Shambling Hordes + Pressing Flesh

Shambling Hordes
Zombie 3 life, 0 bleed, 0 strength
When Shambling Hordes enters play, remove an ally or vampire in your ash heap from the game or burn Shambling Hordes. Shambling Hordes gets +1 strength for each life counter it has..... and can enter combat with a ready minion as a direct action.

If you were to play Shambling Hordes for 3 blood, giving it 3 life and 3 strength, but do not have an ally or vampire in your ash heap to remove from game, Shambling Hordes is burned. Can you then play Pressing Flesh?

Pressing Flesh
+1 stealth action
Choose an ally that was burned from play. Move that ally from the ash heap to your ready region with this card and life equal to its starting life. This ally is a zombie instead of what it used to be, gets -1 bleed, cannot gain life, and may play cards that require basic Fortitude as a vampire.

If this is possible, can the new Shambling Hordes act when it comes back into the ready region since it wasn't a recruit action.?

Looks like legal play to me.
An ally in the ready region can act and the Hordes is a legal target for PF.
But would you need to burn another target in the ash heap when Shambling returns to play? Would it just burn again?

As a side note: I wonder if you’re technically required to track how much bleed the ally has if it’s recycled multiple times.
Or does Pressing Flesh set bleed to -1 rather than decrement it?

The 'enters play' clause in Shambling Hordes will also trigger with Pressing Flesh, so you still need to remove one ally or vampire from the ash heap to avoid burning the Hordes again.

Otherwise, it would work - Pressing Flesh is not a recruit action and therefore the 'can't act' rule does not apply.

The text of Shambling Hordes says "remove an ally or vampire in your ash heap from the game or burn Shambling Hordes.". Does this mean you can choose not to remove one from your Ash Heap and burn the Hordes instead?

Yomyael wrote:

The text of Shambling Hordes says "remove an ally or vampire in your ash heap from the game or burn Shambling Hordes.". Does this mean you can choose not to remove one from your Ash Heap and burn the Hordes instead?

Yes, you can choose to burn the Hordes even if you have an ally or vampire in the ash heap to remove.

skimflux wrote:

Yomyael wrote:

The text of Shambling Hordes says "remove an ally or vampire in your ash heap from the game or burn Shambling Hordes.". Does this mean you can choose not to remove one from your Ash Heap and burn the Hordes instead?

Yes, you can choose to burn the Hordes even if you have an ally or vampire in the ash heap to remove.

That's pretty neat.
It allows Pressing Flesh to bring Hordes into play (and sticking) in the ready region, allowing it to act the turn it's recruited.