My brother and I are big Fallout and ES fans, so for Christmas I got him the Fallout board game. We aren't really table top gamers so I didn't really know what I was getting us into. We got the game set up and we're SO close to getting it but I'm hoping someone with a little better knowledge of the game can dumb down a few things for me. We got the movement, exploration, enemies and combat down. But:

1.) We could not figure out when to move down the shield or star on the scenario card, do they move once another sword or shield tile is placed on the map?

My friend completed part of the main Commonwealth quest and it said "add a third shield tile to the map" but didn't really say where? It seems like if you move the faction down on the scenario card with every tile it makes the game go so fast.

Also, are the sword and shield tiles irrelevant to players until they declare loyalty to a faction?

2.) As far as getting influence points, we got through about 7 turns and no one had any. Do you wait to declare your loyalty based on your agenda card until one faction has more tiles on the map than others? It seems like the way our game went was we did about 2 quests and then "all **** breaks loose" quest happened and it asked us to put faction tiles all over the map? Seems like that would finish the game so quickly and no one had influence.

This game looks like it can be really fun, but it is nothing like anything I've ever played. Thanks for anyone's help!

PS Sorry if this is double-posted I'm not sure if it went through when I made my account!

Sorry for the delay - this forum is quiet... methinks a combo of no announcements of future expansions and general quiet from FFG (still waiting for some official FAQ!)

1) Both the Star and Shield markers on the scenario card move down the track whenever the Agenda deck runs out and needs to be shuffled. They also move, of course, whenever the results of a quest card say Star+ or Shield+, moving one space for each + symbol.

2) Each Agenda card you have is worth 1 Influence by itself, so everyone starts the game with 1 point. Getting more Agenda cards is key to winning the game, and the easiest way to win is to lucky into a few cards for the same faction, and, of course, moving that specific faction (Star or Shield) down the victory track.

Fallout can end VERY suddenly. We just played a big game last night and decided to keep going after the official win, because we wanted to see how the main quest line was going to end. Not unlike a Bethesda video game, by the time we finished, we were all ridiculously-powerful