Scion of the Void - Returning Home

[Ryin]

Scion of the Void's Returning Home ability reads as follows:

Returning Home: When this model is
targeted with an enemy Action it may discard
a card to become buried and make the
Action fail. At the end of the Turn, if this
model is buried, sacrifice it.

Does the "At the end of the turn, if this model is buried, sacrifice it." Apply only when Returning home is used, or is it sacrificed at the end of the turn if it's buried no matter how it came to be buried?

Thanks in advance.

[Ludvig]

The last part of the Rule isn't a condition applied by the former part. It is an ability and abilities are always active. So if at the end of a turn you are buried for any reason whatsoever you should sacrifice the scion. That's how I read it at least.

[santaclaws01]

1 hour ago, Ryin said:

Scion of the Void's Returning Home ability reads as follows:

Returning Home: When this model is
targeted with an enemy Action it may discard
a card to become buried and make the
Action fail. At the end of the Turn, if this
model is buried, sacrifice it.

Does the "At the end of the turn, if this model is buried, sacrifice it." Apply only when Returning home is used, or is it sacrificed at the end of the turn if it's buried no matter how it came to be buried?

Thanks in advance.

Only if Returning Home was used I believe.

[Slapdrone]

I've been using him quite a bit since the beta and would agree with santaclaws01 on that.

[Ryin]

5 minutes ago, Slapdrone said:

I've been using him quite a bit since the beta and would agree with santaclaws01 on that.

This would certainly make him MORE useful in my eyes, but rules seem to be written absolutes. There's not anything to distinguish it as pertaining to just that rule and there are plenty of abilities that have multiple independent effects on them. Tara herself is a good example with Heartless. I really don't KNOW either way, which is why I asked. I'd certainly PREFER for it to only be for that ability though.

[solkan]

3 hours ago, Ryin said:

This would certainly make him MORE useful in my eyes, but rules seem to be written absolutes. There's not anything to distinguish it as pertaining to just that rule and there are plenty of abilities that have multiple independent effects on them. Tara herself is a good example with Heartless. I really don't KNOW either way, which is why I asked. I'd certainly PREFER for it to only be for that ability though.

All of the 'bury this model, then (eventually or conditionally) unbury it" really have to work the same way, or you're going to just create an endless parade of arguments.

Ability/action/effect/whatever A that buries and unburies the model doesn't unbury the model if something else did the burying.

 

[Ryin]

1 hour ago, solkan said:

All of the 'bury this model, then (eventually or conditionally) unbury it" really have to work the same way, or you're going to just create an endless parade of arguments.

Ability/action/effect/whatever A that buries and unburies the model doesn't unbury the model if something else did the burying.

 

Let me clarify a bit with an example.

Let's say a death marshal buries the Scion of the void and keeps it buried until the end of the turn. Would it be sacrificed because of Returning Home or does it only get sacrificed when it buries itself through the Returning Home ability.

[solkan]

9 hours ago, Ryin said:

Let me clarify a bit with an example.

Let's say a death marshal buries the Scion of the void and keeps it buried until the end of the turn. Would it be sacrificed because of Returning Home or does it only get sacrificed when it buries itself through the Returning Home ability.

It should only get sacrificed because it's still buried due to the effect/ability/action that buried it.

It's the same reason that if you get buried by Pine Box, find some way to unbury, and then get buried again by something else, you don't do anything if the model that originally used Pine Box gets killed.

 

[lusciousmccabe]

On 12/25/2015 at 4:18 PM, solkan said:

It should only get sacrificed because it's still buried due to the effect/ability/action that buried it.

I would say it only get sacrificed if it's buried by the effect that says to sacrifice it.

[solkan]

45 minutes ago, lusciousmccabe said:

I would say it only get sacrificed if it's buried by the effect that says to sacrifice it.

That's the point of the discussion.  The last sentence of the ability under discussion:

On 2015/12/24 at 5:05 PM, Ryin said:

At the end of the Turn, if this
model is buried, sacrifice it.

Returning Home buries the model, and then sets up the condition which sacrifices it.  The understanding being that "if this model is buried" means "if this model is still buried by this effect".

[Ryin]

I wonder why they didn't write that in specifically then. That's what I'm worried about.

[solkan]

32 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

32 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

The last part of the Rule isn't a condition applied by the former part. It is an ability and abilities are always active. So if at the end of a turn you are buried for any reason whatsoever you should sacrifice the scion. That's how I read it at least.

The last part of the Rule isn't a condition applied by the former part. It is an ability and abilities are always active. So if at the end of a turn you are buried for any reason whatsoever you should sacrifice the scion. That's how I read it at least.

