Assigning Blame and Mysterious Deaths interaction.

QUESTION:

Let's say I play mysterious deaths. I have two personalities out, a 6 gold cost personality X and a 7 gold cost courtier. My opponent has two personalities out, a six gold cost samurai and another random person Y. Mysterious deaths attempts to kill my person X and his Samurai. As the active player, I choose to kill my personality first, triggering assigning blame targeting my opponents six gold cost samurai. My opponent doesn't want his samurai to die dishonorably, so he commits seppuku off of my Assigning Blame. Will my Mysterious deaths kill his Personality Y, or will it attempt to kill his six gold cost samurai and fail becasue he's already dead?



ANSWER:


<BLOCKQUOTE>Shosuro Ishii wrote:As the active player, I choose to kill my personality first...
</BLOCKQUOTE>

Sorry, that's not what happens.

http://rules.l5r.com/Effects#Order_of_effects: "If multiple effects are caused by a single piece of text they occur simultaneously..."

You're slightly misinterpreting this, from http://rules.l5r.com/Timing: "If the order of simultaneous triggers to an occurrence needs to be determined, the active player determines their order.
Example: Two personalities destroyed simultaneously in battle resolution, A and B, each have a Reaction or trait that trigger before they are destroyed. The active player decides whether Reactions and traits triggered by A’s destruction happen before or after Reactions and traits triggered by B’s destruction."

<BLOCKQUOTE>Shosuro Ishii wrote:...triggering assigning blame targeting my opponents six gold cost samurai.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

In your example, your opponent's Samurai died simultaneously with your 6 cost Personality; you would react "after" that with Assigning Blame, but the opponent's Samurai is no longer around for it to target.

Now, as far as what you COULD do in this situation as the active player, imagine that the first instance of the word "before" in the italicized example is "after" and that your opponent ALSO wanted to play an Assigning Blame. You could decide that YOUR Personality's death is the one everyone is allowed to take turns Reacting to, BEFORE his. But that doesn't change the fact they both died at the same time.