You are playing Nightmare mode.

While the players are at stage 5b, this card gains:"Forced: When the players are instructed to remove any amount of progress from a quest stage, place 1 progress here instead."

If there are X progress tokens here, the players lose the game. X depends on the number of players in the game:

1 player: X equals 5

2 players: X equals 7

3 players: X equals 9

4 players: X equals 11

Begin with the standard quest deck and encounter deck for The Battle of Five Armies Nightmare scenario.

Remove the following cards, in the specified quantities, from the standard encounter deck:

3x Dark Bats

3x Hidden Path

2x Fighting Among Friends

1x Vanguard of Bolg

1x Ravenous Warg

4x Gundabad Climber

3x Gundabad Wolf Rider

1x Misty Mountain Eagle

Then, shuffle the encounter cards in this Nightmare Deck into the remainder of the standard The Battle of Five Armies Nightmare encounter deck.

Finally, flip this setup card over and place it next to the quest deck. Its effects remain active throughout the game, which is now ready to begin.