-onyx-lives-project/home
Rules Q&A
- Q: Flanking Action Battle: If your current army has more units than the current enemy army, bow one of your target Samurai there: The enemy leader targets and destroys a Personality in his army.
The Crab's Strength Battle: Target one of your opposed Crab Clan Personalities: Give him +4F. Until the battle ends, actions taken by enemy players that target him have the additional cost, "Discard a card."
If my opponent has used the Crab's Strength on his personality, then I use Flanking Action, if he chooses his personality that has been targeted by Crab's Strength, do I have to discard?
Thanks,
A: No, you do not.
Required Targeting occurs before costs are paid, but the targeting of the enemy's Personality is not Required because you're not the one doing it:
http://rules.l5r.com/Abilities_and_actions#B._Required_Targeting (emphasis mine): "An action’s required targets consist of anything that is targeted by the player taking the action in the action's constraints or effects..."
So, that targeting happens as part of the Flanking Action's effects (Step D in "Using an ability"). Your opponent choosing his Crab Strength'd Personality will add the cost of "Discard a card" to your action. But, adding a cost during the effects won't force you to pay it because you've already passed the payment step (Step C), and it won't stop the effects from happening, because it was already checked whether you paid costs directly before any of your action's effects started resolving:
http://rules.l5r.com/Abilities_and_actions#D._Action_resolves: "If mandatory costs and required targeting have been met, activate the action’s effects in order." Brook Cunningham, "Flanking Action + Crab's Strength", 2 Aug 2008 - Q: Flanking Action: "Battle: If your current army has more units than the current enemy army, bow one of your target Samurai there: The enemy leader targets and destroys a Personality in his army."
If I am in a battle where my opponent controls the same number of units that I do (or has more units), can I: a) play Flanking Action without paying the cost of bowing a Samurai (only have to pay the cost if I have more units) or b) not play Flaning Action because I do not meet the restriction of needing to have more units than my opponent.
I'm unclear about the "If your current army has more units...", does it apply to restricting the action's ability to be played or does it modify the cost of the action?
A: It restricts "the action's ability to be played".
Because it comes first in the constraints and costs block, "If your current army has more units than the current enemy army" is a constraint; "bow one of your target Samurai there" is a cost.
See the example here. Alex Jones, "Flanking Action", 31 Mar 2008