Owlbeartross and Press Ganged

Had an interesting situation come up last night. My wife and I were playing Press Ganged when Oloch stumbled across the owlbeartross. One dead grindylow and one dead owlbeartross later, we searched the deck for the next monster to banish and found Maheem (one of the henchmen).

I realized that by the rules - unless I'm misunderstanding something - we lost the scenario right there. The owlbeartross tells you to banish the next non-villain monster; Press Ganged requires you to defeat the henchmen and put them in the bane pile before you can defeat the villain. We put Maheem in the bane pile anyway (didn't have much desire to repeat that scenario just because Mr. Owlbeartross decided to see how many licks it took to get to the center of a Maheem-pop), but I thought it was worth pointing this out. Did we understand the rules correctly? What would you have done?

Interesting question. One thing I would not have done is let that be an autofail for the scenario. I think I would have just put him in the bane pile like you did.

What's the wording on Press Ganged, as far as when you are able to fight the villain? Depending on the wording, I might say banish the henchman and he just doesn't need to be in the pile.

I think it is:

Deal 1 random henchman into a bane pile. Shuffle the other henchmen and the villain into the location deck, and add 5 random barriers from the box. Each character's hand size cannot be greater than the number of cards in the bane pile. When you defeat a bane, add it to the bane pile. The Fog Bank cannot be closed. When you would defeat Master Scourge, he is undefeated unless all 6 henchmen are in the bane pile.

So, by scenario rules as written:

Owlbear Hartshorn's favourite pet gets kicked in the head by some of the "hired" help, storms off and noms Maheem; as a result, Master Scourge's devil-fruit curse triggers, causing him to be completely invincible, and the scenario unwinnable.

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The problem with putting Maheem in the bane pile is this: if this happens before everyone has their full hand size, Maheem would be improperly credited toward "recovering" people's hand sizes.

On the other hand, the sanity check is that Master Scourge cares about whether he has henchmen to hide behind after getting smacked; if Maheem is touring an owlbeartross's stomach, he's not available for that purpose. So he should at least be credited toward whether you can smack Master Scourge successfully.

I think what you did is correct, and is the most appropriate option in the spirit of the game. You overcame a difficult bane, especially early on in the campaign, and you were rewarded for it by putting you that much closer to victory.

If Hawkmoon's quote is correct, (what am I saying, if?) then yea I'd say you played it right. The wording just didn't account for this sort of situation. Effectively I'd change it to "When you defeat or banish a bane"

Neat to see the agreement - thanks for the opinions, all. Andrew, the issue I have with that fix is for barriers like Large Chest - it could be undefeated, you'd banish it anyway, and then by that wording it would go to the bane pile. I'd probably change the last sentence to "...he is undefeated unless all 6 henchmen are in the bane pile or the box", unless that would break something I'm not seeing. The other alternative would be "when you defeat a bane or would banish a henchman", although that might have issues with summoned henchmen (e.g., the owlbeartross's Riptide Grindylow).