Insignificant Hopeful Prospects, Vendetta and Henchman Hardcore

[Brad Maynes]

At it's heart, this question is really "what does "ignored for the purposes of Strategies and Schemes" mean?

Specifically, however, I have the following scenario. My friend and I are planning to learn playing the Starter Boxes we each have (Explorer's Society and Arcanists) against each other in Henchman Hardcore. HH uses "Vendetta" as one of its two Schemes. Vendetta provides that each person must "secretly choose a friendly non-Totem model and an enemy non-Leader model with equal or higher cost".

The Explorer's Society Box is Mr. Ngaatoro (9, leader in HH), Tannenbaum (8), and two Hopeful Prospects (4, Insignificant)

The Arcanists Box is Harrison Frodsham (8, leader in HH), Harris J-5 (7), and two Gearlings (5).

If Insignificant models are truly "ignored for purposes of Strategies and Schemes", how does the Explorer's Society choose models that satisfy the Vendetta conditions? Or are Insignificant models only ignored for purposes of putting out/manipulating tokens?

Thanks!

BLM

[Adran]

In that scenario, the explorers society can't do the Vendetta scheme. 

'Ignored for purposes of Strategy and Schemes' means that you treat them as not there for the wording. This isn't quite the same as they can't score points - they can kill models in a reckoning game for example, and since the strategy there doesn't care how a model was killed, it will still count that kill towards scoring. 

(Edit- fyi, there are at least 5 insignificant models that have ways to drop scheme markers without using the interact action,  and those can still be used to score)

When you know this is an issue and due to various restraints (such as you are only using starter boxes and playing Henchmen hardcore) you can't avoid it I would consider making a house rule that the hopeful prospects can be used in vendetta. (Or chose a different scheme for your games if you don't want to have to learn 'wrong' rules)