Setup: Assemble the Middle-earth Map. Place 1 progress token on the region that shares a Trait with the greatest number of heroes. This is your current region. Set Chief of the Nine aside, out of play. Put Shadows of Terror into play, Abroad side faceup. Choose a player to take control of Dúnedain Tracker, Standard side faceup. If there are 2 or more groups, flip it to the Epic side, and familiarize yourself with the treachery called The Nine Are Abroad. Each player searches the encounter deck for a non-unique location and reveals it. Shuffle the encounter deck.

Forced: After placing a third resource token on a region, remove 3 resource tokens from it. Then, shuffle the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck and discard cards until a Nazgûl enemy is discarded and place it on that region. Tell each other group to search their encounter deck and discard pile for the same enemy, place it on their copy of that region, and shuffle their encounter deck. Do not trigger the “when revealed” effects on these enemies.

When the number of Nazgûl enemies in play matches the number of groups, advance to stage 2A at the end of the current phase.