Can an overlord who ran out of skeleton figures take a player's necromancy figure? I think RAW says yes, but I dunno.

EchoingZen said:

Taking a look at the description of Necromancy in RtL and AoD, I'd have to disagree. The monster now belongs to the hero, not the OL. If you allow the OL to take the necromanced figure back solely because he has run out, the skill becomes somewhat pointless.

Big Remy said:

I would agree except that under the rules, where it discusses what to do when you do not have enough figures it does not say the monster has to be your figure. (I have to play devil's advocate here.)

EchoingZen said:

Actually, it does say it has to be the OL's. Page 12 of JitD:

• If the overlord player wishes to place a monster on the board but is already using all of his available figures , he may choose to remove a monster figure from the board to make that figure available for immediate placement. The overlord player simply removes the figure from its original space on the board and places it in a new space, following the normal rules for spawning monsters or placing monsters when a new area is revealed.

Since a necromanced figure is no longer under the control of the OL, it is no longer his . Therefore, it can't be considered one of his available figures . So if he runs out now, and that figure is still necromanced, he can't take it because it is not available to him because the heroes have control of it.

Excellent... That's what I was looking for! :-) Thanks Remy!

I don't buy that, Big Remy. It doesn't say that the overlord can remove "one of his available figures," it says he can remove "a monster figure." It goes on to say that removing that monster figure makes it "available," which even implies that the chosen figure cannot be one of "his available figures" (otherwise it would already have to be "available").

If you want to get really pedantic though, it says that the overlord can only invoke this rule when HE is "already using all of his available figures," so you could attempt to argue that the necromanced monster is one of the overlord's figures, but is not being used by him, and therefore he doesn't meet the prerequisites to remove a monster (not even one that is under his control).

Regardless, the rule was obviously not written with this situation in mind, because (a) the wording isn't terribly clear regarding the requirements, (b) the overlord probably shouldn't be allowed to do this, and © this was published long before the Necromancy skill existed. It is my strong suspicion that if FFG ever made a ruling on this, they'd allow the overlord to remove a monster he controls, but not one controlled by a hero.

...and perhaps I spoke to soon. I checked out the PDF rulebook in the Support section, and it does not inclue the word "his" in regards to monsters.

EchoingZen said:

I got that out of my pdf.

@Antistone: I don't think its really a great case either but I think allowing the OL to negate the Necromancy skill because he ran out of monsters is BS anyway you slice it.

In any case, that statement in JitD was written prior to Necromancy being in existance so I really don't think you can apply it to this situation anyways. I only quoted it because it the best I could find in the rules to try and resolve what I would call a purely common sense situation.