We played the game last weekend and find out that one mission for heroes is broken. Heroes can win if there is 2 or less monster tokens in play. Ok so heroes have to fight them .... but, there were some blank monsters on pernamently perilous locations and we have no way to fight them because everytime we get there, sauron may choose to draw peril cards instead of fight. This is likely for sauron if there are monsters on this tiles and it is easy for him to make heroes dont fulfil their mission this way. I think it is weak side of the rules. Sauron simly put 3 monsters on permanently perilous locations and if heroes have this mission card they have much less chance to win. Does someone know how to fix this ?

I have another question, one of the heroes have an ability that allows him to look at monster tokens in adjacent locations. Can he share this information with other heroes ?

Rasiel said:

Odds of having that mission are only 1 in 5 though. Yeah, monsters in perilous locations are hard to remove, but during the Ambush step, Sauron has no choice (unless that location has monster + minion), combat will happen. Of course, this means the Hero ended his/her turn in that location, which might not be the best idea in the world. There is also at least 1 Event card that can remove monsters from any location. And bear in mind, to place 3 monsters, Sauron will have taken 3 Monster/Command Actions and if he's put those monsters into Perilous locations, that can often mean his Plots are much less protected. Sucker his Plot away and go into final combat with a hefty advantage on dominance, meaning a lot weaker bunch of Ringwraiths.

Rasiel said:

I don't see why not, heroes are working together against Sauron.

This is so nice, but ambush step is after saurons turn, so he can move this monster away usually to another perilous location, or he can get there with one of his minionst who will fight instead of weak or none token, or play a shadow card with fight that than skips ambush step. What you say is nice, but no, we played with this mission and sauron didnt know we have it, but still he defend his monsters this way. We dont have time to wait in those locations that long (and get some awful peril cards) to kill one monster because we have to stop saurons plots, if you played some games you know that this is the main objective for the heroes, not their mission, mission is only second.

Rasiel said:

Only Peril-Peril adjacent locations are Ruins of Angmar - Mt. Gundabad. Influence can be removed from non-Stronghold locations to stop them from being Perilous. And in 1-Hero, the Hero gets two turns in a row, with no Sauron turn in between. Monsters also can only move to an adjacent location with influence on it. And again, if Sauron is taking an action just to protect a monster token, to me, he is wasting part of the action. And I'd much rather he play a Shadow card that initiates combat (Crebain and Agent are jokes, Giant Spider/Cave Troll is less nice), means I don't have to worry about another Shadow card this turn.

Rasiel said:

What I'm saying is if Sauron is spending his actions protecting his monsters, he has less actions to plan and protect his Plots. In which case, it should be easier for the Heroes to remove those Plots. And you know you skip the Combat/Peril in the location you start in, right? Peril doesn't end the turn as often as combat during the Travel step can, since all but Thalin have to beat the monster to continue. Let Sauron fondle his monsters, just crush his Plots and have dominance come Finale, then you can kill the weakened Ringwraiths for the win. If you have that Mission, don't bother even trying to complete the Mission when/if you see Sauron doing that. Not having to worry about your Mission makes it easier to focus on removing Sauron's Plots. As long as you have dominance come Finale, doesn't matter whether you completed the Mission or not, Sauron can't win by his Mission without at least having a tie for dominance. Which he shouldn't, if he is so concerned about his monsters.

You dont get it. Sauron protects his tokens this way because he have "one monster action more than he needed" or he wanted to fight there with his minion anyway and perilous locations was there because there was tokens from previous rounds. He doesnt spend any action on doing only saving his token. He simply have this option so he take it.

When combat occurs, it also defends saurons plots. Because of combat, hero have to kill that weak monster or be stopped in place. When sauron is lucky to get a 3 strength 5 attack melee card it is also very good to deal 3-5 damage to hero. Only by playing shadow card. You think combat with weak monsters is not worth it ? Your problem.

Mission card should not be that hard to fulfil. End of story.

Rasiel said:

But this is only if Plot + monster are in the same location. If you send 1 Hero out hunting for monster tokens, seems Sauron in your games will spend an action to move the monster, so it is not forced to Ambush and get discarded.

As to Reckless, if I'm against the fodder-Crebain/Agent, why not go with Parry first? It'll kill either of the two, because of Reckless and you take 2 dmg yourself.

Rasiel said:

It's not like every Hero Mission is hard. They have 3 very easy ones (Spear of the West, Noble Blood and Isildur's Secret), 2 hard ones (Against the Shadown and Keep Minas Morgul at Bay).

For Sauron, there are 2 Missions the Heroes can nerf on their last turn (or even on the Hero Rally Step on the turn Finale starts) that he can do nothing about (His Dark Throne and To Find Them All). Even his other 3 are solely dependant on the Plots he draws. Maybe he has the Black token to stage III Mission, but no Black Plots come into play until very late (which there is a good chance of, as the good ones require 5 and 8 influence in the Shadow Pool), but he did draw a lot of Red Plots early and could start the Finale without completing his Mission, but with dominance. I'll take final combat with dominance over trying to complete my Mission if that can result in the Heroes tying for dominance. Like you said, Mission is secondary, dominance is the key, if Mission is completed, nice, if not, if you took care of dominance, doesn't matter.

It appear to me that it is even harder to kill 3 minion to fulfill the mission for hero.

Sauron can auto Peril the hero at adjacent locations like Ruins of Angmar and Mt. Gundabad. They just need to move the minion away to prevent ambush.

Or move my minion to an adjacent space and put some influence on it and make it peril again.

There is basically no way to kill gothmog of gorgoroth since he peril within 1 space of him. Including himself.

You can only kill ringwraiths in the very last turn. which i can move him to a permanent peril location.

Witch-king is hard to kill.

Sauron can even play the shadow that relive a minion back to life and move in to any location.