The special rules under "Battle of the Guards" says that leaders and guards that suffer more than 1 damage reduce the damage suffered to 1 instead.

Does this rule still apply to guards and leaders after the Influence effect is revealed? Does it only apply to guards, but leaders are treated as normal?

I think it's safe to say this rule would continue to apply to guards, at least.

Regarding leaders, it's a little more murky. The Battle of the Guard special rules say that a leader blocks LoS and movement and may be targeted by any figure. After the influence effect is revealed, leaders are to be treated as either heroes or monsters, depending.

At the very least, this means figures of the same type can no longer target the leader with attacks, so at least part of the Battle of the Guards rules are being overwritten. Of course, nothing actually says Battle of the Guards ceases to apply, so whether the remaining effects that are not specifically contradicted continue to apply or not is unclear.

I'd say it's a good one to ask FFG.

My question on this quest is: What happened to the hulks? Under Setup, it states: "The ynfernael hulks are not placed during setup." From that point, nowhere in the special rules text nor under Reinforcements are the hulks ever mentioned again. How do they get on the board?

The Ynfernael Hulks come into play if the Overlord chooses the purple Influence effect.

Ha. Right in front of me. Thanks, sigma.

The first time I looked at the quests, I had the same question, and I hadn't bothered to read the Influence options yet when I was going through them all.

For anyone who's interested, I got a response about the damage question:

"Yes, the suffering of only 1 damage applies to both the guards and leaders during the entire encounter. This does not change at any point or for any reason during the encounter."

For anyone who's interested, I got a response about the damage question:

"Yes, the suffering of only 1 damage applies to both the guards and leaders during the entire encounter. This does not change at any point or for any reason during the encounter."

Interesting, that's good to know. Based on the quest guide, I would have assumed it applied to the guards throughout, but the leaders have special text associated with them after the influence effect is revealed- I would have assumed that this text replaced or superseded the text about leaders from before.

Yeah, that was my initial guess as well, but it was still vague enough that I wanted to check. I'm glad I did. In a way, I do like this ruling, though, as otherwise I think the leaders would fall a bit too quickly once the Influence is revealed.