Wrathful Dead

Legend of the Five Rings card from Before the Dawn

Card Type

Personality

Force

3

Chi

3

Honor Requirement

-

Gold Cost

7

Personal Honor

0

Clan

Scorpion

Keywords

Cavalry, Goryo, Nonhuman, Scorpion Clan, Spirit

Card Text

Battle: Target a card without attachments in a unit led by a dishonorable Personality: Destroy the targeted card.

Legality

Age of Conquest (Emperor), Destroyer War (Celestial)

Deck

Dynasty

Printings

Rules Q&A

• Q: This is kinda an extension of the thread here : http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=64362&p=824523&hilit=surprise+attack#p824125 which is really old, so pardon me. I see the samurai ruling is straight forward, but if you go further into 'legacy' cards and pull out plans within plans it starts being complicated and I just want to be sure I understand how it works. Don't want to screw up any 'create a battlefield' cards that might appear during the action phase.
  This depends heavily on 2 cards: Ambush:
  Surprise Attack:
  It touches briefly on Plans within Plans:
  So if somebody creates an attack (but not an attack phase) like say use of the card "Ambush" and as a result players are forced into attacker/defender roles. You then use Surprise attack to move to yet another created battlefield (still outside the attack phase) but the movement of one of the parties is negated.
  example: I'm playing with a bunch of nonhumans (we'll use Tokuro's bear as an example. nonhuman spirit)
  My enemy is running Wrathful Dead (nonhuman spirit). ---- I play Ambush and force him into a battle as the defender.
  I then play surprise attack, but the 'Wrathful Dead' is either cowed by wisdom (by me) or Height of Courage (by the scorpion controller), are they still considered the defender at the new battlefield? Even though they were never in the defending army? Its not during an attack phase, so I find it odd to imagine it just retains attacker/defender status through the entire open phase.
  ---- To further complicate things (and ultimately the reason I asked, I might be at a tournament in the near future where these 'legacy cards' all might be present.)
  If it DOES retain attacker/defender status, what if the scorpion 'Wrathful Dead' after the end of my created battle, uses "plans within plans" to ambush ME in the same phase targeting my En'you (not the bear, which last had 'attacker status') and the same thing happens (but in reverse where I negate my En'you's movement to the surprise attack's battlefield). Would I be able to move my Tokuro's bear into the attacking army at the enemy's surprise attack battlefield because I never had anybody in the defending army at the surprise attack? Or would it retain my last (player) attacker/defender status from his ambush? Or a 3rd scenario, where his ambush fails because I have attacker status this phase from MY ambush and cannot be assigned as defender (not sure if cardinal rule 'card overrides rulebook' applies)
  A: The flow here is a little hard to follow, but I'll try to answer where you've got question marks.
  1. If the Wrathful Dead does not move to the battlefield created by Surprise Attack, it is never the defender at that battlefield. It ceases to be a defender once the battlefield created by Ambush resolves, although another action could then move it into the battlefield created by Surprise Attack and it would become a defender once again.
  2. It seems the answer to question 1 makes the questions you ask in this paragraph irrelevant. I think you may have slightly misinterpreted Zen's original response. He was saying that Surprise Attack itself does not reset who the "attacker" and "defender" are for the Surprise Attack battlefield based on who played the Surprise Attack.
  If the Scorpion player plays Plans Within Plans, then Ambush, then Surprise Attack, the fact that you played Ambush and Surprise Attack earlier in the turn are not relevant to the definition of attacker and defender. He will be the attacker during his Ambush and any subsequent Surprise Attack battlefields created from it. Jon Palmer, "attacker/defender status + surprise attack (ambush)", 28 Dec 2011