Background:
In the Silver and Gold start Advanced Campaign options, the heroes are given many opportunities to spend their CT and a lot of additional cash to acquire weapons and other treasures of their choice with. However, the OL is not given any similar opportunity. This appears to be an oversight! It is certainly extremely unbalancing, giving the heroes several 'free' weeks worth of dungeoneering while the OL 'powers up' spending just his starting XP, one upgrade per week. If the OL is allowed to spend his XP, the same as the heroes may spend theirs (and their additional cash), then some information as to what the OL can purchase is also necessary.

Questions:
Q1. In a campaign which starts at Silver or Gold level (using the rules on pg9 Rtl or pg 12/14 SoB) is the OL allowed to purchase upgrades using his additional 1-200 XP?
A1. Yes, the OL still gets his 15XP 'initial' purchase (with normal restrictions) and before/after (delete as appropriate) the heroes finish their purchases he may spend any or all of his additional 100-200 XP on any upgrade he could normally purchase (at copper level if a Silver start and and copper or silver level if a Gold start).
A2. No, the OL may not spend his additional 100-200 XP before the game begins.
A3. Some other answer

Q2. If the OL is allowed to spend his 100-200 XP, is he allowed to 'save' any of it?
A1. Yes. The OL may save some of his XP and spend it during the campaign. This may mean the heroes face diamond monsters on the first week of a Gold level campaign, for example.
A2. No. Any starting XP not spent by the OL are permanently lost, although the CT are not lost.
A3. No. Any starting XP not spent by the OL are permanently lost and so are the CT that they originated from. Thus the campaign may actually start at 198 CT instead of 200, for example (if the OL spent 98/100 in a Silver start). Such a campaign would still start at Silver level.

Not a topic I know a lot about, but I was under the impression that general opinion on the forum was that the rules for starting at silver/gold level were fundamentally broken because of the map control the overlord gives up by not actually playing the earlier stages of the campaign, thus losing the ability to deny the heroes key skills by sieging the cities that train them, and also the opportunity to threaten an overland win while the heroes were still relatively weak (possibly leaving only the option of a final battle, which is notoriously easy for the heroes).

Has anyone played with these rules enough to know that they basically work, given one of the possible rulings Corbon listed above? If not, perhaps they need a complete rewrite (or a quiet death next to the "Basic Campagin Play" rules and the "Competitive Play" rules in the quest guide) rather than a spot fix.

Antistone said:

I think that even if the OL is allowed to start spending his XP the same as the heroes he is heavily disadvantaged plot-wise (and particularly in city razing).

However he is also advantaged a little in that he gets to choose all his upgrades coherently.
He is also not particularly disadvantaged for Tamalir raze strategy.
He is also probably advantaged for final battle strategy, as he is more likely to get all his wanted upgrades for his Avatar (especially if the SoB final battle rules become general and lead to closer final battles).
Although the heroes get to cherry-pick their advances to a certain extent, they seem to be considerably weaker overall than most heroes coming through a full campaign at the similar stage.

In fact, a Titan or Demon Avatar is really, really scary in an accelerated start. They can start with a bunch of Lts, their perfect selection of Treachery, and storm Tamalir in just 3-4 weeks.
The one silver-start I played saw the Titan raze 2 cities in the first 5 weeks(!), with both Nerekhall and Greyhaven falling to their first seige roll. Tamalir was under serious multi-seige in about week 5, and the heroes only defended it by the skin of their teeth (actually conceding one raze roll which failed, after beating of all Lts except Alric).
Example: Titan Avatar , Alric free, Seige Engines pre-game, Merric (5), Eliza (5), Thaadd (15), Silver Humanoids (25), 2 Event and 2 Monster Treachery (50).
All Lts move towards Greyhaven wk 1, reach Greyhaven wk 2, seige it wk 3, (2 Farrows move on to Nerekhall as Greyhaven only needs 2 markers with Seige engines and Thaadd), raze Greyhaven wk4 (Alric and Thaadd move to Tamalir) and put the last token on Nerekhall, raze Nerekhall and place 2 tokens on Tamalir on wk 6, with the 2 Farrows moving back to Greyhaven, and wk 7 you have Tamalir with 4 seige markers (effective value 6) and 4 lts on it!

The Demon is even faster!

The heroes need to be very good if the OL picks either of these two Avatars for a fast start!

Corbon said:

I would love to see some expanded rules on this particular topic.

Also wanted to say thanks to all the people putting in the time and effort to compile this data for proposal to FFG.

The heros also don´t have the opportunity to accumulate any Rumor rewards, which I would regard as quite a disadvantage as well.

In a Gold start, the missing Silver Legendary reward (namely the free skill) would probably represent a painful gap in their training as well.

Since the commente appear to about the balance rather than the actual entry, should the starting post stand as entry for the FAQ proposal document?