I would love to hear how you think Pine Box works when the Scion of the Void gets unburied by another model using it's actions, then.

Target model is buried. If this model takes this Action again or is removed from play then the target model is unburied in base contact with this model before this model is removed from play. At the beginning of this model’s Activation, it must succeed on an opposed Wp vs. Wp duel with the target. If this model loses, the target is unburied in base contact.

Death Marshal A uses Pine Box to bury the Scion.

Model X uses the Scion's action to unbury it.

Death Marshal B uses Pine Box to bury the Scion.

Model Z kills Death Marshal A, and the player quotes the passage in red as the reason why the Scion unburies again.  (Note that the Scion was last buried by Death Marshal B's Pine Box.)

This is the same naive reading which claims that that the last sentence of Return Home is its own independent rule.

 

[Ryin]

That's how I was assuming it would work, because it makes sense with how pretty much all rules work in Malifaux. If they wanted it to be conditional, they would have wrote it that way.

[lusciousmccabe]

I think it's just an unfortunately placed full stop.

If they wanted the Scion to be killed at the end of the turn if it was buried for any reason they would have put it in as a separate ability.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Actually that isn't true. You can't read intent of the rules into it that way. I'm not saying it should work one way or the other, but Malifaux doesn't have the most precise language so you can't say that they would have made it a seperately ability if they intended it to work differently. 

RAW as I interpret it, because the sentence that specifies it sacrficies itself if it is buried is seperate I'd say currently that yes for whatever reason if the scion is buried at the end of the turn it goes bye bye. I'm not sayin I think for certain that was the intent, but it is an ability, abilities are always active, and they didn't tie that sentence to the first trough a different punctuation.

I could see the argument either way, and I'm not weighing on the way I think it should work, just what I believe the rules currently say. It very well might be that was the intent to prevent abuse of the bodyguard scheme. Select the scion and that's an almost guaranteed 3 points if you get to turn 5.

Probably a good candidate for an FAQ entry.

[Ludvig]

10 hours ago, lusciousmccabe said:

I think it's just an unfortunately placed full stop.

If they wanted the Scion to be killed at the end of the turn if it was buried for any reason they would have put it in as a separate ability.

Read the incorporeal rule. It has two completely different effects lumped together. One affects movement, tge other affects taking damage. They still aren't separate rules although they have effects that kick in at completely different times.

[Ludvig]

11 hours ago, solkan said:

I would love to hear how you think Pine Box works when the Scion of the Void gets unburied by another model using it's actions, then.

Target model is buried. If this model takes this Action again or is removed from play then the target model is unburied in base contact with this model before this model is removed from play. At the beginning of this model’s Activation, it must succeed on an opposed Wp vs. Wp duel with the target. If this model loses, the target is unburied in base contact.

Death Marshal A uses Pine Box to bury the Scion.

Model X uses the Scion's action to unbury it.

Death Marshal B uses Pine Box to bury the Scion.

Model Z kills Death Marshal A, and the player quotes the passage in red as the reason why the Scion unburies again.  (Note that the Scion was last buried by Death Marshal B's Pine Box.)

This is the same naive reading which claims that that the last sentence of Return Home is its own independent rule.

 

If I attack a model with the incorporeal rule before it has moves that turn, would you not allow me to halve the damage? The incorporeal rule has two different paragraphs lumped together under one ability name much like the Zions. I always assumed one wasn't reliant on the other but maybe you know something I don't?

As for the pinebox interaction I think you are right. That proves that multiple bury effects have weird side effects. I don't think it proves anything about how to read the Zions ability.

[lusciousmccabe]

1 hour ago, Ludvig said:

Read the incorporeal rule. It has two completely different effects lumped together. One affects movement, tge other affects taking damage. They still aren't separate rules although they have effects that kick in at completely different times.

Fair point.

[Math Mathonwy]

On 12/28/2015 at 11:25 AM, Ludvig said:

If I attack a model with the incorporeal rule before it has moves that turn, would you not allow me to halve the damage? The incorporeal rule has two different paragraphs lumped together under one ability name much like the Zions. I always assumed one wasn't reliant on the other but maybe you know something I don't?

As for the pinebox interaction I think you are right. That proves that multiple bury effects have weird side effects. I don't think it proves anything about how to read the Zions ability.

Do you mean that you would actually unbury Scion when Death Marshall A dies in solkan's scenario?

[Ludvig]

2 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Do you mean that you would actually unbury Scion when Death Marshall A dies in solkan's scenario?

