The card itself is pretty clear to me, my question is quite specialised:

When the Lurker is the herald, can you make new pacts at the start of the battle? The question came up in a game that I'm playing right now and the outcome will pretty much make or break the game.

What's in the rules: you cannot gain power tokens during final combat, this is not a final combat however. But it's not the start of your turn per say either. So how would you rule it?

Sorry, you may not exploit the Lurker while battling an AO as result of an OW encounter. Nothing related to final battle really triggers (you don't discard active Environments, you don't devour investigators LiTaS and so on), since it's not a real FB, and in the same way, there is no real "new turn begins", so no new Pacts can be taken

And another victory for Glaaki! Kate was eaten by Cthulhu as expected, a few bad mythos later, after losing my weapons to servants of Glaaki, right before sealing the final location - a devouring gate opened on Mandy. Which added the last 2 servants to the board. And I thought swapping with a servant on Devil's Reef (via the Mi-Go Braincase) to ensure I could put the final seal down without the terror level rising was a good idea. Nope, AH did not want me to win this time...

Update : Did I play that right? Does Glaaki immediately awaken when the fifth servant enters play or only when it is required to but cannot place anymore?

Glaaki is awaken by a sixth servant being summoned. You can't add the sixth one (clearly, since you have only five) hence you summon the big boss

The text is "if all 5 servants are already on the board". Key text: "already". If the fifth one arriving on the board were the triggering condition for Glaaki to awaken, it would be worded "when there are no servants left on this sheet, the AO immediately awakens" or "as soon as there are 5 servants on the board"

Thanks for the quick answer! Great, then I actually won that one. :-) Time to alert Tibs to correct the stats!

Well done then! Glaaki is a nasty one, so congrats for your victory

I would say that Herald/Guardian/Institution effects are "on hold" for the duration of the OW battle. Blight and Nodens cards, of course, still take effect. Just not the herald/guardian's ability to administer them. Oh, and obviously, Bound Ally cards don't leave you to join the OW AO.

As far as not receiving clues/power... that rule is in place to prevent you from insta-killing Nyarlathotep, but you might as well play it safe and say that it doesn't apply to OW battles either.