I will keep you posted if I ever get additional details from Nathan regarding this.
I also think this is unheard of, and sorts of redefines the surges as a mechanism.
or, perhaps even more plausible, Nathan just didn't think this one through

Well,
My original question was cut in his reply, which is a shame because I don't have a copy of it (as I filled a form). Quoting for reference:
I asked him to come back with a quote of my question if he still had it.
Soooo,
I as the Overlord can do exactly what I did, i.e. spend all surges on anything else than the one from the quest rules, including the ones listed on Uncontrolled Power. It means the attack not missing is NOT a requirement for spending the surges on Uncontrolled Power. The surge from the quest rules is not special in any way, as it is added to your pool of available surges. The requirement from Uncontrolled Power to be able to spend ALL surges is still satisfied in my case, and I can safely see the attack miss -  as long as there are enough surges available to bypass the one imposed by the quest rules (the two from the OL card since the hero is a mage, plus whatever the weapon used for the attack had printed).
Surges are therefore SPENT, but question remains if their effect will still trigger, or fail. I replied to Nathan asking the same.
 
 
 

Are we playing the same IA and Descent? In IA I as the IP had no problem dominating the Rebels every mission despite making intentional suboptimal plays in critical situations and giving tips to them constantly and rewarding them as if they won every mission and searched all crates. It went so far that I knew they can't win this after I read the secret information of the missions and the hero favoring finale was over in 3 rounds. winrate was 10-1 (The Rebels won the first mission).
In Descent it always felt like the heroes can win, yet I always won the campaigns as OL in the end.
 
Seeing how little the upgrade would be to a 3rd edition (from an aesthetical point of view) compared to 1ed->2ed and the fact FFG is updating all their Terrinoth products to the aesthetics of Descent 2ed, I don't see a 3rd edition coming anytime soon. Also there are no real structural problems in Desecent 2ed that would  justify an update such as the Road to Legend campaign frankenstein's monster that Descent 1ed was.

I submitted this one to FFG.
Not that I am not happy with the previous answers, but with FFG you never know if they said yes to that and no to something else everybody here would consider a variant of the same issue.

I disagree, in that the surge is a requirement for the attack to hit. If the attack misses, no other surges may be spent. Therefore, in order to spend "as many surges as possible", the attack must hit.

Also agree with Zaltyre and Any2cards. 
The rule here is you must first spend any surges required to make it not a miss before anything else.   For an example if you are adjacent to a shadow dragon and roll only one surge but cannot do enough damage to put any hearts on it you must still pay the one surge for shadow before you recover 1 fatigue. 
 
Also you cannot spend any surges unless it is not a miss.  So no using the cross bow 15+ spaces away after it was a miss due to range.
 

Blood Bowl: Descent edition?

Like I said earlier in a similar thread, you would need to address conditions and attribute-based monster abilities. These really sound like they would be OP in a game mode like this.

Re: Fire Flask & Cursed Doll
 
I´m not really sure whether I agree or not to the provided explanation as for why these two cards would be lackluster, or should be swapped to better variants (or other cards alltogether).
 
Actually when I think about it now, I have never really considered the Search deck as being anything else than a set of cards with printed gold value (or access to treasure chamber/chest). That's actually how they´re designed at the core, since the important part is that a used card still retains its monetary value when used to cash it in at the item shop.  Then yes, heroes do get additional effects out of these cards, among others useful potions. But I have never considered this the other way around, e.g. this deck as being a set of utility cards with secondary market value. Therefore I am genuinely surprised to see people complaining about the utility of these cards, as it's not the point in my mind.
 
The way I´m thinking is that yes, they are worth 50 gold and therefore heroes are glad to draw them out from the deck even if they don't always get to use their effect. But my players use them from time to time. Cursed Doll especially, whenever conditions are getting out of hand. I mean, it's not easy even with a healer to clear out three Immobilized conditions, for instance. Healer can fatigue out, can't be within range of everybody etc. the doll provides a safety net and can be totally worth using even at the cost of one action. It's situational, though, we can agree on that. Fire Flask is the least used of my group, but in the early game they can show some value if the group does not have access to Blast effects yet. Sure it's much less useful in the late game, but it still can clear a group of Kobolds for instance.
 
I don't think Search cards should necessarly be good all-around cards. The potions are, but I don't really find it wrong to get a more situational card from time to time. They are not here to chain powerful effects or anything, just to reward the heroes for searching (basically being able to search is a deed in itself, really). That reward is mainly gold. So yeah, somehow I think these two aforementioned cards are well-balanced because you get both a meh-effect and good gold value. As opposed to the health potion which is both good and financially lucrative.
 
