I talked to the judges following the Kiku Matsuri initial tournament and got an idea of what the most commonly asked questions were. Most are straight forward, and a lot of these questions are answered right in the Learn to Play and Rules Reference, though these might be some helpful tips for those playing for the first time. I heard more advanced questions were asked of the judges in later tournaments (I have not gone into these).
1) The attacking player immediately takes the fate on a ring when declaring a conflict. The attacking player also takes the fate when a ring is changed to another ring.
2) If you have a character in a conflict with a dash as a skill, and the conflict type changes to the dash type, the character is bowed and sent home.
3) Characters with a dash as a skill value cannot have their political/military skills swapped by any card effect.
4) If a province is broken during the conflict phase by a card effect, the conflict does not end but continues to determine the winner (this is also in the LTP FAQ)
5) If a conflict is tied at zero/zero and both players pass, there is no winner, and the ring is sent back to the unclaimed ring pool.
6) You can declare one military and one political conflict per round. If a conflict's ring type is changed, it does not affect what you have to declare. For example, if you declare a military conflict and it is then changed by a card affect to political, you would still only have the opportunity to declare a political for your second conflict.
7) You do not place fate on characters that are 'put' into play (though you may still place fate on those characters through a separate card effect).
When you play Endless Plains to break your own province, it does not count as your opponent breaking a province (i.e. 'For Greater Glory')
9) There was a bit of confusion by players around if you 'must' meet what an ability says. Here are the general principles (see RR for actual rules wording):
- To play an ability, you MUST meet the cost and targeting requirements, meaning anything BEFORE the "-" dash in an ability MUST be met. i.e. if a card says "choose two participating characters -" then there must be two participating characters to activate the ability. Edit: A target must also be an eligible target, meaning at the time of targeting the effect could affect the target (not including referential targets).
- Complete as much of an effect as you can given the circumstances (anything AFTER the "-" dash). If all of an effect can't happen, that's OK. For example, if an effect says "look at the top 5 cards of your deck" and you only have 3 cards, that's OK.
- The effect (after the dash) must at least make SOME change to the game state. If an effect doesn't make any change to the game state, the ability can't be activated.
Let's look at an example, as this question was commonly brought up for "Shameful Display: Action: During a conflict at this province, choose 2 participating characters - honor one of those characters and dishonor the other.". First off, there MUST be two participating characters to meet the targeting requirements. Next, assuming both yours and your opponent's characters are dishonored, you are allowed to play this card, as you would be able to honor your character. Because you changed the game state by honoring your character, the fact that you're not able to dishonor an already dishonored opponent's character is OK. Now let's assume you choose two participating characters that your opponent controls, one is honored and the other has no status. You would be able to dishonor the character with no status, and honor the character that is already honored. Because you changed the game state by dishonoring your opponent's character, it's OK that honoring an already honored character can't be fulfilled.
