Forced: After the players travel to The Brown Lands, place 1 progress token on it.
They had come to the Brown Lands that lay, vast and desolate, between Southern Mirkwood and the hills of the Emyn Muil. What pestilence or war or evil deed of the Enemy had so blasted all that region even Aragorn could not tell.
–The Fellowship of the Ring
You are playing Nightmare mode.
Forced: At the beginning of the quest phase, the player who is guarding Gollum must either exhaust a hero he controls or resolve the "when revealed" effect of the topmost Tantrum card in the encounter discard pile.
Forced: When Stage 4A is revealed, search the encounter deck and discard pile for 1 copy of Attercop, Attercop and add it to the staging area, if able. Shuffle the encounter deck.
Begin with the standard quest deck and encounter deck for the Return to Mirkwood scenario.
Remove the following cards, in the specified quantities, from the standard encounter deck:
3x Woodman's Glade
3x Wood Elf Path
3x Mountains of Mirkwood
2x Goblin Sniper
1x Marsh Adder
2x Wargs
2x Despair
2x The Brown Lands
2x The East Bight
Then, shuffle the encounter cards in this Nightmare Deck into the remainder of the standard Return to Mirkwood encounter deck.
Finally, flip this setup card over and place it next to the quest deck. Its effect remains active throughout the game, which is now ready to begin.