Legacy Rules Team

The Legacy Rules Team of the Rules Council exists to maintain the rule system for legacy Decipher formats, which means making decisions for how cards or rules are to be interpreted when they are unclear, and otherwise maintaining the rules for the game.

Maintaining Rulebook Archive

Before we can do anything new, we must be sure of what came before. The wiki contains a page where all known Decipher rulebook PDFs are stored at the Rulebooks article.

This includes the following:

• QuickStart Tutorial Rulebook (Comprehensive 1.0)
• Comprehensive Rules 2.0
• Comprehensive Rules 3.0
• Comprehensive Rules 4.0
• Starter Rulebooks
• Deluxe Rulebooks
• FAQ Documents (proto-CRDs)
• Current Rulings Documents

Unfortunately there's more than just historical reasons for maintaining this list. There are a decent number of rulings that Decipher made in one document that were omitted from others.

This includes:

• Individual card rulings from FOTR block that were dropped from the Rules 4.0 document once those sets were rotated out
• Oversights that put rulings in one CRD but not others
• Cleanup that occured between 2.0/3.0/4.0 that threw out the baby with the bathwater in some cases

Thus, as we find more documents out in the wild, it's important to add them to our archive here and scour them for anything that might have been missed.

Comprehensive Rules 4.1

On the wiki linked in the sidebar is a document called the Comprehensive Rules 4.1. This document is an all-in-one reference that contains every single official Decipher ruling in one place. As a base, it started with the Comprehensive Rules 4.0, with the last Current Rulings Document edited into it. It then had various entries re-inserted as mentioned in the above bulleted list, as well as the Tournament Guidelines (for the Mulligan rule).

This document as much as possible should be original Decipher rulings. This is a consolidated reference for convenience and should not be altered.

The one exception is when Decipher themselves superseded or reversed past rulings, as is the case with at least one entry from the final CRD. When such edits must be made, they are done [with bold and surrounded in square brackets], to ensure that it is always clear when an alteration has been made.

This document will probably go without many edits in the future, but things might still be discovered that it's missing! A ruling for The Ring's Oppression (1C273) managed to evade detection for years before being reintroduced, so you never know.

Comprehensive Rules 4.2

The Comprehensive Rules 4.2, aka the Community Rules is meat and potatoes of the Legacy Rules Team. It uses the 4.1 document as a base and branches from there.

There are different kinds of alterations to the underlying document:

• New rulings: card interactions where the Legacy team has decided it will work like X and not like Y
• Clarifications and breakdowns: the original Decipher text isn't superseded per se, we just add some notes breaking a process down into specifics, such as what Decipher themselves did for Playing a Card or Fellowship Movement.
• Overrulings: At the end of the day, something stunk and could not be worked around, and a rule by Decipher needed to be struck out. This is only done carefully and as a last resort, but it is occasionally necessary.

These different types of additions are marked in the wiki by the use of templates.

Template:Ruling is used when issuing an additive card or interaction ruling that doesn't materially alter Decipher's rules, just adds a decision on how an unspecified interaction will fall:

Legacy Ruling: Negative Damage

When a character has had its damage bonus reduced to below zero, it does not result in "negative damage", i.e. 1 wound is still applied if they win a skirmish.

- Legacy Ruling 1

Template:Clarification is used when expanding or adding specificity to a vague process:

Legacy Clarification: Negative Damage

When a character has had its damage bonus reduced to below zero, it does not result in "negative damage", i.e. 1 wound is still applied if they win a skirmish.

- Legacy Ruling 1

Template:Overruling is used when removing or materially altering an original Decipher ruling, effectively striking it out and replacing it with something new:

Legacy Ruling: Negative Damage

When a character has had its damage bonus reduced to below zero, it does not result in "negative damage", i.e. 1 wound is still applied if they win a skirmish.

- Legacy Ruling 1

Legacy Team Rulings

Each ruling is associated with an accompanying ruling article here on the wiki. This acts as both a workspace for team members to organize and track any evidence or developments and a historical record of why and how a change was ruled. This makes linking the issue to new and returning players much simpler.

Each ruling article should contain the following:

• An explanation of the initial issue
• The evidence referenced one way or another
• A link/transcription of any public posts made on the subject
• The ultimate vote and decision made
• If a change was made, summarize where it can now be found / link it in 4.2

In many cases, the result may simply be "we opted to change nothing / uphold the traditional community view", and that's fine. The important part is that there's now a record that people can be linked to to get an overview of the entire issue.

And just because we rule one way doesn't mean that's set in stone. Maybe Ruling #167 decides we got #33 wrong and reverse it. But either way, a record will exist, all in one easily browsed (and linked) place.

See the table at the bottom of this page for a list of all past and current Legacy Team Rulings.

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