Merchant Atoll
Legend of the Five Rings card from Promotional–Celestial, Ivory Edition
Open in Oracle of the Void
- Card Type
- Holding
- Gold Cost
- 6
- Keywords
- Castle, Port
- Card Text
- Your Provinces have +1 strength.
w: Produce 5 Gold. - Legality
- A Brother's Destiny (Ivory Edition), A Brother's Destiny (Twenty Festivals), Age of Conquest (Emperor), Destroyer War (Celestial)
- Deck
- Dynasty
- Notes
- Legal December 1st, 2011, Released in the 2011 Summer Con pack
Printings
Promotional–Celestial
- Rarity
- Promo
- Flavor Text
- "A mid-sea merchant outpost for kobune crews! It will be expensive, of course, but think of the profits!" - Tashiki
- Artist
- Charles Urbach
- Publisher
- Alderac Entertainment Group
Ivory Edition
- Rarity
- Rare
- Flavor Text
- "The war is over, but I do not intend to lose the pace. Keep an eye on merchants with Crane patrons." - Yoritomo Hiromi
- Artist
- Charles Urbach
- Card Number
- 38
- Publisher
- Alderac Entertainment Group
Rules Q&A
- Q: Following up on this:
http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=109265
The comprehensive rules say this: Sometimes, as with Equip (p. 36), “Recruit” is used as an effect in card text. This means that the effects of the Recruit action are activated, and the card’s Gold Cost is checked against the amount paid for the original action. If the original action did not give the opportunity to pay Gold, then before the card enters play, its Gold Cost must be paid or the entering play fails.'
Does this not mean I must still pay the gold cost of the targeted holding when it enters play? Or are you saying that the 'ignoring costs' piece of Haruna's text applies not only to the ability on Second City Market, but also to the Recruit part of the effects of that ability?
This seems abusively powerful and would allow a turn 1 flip of 2x Haruna and 2 x SCM (as an extreme example) to allow me to start turn 2 with Merchant Atoll x2 in play.
A: The cost of Second City Market's action is the cost of the Holding to be Recruited, but Haruna says to ignore costs: the Holding essentially enters play for free.
The sentence, If the original action did not give the opportunity to pay Gold, then before the card enters play, its Gold Cost must be paid or the entering play fails. in the Comprehensive Rules is only there to support Open/Legacy: all Ivory Edition cards that create Recruit effects give the player that opportunity to pay gold.
REVERSAL: See below. Alex Jones, "Yoritomo Haruna & Second City Market", 29 Jul 2014 - Q: Is it legal to pay 6G in one purchase (fe for Merchant Atoll) from single Remote Village with help of Zlkyt? Bow RV for 3G then destroy it for another 3G?
Reaction: When paying a Gold cost, destroy your target Mine or Farm: Produce Gold equal to its base Gold Cost.
A: This is legal: bowing the Remote Village to produce gold is separate from, and does not interfere with, subsequently destroying it to pay the cost of Zlkyt's Reaction.
Note also that there is no rule in the rulebook which defines the order in which traits and Reactions must be used to produce gold. In particular, the usual Timing Sequence does not apply: EXCEPTION: Gold production from multiple sources to pay a single cost occurs in an order chosen by the player paying the cost, even if this would violate the relative order of steps below (such as by using a gold-producing Reaction before the rulebook-granted Stronghold gold production). Alex Jones, "Zlkyt", 2 Jan 2013