Horiuchi Rikako

Legend of the Five Rings card from The Truest Test, Samurai Edition Banzai

Card Type

Personality

Force

1

Chi

4

Honor Requirement

2

Gold Cost

7

Personal Honor

3

Clan

Unicorn

Keywords

Loyal, Unique, Advisor from the Shogun, Shugenja, Unicorn Clan

Card Text

Absent Remote Battle: Move Rikako to the current battlefield. Straighten a card in your army there.
Limited, w: Look at the top four cards of your Fate Deck. If one is an Item, show it and put it in your hand. Put the rest back in any order.

Legality

Age of Enlightenment (Lotus), Race for the Throne (Samurai)

Deck

Dynasty

Story

2006 Gift of the Shogun Top of Clan - Kit Falbo

Printings

Rules Q&A

• Q: question: is this correct? I play khan's gambit w/ my one bowed personality, i use the battle-ability of Horiuchi Rikako moving into battlefield and straighten my bowed personanity / or use the ability of Heavenly Kobune of Sultengu moving into battlefield from home / or moving in of Chagatai exp4 from home / or using akodos grave to destroy the terrain ?????
  A: OK, capitalization and punctuation count, folks. I'm not the greatest typographer in the world, but I want sentences that start with a capital letter and end in a (single) period, exclamation point, or question mark.
  Khan's Gambit says, "You cannot use abilities on your cards at this battlefield."
  You are free to use abilities on cards that are not at that battlefield, even if the ability moves them into the Battlefield as one of its effects. Martin Lund, "khan's gambit + moving in", 9 Nov 2007
• Q: Horiuchi Rikako: Can I use her ability when she is at home(?)
  A: Yes. Zen Faulkes, "Horiuchi Rikako's Battle ability", 15 Aug 2007
• Q: Some more context for this:
  viewtopic.php?t=57010
  The original debate was on bowed cards being able to use their abilities to straighten themselves, more specifically Horiuchi Rikako. My argument was, as you confirmed elsewhere, that no because it was conditional. Then the debate became that "conditional" as defined by the rulebook was too ambiguous. The rulebook reads:
  An effect is conditional if, at the time the action, Event, or trait
  producing that effect begins resolving, it has not yet been determined whether the effect will occur.
  (bolded for emphasis)
  Then it became important to know when the action begins to resolve. Again, by the rules the steps of taking an action are:
  1. Announce the action or card.
  2. Select all required initial targets, if any. Decide upon and select any
  optional initial targets.
  3. Pay all costs.
  4. Resolve all effects in the order written.
  If "Resolving the action" is not the same as "resolve all effects" then the action could be considered to "begin resolving" at a different time.
  If it's at the same time as announcement (step1) (or "after" announcement, or "before" targets), then a card like Asahina Sekawa XP2 would not be able to straighten itself since it hasn't picked targets yet (step2) and therefore doesn't know that he will be his own target - making it conditional. Is this logic correct (assuming the if statement is true)?
  If it's at the same time as targeting (step2) then it would seem to fall to the active player to decided whether you "begin resolving" the action first or chosing targets first. Right?
  If it's at any other time (after targets, before, during or after costs...) then Asahina Sekawa XP2 could straighten himself if he had already picked himself as a target. However, if "begins resolving" is after announcement, then an action that has a conditional straightening effect and is therefore illegal to use while bowed (like Horiuchi Rikako, for example), only becomes illegal to even announce after it's already been announced, since you don't check if the effect is conditional until after you announce it (assuming again that "begins resolving" is after announcement)
  Does that make anymore sense?
  A: Oh, so the question is really about bowed cards using actions that can straighten cards. I've been thinking on that one. I'm pretty sure the solution to that is not going to depend on when actions resolve, though. Zen Faulkes, "Action Resolution Take II", 29 May 2007
• Q: Horiuchi Rikako: can I use the action while she is in the battle to simply straighten a card in the army?
  A: Yes. Zen Faulkes, "Horiuchi Rikako Battle Ability", 29 May 2007
• Q: If Horiuchi Rikako is at home, bowed, can she use her battle action to move into a battlefield and straighten herself?
  A: No. Zen Faulkes, "Horiuchi Rikako", 27 May 2007
• Q: If Horiuchi Rikako is in the current battle, bowed, can she use her battle action to straighten herself?
  A: No.
  Lotus rules, pg. 39: "Abilities on a bowed card or Stronghold cannot be used unless their costs or effects will straighten that card or Stronghold." The ability here is conditional. It may straighten the card, or it may not. Zen Faulkes, "Horiuchi Rikako", 27 May 2007