With all that being said I do have thoughts about another type of potion giving an extra move point to a hero for the round. 
 
EDIT: As I exposed multiple times earlier, I don't see any issue with the cards of the Search deck, however I can admit the Searching mechanism as a whole feels a bit lackluster. As if it's not really thrilling to search. You do it because you must. Then sure, there is excitement in getting Treasure Chest, but that aside you´re just here for the gold, and why not if it can even give you a potion. Might as well roll on a table instead of drawing a card. But I don't know if it should be changed. I think it has to be like this. This is not the D&D adventure games where all your gear comes from the "search" deck, here your abilities and overall potential comes from other sources, and search cards give you temporarly accessible powers. So it has to be toned down to maintain balance.

Note that some effects are based on an attack rolling a X, so the X is not necessarly the end of things either. The Overlord has a few plot cards using it, and Airborne from Infector deck. heroes also have a few cards if I´m not mistaken. Thus house ruling out the X would invalidate some of these cards, which for me defeats the question of getting rid of it at the first place.
 
But honestly I like the brutality of the X and I don't really feel like I would have liked a better "presentation" around it. You miss, next in line, thank you very much - kind of.
I also like that the X can be mitigated and is not completely absolute.
 
I think choosing a hero like Reinhardt helps building a slightly different strategy, rather than feeling forced to do so to get rid of something unfair. So this choice can be seen as productive.

I don't get the hate over the "X". Since the times of D&D if you rolled badly on an attack you miss. Granted, rolling a '1' on a d6 is much more likely than on a d20, but the principal remains the same.
 
In addition to re-roll abilities, there are numerous options for players who just can't stand ever missing an attack. They can play as Reinhardt the Worthy, or take advantage of skills from classes like the Monk or Skirmisher, or items like the Golden Mask to never have to deal with a miss.
 
Its not like Imperial Assault was exempt either. The odds of missing were the exact same when attacking any figure with a white defense die, of which there are plenty.
 
This also allows lucky and exciting turn-around situations when one side is in dire straights. If attacks can never out-right fail, then there is the slow creeping inevitability of defeat for a losing side as they get worn away, feeling like they can never regain their footing the way they can if the winner suddenly starts whiffing.

This community should collectively buy you what you miss for your efforts!

This community should collectively buy you what you miss for your efforts!

1- Basic III deck - I hope monster traits-based.
2- Reprint of the errata:ed cards.
3- New version of the Shadow Rune campaign, in booklet format.
4- Updated FAQ

.... but have you painted everything? The journey continues.......

No problem!
 
To give you guys an early update:
 
I haven't been able to work on the site as much as I'd have liked to this past week, but Hybrid Classes seem to be working, as well as starting a CtR campaign and continuing a MoB campaign with CtR.
It's just the finale from CtR that is presenting a bit of a problem, but I hope I can figure that out today or tomorrow. Otherwise, it'll be something for next year..
 
Also, I swear that half the time these post don't get marked when there is a new reply. I missed yours jbrantly. I'm looking towards having a few people help out and improve the code, but I don't want to just put it out there for everyone.

I should've mentioned I play RTL exclusively and mostly. solo as of late

While I applaude the creativity and dedication, I´m very sceptical, and "handy" would really not be my choice of words for it:
- Cards are hidden from Overlord, I don't think you can do that. I would object.
- You can't put tokens on skill cards since they're in standing position.
- The cards standing are a hindrance for checking fatigue/damage/token status on hero sheet.
- It doesn't quite work beyond 3 skill cards and there is no real solution to item cards. I don't like the fact they´re half covered, it´d bother my eyes every time I try to read the text on them
- Not sure why condition cards are part of the model. Overlord needs them as well.
 
Otherwise clean design.

I don' t think I'm overreacting at all, the things I mentioned about are important for game visibility. Of course you can still say that it's not as bad as I described for your group, which is fine. It wouldn't work at all with us, though.

I actually think InfinityBlack has a valid point, which is that you're deliberately hiding the information from yourself, for good or bad (for the record I don't think your reason is silly or anything). When it comes to organization there is no secret recipe, I have yet to see two people handle it the exact same way. The community will always give you advice with regards to that, but in the end only you have the full picture of what you own and what your storage possibilities are. Or, you take the risk to having to change your solution as you open new expansions. It can get expensive.
 
I would also argue that you could just open it all, and that would still leave you with a lot of unplayed content you can explore later in the future, therefore fulfilling your desire to leave pleasant surprises ahead of time, at the pace you decide. Such content is clearly new campaigns, after all they are the meat of the game. And new mechanisms tied to them. That's quite a lot of content? As for items and monsters, I would always advise to play with EVERYTHING you have available, because they enrich the game so much regardless of campaign. They make your choices way more interesting and allow you to test things. The more you have seen card lambda in action in a game, the more you are able to appreciate under which circunstances it's good or not.
 
