The Southron army was larger and better prepared than the rangers anticipated, and now your dwindling company is painfully overmatched. Your only option is a disciplined withdrawl to Cair Andros, before being overwhelmed by the enemy reinforcements hurrying up the road to join the fight.
The island fortress of Cair Andros, which guards Gondor's northernmost causeways over the river Anduin, is under siege! Battering rams rumble up the eastern causeway and rafts filled with Orcs float across the river toward the lightly defended northern banks.
Setup: Add The Approach, The Citadel, and The Banks to the staging area. Shuffle the encounter deck.
Siege. (Characters quest using instead of .)
Players must deal damage from undefended attacks to the lowest Battleground location in play. If there are no Battleground locations in play, immediate advance to the next stage.
The assault is relentless, and the defenders grow weary. The tide is slowly but surely turning against you...
Orc scramblers have infiltrated the island and climbed over the walls. They fought to the western gate, and the gate fell. Now a new host of enemies that were lying in wait are breaching the Citadel itself!
Siege. (Characters quest using instead of .)
Breakthrough at the Citadel adds 5 to the staging area.
The defenders of Cair Andros have survived brunt upon brunt of the enemy's assault, but the outcome of the battle hangs on the edge of a knife. One last heroic effort is required to save the fortress and win the victory...
When Revealed: Add Dr没-buri-Dr没 to the staging area.
You sense that the edge of the forest must be near at hand, but Woses are master huntsmen and a band of them block your path. your situation seems hopeless: there are simply too many of them. As they begin their attack, you realize your only hope of survival is to convince the Pukel–men that you are not their enemy.
Characters use their instead of when attacking enemies. If an enemy would be damaged this way, place progress tokens on it instead of damage tokens. When an enemy has progress equal to its hit points, add it to the victory display and place those progress tokens on the quest.
If the players defeat this stage, they have won the game.
On all this Bilbo looked with misery. He had taken his stand on Ravenhill among the Elves – partly because there was more chance of escape from that point, and partly (with the more Tookish part of his mind) because if he was going to be in a last desperate stand, he preferred on the whole to defend the Elvenking. –The Hobbit
Siege. Characters may use instead of when questing here.)
Players cannot advance from this stage unless stage 2 and stage 3 are complete.
Forced: If there is no progress on this stage at the end of the round, each player must discard all resources from each hero's resource pool.
Orcs close in on all sides. If you do not hold them back, your forces will not survive long.
Forced: At the end of the combat phase, assign X damage among characters in play, where X is the total number of shadow cards dealt to enemies in the staging area.