Playing Army of Dal'Zunm this coming Friday.

The quest states that the heroes can spend an action to reveal the color of an objective token, and can then spend another action to place it on their hero sheet if it is blue or discard it if red (no action). It says a hero or Lieutenant may equip the green objective token if adjacent to it. But because the overlord has the ability to see what some of the objective token colors are by discarding a card, is a lieutenant able to directly (on OL turn with an action) equip the Relic or green objective after swapping it? Does it stay flipped, and does the one it is swapped with stay unflipped?

The rules do not specifically state an objective token has to be flipped over before it is equipped. If it can't be equipped by a lieutenant after swapping, the only way for the OL to equip it is to kill the hero who has it already equipped.

When the OL looks at a token, does it get flipped even if he doesn't exchange it?

The favor on this ruling seems to tip one way or the other based on interpretation, so if you can see another input that I am missing to make it balanced, that is good, too!

I haven't had my last question from a week ago answered by FFG yet, so I don't expect an official ruling before I play this, so opinions and insight are much appreciated.

Review in progress...

In my opinion, there are a few different things at play in the answer to your question(s).

Does it stay flipped, and does the one it is swapped with stay unflipped?

In the "All-Knowing" section of the rules, it says, "Each time an objective token is revealed, the OL may discard 1 OL card from his hand to look at one unrevealed token on the map. Then, he may exchange that token with the token that was revealed."

I think the key bits of this text are:

1. the absence of "before the token is revealed" (along with "...token that was revealed".)

In other words, the token the hero originally reveal is seen by all.

2. "...to look at ..." not "to reveal". This is a little tricky. The language (to me) implies it is secret, but there is the standing rule that all knowledge not said to be secret is public. I'd default to the rules as written, this is public, too. I suspect it is intended that the OL looks at the other token secretly.

3. As to your last point, I would imagine that whichever token ends up in the "second" location (not the original space where a token was revealed) stays hidden. Even though the color of that token will be known, it doesn't seem like the OL would ever want to exchange if what he was doing was helping the heroes reveal more tokens with fewer actions. The exception to this is if he sees the green token, he could ****** it away.

Regardless of the correct answer to #3, I'm fairly confident that a LT cannot pick up an unrevealed token, even if the OL has knowledge of what it is. "Green token" means" green face showing" in all cases I can think of right now.

Notably, everything I've posted above is my opinion based on my experience with the game.

I don't know if your starred word was intended or if that is some expletive or other automatically starred by the forum... I will assume you said "sna-tch"... (edit, yes, confirmed, forum does not like this word, and I am too sheltered to understand why).

Anyway, your point 2 seems to contradict itself.

What I thought you were trying to say (minus your 3rd sentence under #2) is that the token the OL looks at remains hidden and the revealed token remains revealed whether he trades tokens or not. In this situation, a trade does not necessarily waste an action for the heroes, but it does delay getting a blue token equipped (if that is what they used an action to reveal), and they would have to use an action to reveal the new token next to them. Further, if it was the green token, it seems that a LT could then pick it up.

Is this something anyone out there has played and can comment on the balance of their interpretation?

You're right, I didn't realize that word would be filtered, either- it has a perfectly colloquial application of "to take away".

Anywho, for point 2 I didn't mean so much to contradict myself as to point out that the wording implies one thing, but never explicitly states it. Since the "looking at" is not EXPLICITLY secret, I think the RAW default to "public knowledge. Therefore, either outcome is possible based on whether you use the RAW strictly, or make a guess as to what the writers probably meant.

The disconnect between those two concepts causes all the grief for D2e.

It also has the common urban definition of the female lower private area, which the filter is probably catching it for.