I am playing Sauron and I picked the plot card " To Find Them All," which states that I can win the game if I have 6 influence on the Shire. Is it correct that as long as I have 6 influence on Barad-Dur I can have a single influence counter on each connecting square all the way to the Shire when I again need to place 6 influence on the Shire location to win?

Yes. The example on page 17 shows a similar situation: 3 influence on Barad-Dur, one each on Mount Doom and Sea of Udun, and 2 on the Marshes. It's OK to have different amounts of influence on the extensions, as long as the amount on (in this case) Barad-Dur is not exceeded.

TK

Hi Tim. Thanks for your response. My interpretation of the rules was the same as yours by wanted to run it by someone else to confirm. My real concern is that this seems to make the goal way too easy for Sauron to achieve. I ran a playtest this morning and found the Ranger and Dwarf character plots relatively simple as well. As an opposing player it seemed very difficult to prevent these from being accomplised. Has anyone else run into this apparent problem?

Haven't played it yet, either, but it seems all the heroes have to do to stop this is "break" the extension chain in between Barad-Dur and the Shire, and all locations on the "Shire" side would be reduced to 1 influence each. If the heroes could cause two or more breaks near the end of the game, Sauron might not have time to refill the Shire. Easier said than done, I'm sure.

TK

Thanks for the info. I see your point, you're absolutely right. I must have been pretty obtuse this morning, it was a long ride back from Gencon...

I actually think all of the missions are pretty easy to accomplish, the issue, however, is that completing your mission doesn't necessarily mean you win.

You have to either be dominant at game end AND complete your mission. Or be tied for dominance and be the ONLY one who completes his mission. The combination of these events is a lot trickier than just completing your mission, it involves making sure you are carefully stopping the other side from winning or you will just end up in the 'fight finale' which it would seem is pretty heavily weighted in favour of the heroes

Tim Kelly said:

Unless Sauron has this particular mission there's really no incentive to do either of these.

And it's ridiculously easy for the Hero players to break the chain of influence since Sauron's turn is always the first in every round.

Tim Kelly said:

When/How can heroes "break" the extenstion?

End their turn in any location with influence. At the start of Sauron's turn there is a Hero Rally step which removes influence from that location (not Shadow Strongholds) and which can then eliminate a lot of additional influence if the chain breaks. Worst case scenario for Sauron is having 6 influence at Barad-Dur and Shire. Hero ends their turn at Mt. Doom (only access point to Barad-Dur), poof, influence chain is cut, so now every other location has to stretch their influence back to Mt. Gundabad and/or Dol Guldur, both of which can only have 3 influence, so Shire among them would to 3 influence (since no location can have more influence on it than the Shadow Stronghold it can link back to).

For Sauron, "They Are Terrible" Shadow card can see the Ringwraiths make a really quick move to Shire and can catch the Heroes off-guard.

Dam said:

Thanks!