My Overlord is adamant that he purchases Overlord Cards in secret. I can't find anything in the rules that would lead him to this conclusion, but frustratingly there are only oblique hints to the contrary. I know he modifies his deck before each Quest in secret. I'm strictly talking about the Spending Experience step of the campaign.

I tried asking FFG but it's been a week and I didn't even get a confirmation that they received the question much less an answer.

He is mistaken. The heroes get to know every card purchased by the OL. In fact they know *exactly what cards the OL has in his deck.

*When the OL has more than 15 cards, he has the option to leave some cards behind at the beginning of the quest (not shuffle them into his deck). The heroes will get to see how many cards he brings along, but they do not get to know which cards he excluded.

As an example, let's say your OL has the Basic deck (15 cards) and has purchased "Blood Rage" and "Web Trap". He owns 17 cards.

At the start of a quest (not encounter) he can decide he doesn't want to use all 17 cards, he only wants to use 15 (the minimum deck size).

He sets 2 cards aside before shuffling his deck for the quest. The heroes see that.

You know he has access to 17 cards (Basic +Web Trap+Blood Rage).

You know he has 15 cards in his deck.

You do not know if those two cards are Poison Dart and Web Trap, or Tripwire and Frenzy, etc. That is, you don't know WHICH 15 cards he is drawing from, but you know they are 15 of the 17 he owns.

Zaltyre is right. I suspect your OL friend has been playing Imperial Assault? The OL buys his agenda cards in secret there.

That was the impression I'd gotten. Unfortunately, he's rather entrenched in this belief and tends towards the "prove I'm wrong" method of rules resolution, rather than showing where the rules support his interpretation. Is there a place in the rules that explicitly state this I could point him towards?

Even just a section that says something like "Everything is public knowledge unless noted otherwise" would be enough to work with. I tried pointing out a similar passage from the Quest Guide but he argued that it only applies to the material in that particular book.

It's not an explicit reference to public OL cards, but in the spend experience OL section on page 20, there is:

"Before each quest (but not each encounter), the overlord player may
choose to temporarily remove a number of cards from his deck in order
to optimize his strategy for the quest. This is done in secret so the hero
players do not know which cards the overlord player has removed.
He must keep a deck of at least 15 Overlord cards for each quest. Any
removed cards are set aside for the duration of the quest. After the quest
ends, return any removed cards to his deck of Overlord cards."

If the contents of the overlord deck were not known anyway, there would be no reason to remove cards down to 15 in secret .

There's also the fact (from that same section) that the players all record their purchases on the campaign sheet.

We know what he buys through observation. We didn't know he had bought a second Web Trap until he played it, but at that point we have the information for the rest of the campaign so removing them secretly isn't necessarily exclusive with purchasing in secret as well.

The entry you're talking about reads "When he purchases a new card, that new card is added to his deck and the overlord records the experience points he spent on the Campaign sheet." which he claims means he record the number of XP spent but not the card.

I guess I'll have to wait for an official ruling. I appreciate your help but it seems like it relies on default behaviors rather than being explicitly stated, which unfortunately means that even though I think you're right I can't really prove it.

Since the OL cards he didn't buy are not secret, you can always look at these cards to figure out what card he bought. However, it sounds that your OL would like to keep these cards in secret as well.

7 hours ago, mal3diction said:

I guess I'll have to wait for an official ruling. I appreciate your help but it seems like it relies on default behaviors rather than being explicitly stated, which unfortunately means that even though I think you're right I can't really prove it.

I truly do understand your frustration, as "rule lawyers" are never much fun to play with. If this is his general approach, be prepared for some very un-fun times, as there are many, many situations in FFG's writing style of rules, cards, etc. for this game that are not 100% clear, or "explicitly stated" as you reference.

It often takes a flexible mind, much patience, and REASONABLE people/discussions to get the most out of the game. Quite frankly, this is specifically why Sadgit's CRRG is such a big help; we knew we could not rely on FFG, so we created a fan made extensive rules guide.