Imperial Edicts

Legend of the Five Rings card from Lotus Edition, Diamond Edition, Gold Edition, Hidden Emperor 5, Wrath of the Emperor

Card Type

Strategy

Gold Cost

0

Keywords

Favor, Imperial, Political

Card Text

Favor Imperial Political Open: Discard the Imperial Favor to give each of your Provinces +4 strength.
Favor Imperial Political Reaction: Before a Kiho action or an action on a Spell or Shugenja resolves, discard the Imperial Favor to negate the action's effects.

Focus Value

4

Legality

Age of Enlightenment (Lotus), Four Winds (Gold), Hidden Emperor (Jade), Rain of Blood (Diamond)

Deck

Fate

Printings

Rules Q&A

• Q: I'm trying to determine what Imperial Edicts targets when it cancels actions. My assumptions at the moment are: When cancelling a Kiho or Spell, Imperial Edicts targets the Kiho or Spell but not the caster of the Kiho or Spell. When cancelling an Innate Ability, Imperial Edicts targets the Shugenja who has the ability.
  A: Canceling an action targets the action. It only targets a card if the action is from an Action card. Jeff Alexander, "post for 27 February 2003", 28 Feb 2003
• Q: Important point: [Rise From the Ashes] also stopped honor gains, too. By buying turns against both dominant victory conditions, it made alternate victory conditions (or alternate strategies for achieving military or honor wins) more viable. Something many players had advocated, I might add.
  Ayuh, no arguments there. For whatever reason, though, it was never played much as meta against honor decks. (That I experienced, anyway.) In any case, the point I was making was that it was fine by itself. It became "broken" in combination with later cards. That one card became such a point of contention in the community that we were having magic bullets thrown at it (Imperial Edicts, for instance), redefining the rules of what's political and what's not,
  A: The definition of "Political" did not change. What happened is that someone noticed the very tricky fact that Rise From the Ashes met the definition. Jeff Alexander, "post for 16 July 2002", 16 Jul 2002
• Q: Imperial Edicts states Political Reaction: When a card casts a Kiho or Spell or uses an innate ability, discard the Imperial Favor to cancel that action.
  As is says "when a card casts a kiho or spell...." (the shugenja is the one casting the spell or kiho) is it targeting the shugenja, and as such can the towers cancel it.
  A: It is not targeting the shugenja. It only targets the action. Jeff Alexander, "post for 23 May 2002", 24 May 2002
• Q: pps: another question just occured to me. Is discarding the Imperial Favour considered a use, or only if the text of the card says it is. eg. Imperial Edicts and The Imperial Standard. (actually I think this one may be in the archive, I'll go look...)
  A: Only if the card says that it is. There are already existing card effects that discard the Favor without being an actual use of it. Vaughn Derderian, "Rules for August 17th", 17 Aug 2001