Bone Pile bury and no legal corpse markers?

[Grrn]

So this question came up in a game last night.

If a bone pile uses its 2 action to bury and I put 40 mm or 50 mm models over all corpse markers on the table, what happens?

If I blow up all the corpse markers, then the bone pile dies, but if there are still corpse markers around this effect doesn’t happen.  We were thinking it just stays buried forever since it never meets the condition of being able to unbury at the end of turn to unbury.  This feels unintended perhaps?

I attached the relevant rule as an image.

[solkan]

The Unbury rules have an escape clause (second paragraph of Unbury)

Quote

When unburying models, if the models do not physically fit in the specified location, they are placed in their controller’s Deployment Zone by the player who controls them. If models from multiple players were all unburied at the same time, the First Player (see pg. 35) places her models first. 

If you have models blocking all of the area for "base contact with a corpse marker", that satisfies the clause about not fitting in the specified location.

If you manage to fill an entire deployment zone, then you're probably alllwed to shrug and leave the model Buried, and then it gets killed at the end of the game in the absence of some other effect unburying it.

[solkan]

Just to repeat for emphasis:  The fact that you can't place in base contact with a specific corpse marker does not make that corpse marker "disappear" as far as Give Up The Ghost is concerned.

If there are any corpse markers on the table, then you have to try to Unbury in base contact in a legal position.  If there are corpse markers on the table but no legal positions, you go to the Unbury escape clause and Unbury in the deployment zone.  All because "in base contact with a corpse marker" defines the area, just like "in base contact with [the Death Marshal]" or "within X" of so-and-so" does.

If there are no corpse markers on the table, you follow Give Up the Ghost's instructions and kill the model.  And, to speculate, Give Up The Ghost says this sentence because otherwise if there were no corpse markers, you'd also be using the escape clause.

 

[Paddywhack]

2 hours ago, Grrn said:

I’m in agreement at this point with this explanation if one assumption is made: the unbury is non conditional.  I was reading it as if the unbury required a corpse marker to come into base contact with.  The arguments presented here assume that this doesn’t matter.  Are there any examples of situations where the unbury is conditional that you guys can think of off the top of your head?

If the rule read something like "if there is a corpse marker in play, unbury" I might agree with you.

However the ability just says "At the end of the Turn, Unbury this model...". There is nothing conditional in that statement. So yes, you have to unbury the model at the end of the Turn. The next part says where you should unbury it (in BtB with a Corpse) and the last sentence tells you what happens if there are no corpses markers in play. In your case there are still Corpse markers in play, but you cannot legally place the model there, so we go to the main rules on Unburying and see that we have to place in the Deployment Zone. 

[Squirrelich]

Well, it isn't killed and it cannot unbury. So... I would guess it stays buried until a model that can interact with buried models does, or the game ends in which case it is counted as killed per the rule book.

edit: I think @solkan has it right

[Grrn]

3 minutes ago, solkan said:

The Unbury rules have an escape clause (second paragraph of Unbury)

If you have models blocking all of the area for "base contact with a corpse marker", that satisfies the clause about not fitting in the specified location.

If you manage to fill an entire deployment zone, then you're probably alllwed to shrug and leave the model Buried, and then it gets killed at the end of the game in the absence of some other effect unburying it.

If you can’t unbury in base contact then can you even unbury?  I would think you don’t meet the conditions to unbury.

[Grrn]

5 minutes ago, 7thSquirrel said:

Well, it isn't killed and it cannot unbury. So... I would guess it stays buried until a model that can interact with buried models does, or the game ends in which case it is counted as killed per the rule book.

Yea, this is where we ended the discussion.  This feels like the right answer, but it also seems wrong somehow.  Like an unforeseen situation.

[solkan]

4 minutes ago, Grrn said:

If you can’t unbury in base contact then can you even unbury?  I would think you don’t meet the conditions to unbury.

It's the same situation for a Death Marshal using Pine Box, then getting surrounded and killed.  Pine Box says the model gets unburied in base contact with the Death Marshal, which can't happen because all of the base contact spots are filled.  So you go to the escape clause and place the model in the deployment zone.

Having more options (and having them blocked off) doesn't change that.

You have corpse markers on the table, but no room to deploy in base contact with them, so you use the escape clause in Unbury.

 

[Paddywhack]

8 minutes ago, Grrn said:

If you can’t unbury in base contact then can you even unbury?  I would think you don’t meet the conditions to unbury.

As Solkan quoted from the rules: if the models do not physically fit in the specified location, they are placed in their controller’s Deployment Zone by the player who controls them.

You have Corpse markers still in play, so you meet that criteria and the Bone Pile is not killed. However, the models will not fit in the specified place (BtB with a corpse marker as you can't overlap another model's base), so you then have to unbury the model in the controlling player's Deployment Zone. This seems like the best read to me. 

Solkan beat me to the additional explanation....

[Grrn]

I’m in agreement at this point with this explanation if one assumption is made: the unbury is non conditional.  I was reading it as if the unbury required a corpse marker to come into base contact with.  The arguments presented here assume that this doesn’t matter.  Are there any examples of situations where the unbury is conditional that you guys can think of off the top of your head?

[solkan]

1 hour ago, Grrn said:

I’m in agreement at this point with this explanation if one assumption is made: the unbury is non conditional.  I was reading it as if the unbury required a corpse marker to come into base contact with.  The arguments presented here assume that this doesn’t matter.  Are there any examples of situations where the unbury is conditional that you guys can think of off the top of your head?

You've got stuff like Killjoy's Blood Sacrifice and Bette Noire's Drawn To Death as examples of event triggered Unbury effects.

As it is, the way Give Up the Ghost is structured is that both the second and third sentence of Give Up The Ghost are part of the same "At the end of the turn" effect put into play by the first sentence.

If the way this ability is structured is confusing or counter intuitive to you (or your fellow players), please say so.  Because the way Bury/Unbury effects are written is one of those that I think got written in 1st edition and then never questioned when they switched to 2nd.