But at the end of the day, it's your decision and I don't think anybody here is trying to judge you for that. We´re just pointing out that you may make things difficult for yourself

I would also point out that the progression curve between heroes and OL is very asymetric. While both sides can save up XP to get better cards later in the campaign, it is very rare in my experience that not a single hero chooses to spend XP between two quests. As Whitewing pointed out, there are so many excellent 1XP skill cards for all classes, so my hero players tend to farm those early in the campaign to speed up their progression and chance of success. The 2/3XP skills are generally obtained once these key 1XP skills have been cashed in. Furthermore, heroes get gold and again it is quite uncommon that no purchase is made between two quests. My point being that the heroes can consistentlty advance on their progression curve quest after quest, they get stronger, while the OL, well, is stuck with low tier 1XP cards and needs to invest in these before he/she can unlock higher tier ones. In my personal experience I tend to go for the highest impact 1XP card first (web trap normally even if I hate having to do this campaign after campaign) just to give him/herself the slighest chance to keep up. Otherwise you save up, which means your deck hasn't been improved at all.
 
Plot cards can also be purchased but they need tons of threats, and even then you need even more threat to fuel them (normally), which further helps the heroes (!), so yeah as I pointed out in one of my very long posts regarding these and rumor quests, they are more than often dead cards if any good at all.
 
I don't know what the conclusion of all that is, I think it entirely comes down to how the heroes pick their skills and then trying to pick open groups to exploit their weaknesses and hope to draw these better OL cards, which happen to be Basic cards during the whole campaign. I cannot speak for all overlords here, but I never get to purchase these 3XP cards because it would expose me too much, flexibility has always been the better choice rather than specializing, assuming you are facing a rather balanced group of heroes. So the conclusion is that if you set aside luck in the game (yeah that's a stretch), your overall chances of success for playing the overlord heavily depend on your heroes taking their opportunities and making good choices. If they do that (like my heroes do now that they know the game well), the odds are in fact very much against you. That's where you need to make effective purchases just to try to keep up, select your quests and open groups very carefully, and hope luck will kick in in your favor. That's my perception of playing the Overlord in this game currently.

Me too.I´m having a hard time thinking that somebody who really disliked HoB for balance reasons would like any of the other campaigns, tbh.
I hope to be wrong, and I really don't want to judge anybody on anything, but it's very likely that somebody has had a bad experience of the campaign, or at least some of the quests in it, and therefore the campaign sucks overall, following that logic. I will preface my future response to this explanation by warning that some players have expressed or left the impression that people should have the core expectation that the game should be just balanced at all levels, quest, campaign included. Now we can pretty much agree that people really don't want to start a new quest thinking they have no chance of winning it, obviously. Truth is, you can win ANY quest, but the variance in difficulty will always vary between the two extremes. Why? Because the heroes have one configuration, itself being the combination of many factors, and the overlord also has his/her own configuration. Access to a monster monster type can make a quest much easier. Access to a specific shop item can also make some quests a lot easier. The array of possibilities is what is balanced in this game. You lack AoE effects? Buy Blast effects. You are vulnerable to a particular ability? Go around it or buy an item that makes you stronger against it. The list goes on.
It's an asymetrical game, so you can never really quantify balance or fairness between the sides at instant T of a given campaign. The tools for the job for each side are radically different. You can of course quantify the number of wins and losses, but you cannot ev en compare Hero XP with Overlord XP. It really has no equivalence.
So yeah, the game is NOT balanced in that regards. It is a game of affecting the scales, at all times, really. It's a game of ping-pong, I buy an OL card to be better at something, then the heroes buy cards to be better at defending themselves against it. Heroes buy crazy weapons, then I use a specific monster type against it due to immunity to some of this power creep.
More often than not quests look balanced once you´ve gone through the quest objectives and the players (including the overlord) are positioning themselves. Some few quests feel unbalanced, because an earlier decision or purchase made the quest lean towards one side rather than the other. That's part of the game.
Then you can lose badly on a dice roll. Or a card draw. That sucks. But that's luck. Just be prepared for these situations where you think you can pull off something and fail miserably at it based on sheer bad luck.
EDIT: updated my text to get rid of the ridiculous "variance will invariably vary"

The extra dices!

The extra dices!

Loose Ends hero setup:

 
Loose Ends Monster setup:

 
Trolls. Love their Backswing!

 
Loose Ends ending. Heroes made it, but I've played pretty loose and forgot to use OL cards in few instances. All in all, I think this is a very difficult quest as a first quest after Into.