I would be the schmuck with the marshals so I would avoid reburying it but I would allow my opponent to do that if they tried. The effect hasn't gone away after all.

That said I would never try to leverage this to my own advantage by for example moving the death marshal to their deployment and taking it out myself while the Zion was buried. I tend to be more allowing to opponents  and avoid dirty tricks myself.

If the interaction rubs people the wrong way then pinebox should be errata'd to go away if the model is unburied. I realize now it ahould really be errata'd since it never goes away so an opponent buried by a marshal at any point of the game would unbury later if the marshal took pineboxx again. Could be good vs Levi for example.

[Myyrä]

There is no reason to errata pinebox because the unbury condition is specific to models buried by that action. Admittedly, it isn't written to be completely idiot proof but if it isn't a case of unbury condition described in the Action that initially buried the model (as the rulebook calls them), I don't know what is.

[Ludvig]

39 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

There is no reason to errata pinebox because the unbury condition is specific to models buried by that action. Admittedly, it isn't written to be completely idiot proof but if it isn't a case of unbury condition described in the Action that initially buried the model (as the rulebook calls them), I don't know what is.

Good call! Had completely forgotten the unbury part of the rulebook. That kicks in when you are unburied as per the pinebox unbury effect. I'm not sure the pinebox' effect would go away if you unburied for other reasons, since you were then still "initially" buried by pinebox.  What they meant is more like "described in the bury effect which buried this model last" actually  

I will more than happily fall in line with that argument for the sake of sanity since the intention seems crystal clear! 

[lusciousmccabe]

I think they'd sooner add an FAQ that makes bury effects overwrite eachother-like the timing on conditions-than errata Pinebox.

[solkan]

There's no point in an errata to Pine Box because

1.  Rewording Pine Box to make the mechanic explicit would probably require doubling the amount of text in the effect.

2.  The 'you got buried by a rule with follow up effects, and something else unburied you, those rules aren't supposed to apply any more' isn't specific to Pine Box.

A partial list of triggers, abilities or effects which bury and then have follow up effects that reasonably end upon unburial:

• Pine Box
• Glimpse the Void (on Tara, Nothing Beast, Void Wretch, and Anna Lovelace, and probably other models I didn't notice)
• Returning Home
• Void Record (Honorable Mention for a necessary distinction between the buried model and the Void marker)
• Wong's Three Demon Bag's Bacon Curse
• Candy's Best Behavior upgrade's Run Away Home
• Malifaux Raptor's Take to the Sky
• Aionus's Temporal Flux

Aionus's Temporal Flux doubles down on that style of writing because it's written the same way Pine Box is, and it's written so that everything in the trigger is conditional on the model being in play to begin with because the trigger is attached to an attack that can target buried models:

Temporal Flux: After dealing Severe damage to a model in play, bury the target. Unbury the target in base contact with this model at the end of the Turn, or before this model is removed from play.

[Ludvig]

1 hour ago, solkan said:

There's no point in an errata to Pine Box because

1.  Rewording Pine Box to make the mechanic explicit would probably require doubling the amount of text in the effect.

2.  The 'you got buried by a rule with follow up effects, and something else unburied you, those rules aren't supposed to apply any more' isn't specific to Pine Box.

A partial list of triggers, abilities or effects which bury and then have follow up effects that reasonably end upon unburial:

• Pine Box
• Glimpse the Void (on Tara, Nothing Beast, Void Wretch, and Anna Lovelace, and probably other models I didn't notice)
• Returning Home
• Void Record (Honorable Mention for a necessary distinction between the buried model and the Void marker)
• Wong's Three Demon Bag's Bacon Curse
• Candy's Best Behavior upgrade's Run Away Home
• Malifaux Raptor's Take to the Sky
• Aionus's Temporal Flux

Aionus's Temporal Flux doubles down on that style of writing because it's written the same way Pine Box is, and it's written so that everything in the trigger is conditional on the model being in play to begin with because the trigger is attached to an attack that can target buried models:

Temporal Flux: After dealing Severe damage to a model in play, bury the target. Unbury the target in base contact with this model at the end of the Turn, or before this model is removed from play.

Thank you for a very comprehensive writeup. As I said in my last post I was a bit quick about the pinebox-part and I am now completely on board with the rest of the posters in this thread. If anything should be rewritten it would be the Unbury paragraph in the rulebook since it refers you to the initial action that buried the model and not the last action to bury it. I don't think even that would need a rewrite since most people seem to be onboard with just going for intended effect instead of twisting words around. Now the devs have some food for thought for m3e