More or less my thought as well - Shaidar Haran did try after all to save the BA and went in Mesaana's back for it even - but what has turned the Black Ajah into something much more important to the Shadow has come fairly late in the game, because of the Cleansing and the dealings in Rand's inner circle and between the Rebels and the Asha'man, leading the Light to get the possibility and begin to practice mixed gender circles. This makes the Light's channelers far more dangerous than they were before KOD, and using mixed gender circles is the only way, after Merrilor, LTT can eventually teach women (eg: the Green) WOS style saidar battle skills (he no doubt has enough experience handling saidar acting as circle leader in the AOL to show them quite a few tricks, even if his weaving of saidar is clumsy).

The Shadow has given advanced training to its male channelers, while keeping a very close eye on the training of Rand's Asha'man, supervised their training in truth. They had a huge advantage, that the stupid attack on the Tairen manor, where LTT's battle skills finally surfaced consciously in Rand, for all his inner circle to see and start to learn and copy, has undermined their advantage massively (and we don't yet know what Logain has been up to these last months). And with that mixed gender channelling returned, and this was an advantage the Shadow must have counted only they would have in the LB - so much that they've waited for the last minute (unless there's something we don't know...) to even really train the third agers in this (had they foreseen the Cleansing, they quite possibly would have started training mixed gender troops earlier). The Light if it puts its act together, between the AS, the Winfinders and the WO (and eventually the damane), already have thousands of women to but a few hundreds for the Shadow (and we know circles can have less men, far less men, than women in them), but most don't have battle "tricks" to counter Taim's troops' training (and Taim's troop may really be but the tip of the iceberg). Now they're a whole lot of women for mixed gender circles, and WOS-style battle weaves.. unless Demandred has managed (as I tend to think) to recruit behind the scenes, for instance having all the DF women and men tested for the ability then recruited and trained in hiding in the Blight (keeping only the BT nest as "a front" and Taim as a mole who'll be able to destroy the BT from the inside when TG begins.. and if exposed he'll contribute to convince Rand this is all Demandred has for troops). But let's just take in the forces we know of.

Egwene's destruction of a part of the BA has put the Shadow at an (apparent) serious disadvantage as far a mixed gender battle potential is concerned. Demandred might start to worry more about this when he sees how Mat (as I have no doubt he will) uses the channelers in battle.

That leaves the Shadow with the advantage of millions or more of Shadowspawn cannon fodder. From what we've seen in Tear, they'll face massive losses whenever mixed gender circles join the fight. Their other advantage is that the Shadow has but one real base to protect (the area of SG) and all the rest is expandable. The Light has tons of big population centers to protect, beside going on the offensive. They'll need the numeric advantage, badly.



It is too late for what people understand tradtionally as "the power of the White Tower" to play much of a role in the LB. We'll see if the WT returns to the old order post TG. Egwene and the leaders' main contribution at this precise point was to serve as a magnet for all the Light's forces currently soiling their pants thinking about Rand's plans to break the seals. Without the reunited Tower, they would have had no banner to go hide behind (or worse, they would have gone to Elaida... a catastrophe), and might have scattered to go hide in whatever holes they found. Rand going to Egwene first (on purpose, his subtext was essentially: "play your roles, you and the leaders" The Amyrlin Seat's somewhat restored prestige was enough to avoid the scattering and bring everyone to Merrilor, but we have yet to see if this will lead to a situation where Rand manages to sway Egwene (and Elayne who now holds considerable power, and Aviendha who will soon wield a lot among the Aiel as well) and this is enough to convince all the "sheep" to follow, or if Rand will fail and most leaders will side with the Tower on this issue, in which case Egwene's efforts to reunite the Tower won't be that much of a blow to the Shadow...

The fact Egwene has contacts and a fledging alliance with all the leaders of female channelers (but Tuon...) and has a positive back story with Logain to build on to reunite the male-female channelers in at least a working relationship during TG will definitely be quite useful to whoever leads the war for the Light (presumably, Mat). The simple fact the Tower and (and the seven Ajahs) are whole again will greatly help coordinating their various roles in the LB. Rand planned nothing for the female channellers he couldn't count on (and certainly never foresaw that the various groups could begin to unite before TG), but Egwene has done better than he could even hope for. It would have been fairly catastophic if during TG the Red and Blue were at war, and all the other Ajah split in two factions, unable to work well together, and Winfinders, WO leaders were not even on speaking terms. But before considering this among the big blows to the Shadow in retrospect, we'll have to wait and see if Egwene doesn't turn her fledging alliance into The Fateful Concord take 2. I doubt it will come to that personally - at least if it starts that way I'm convinced the conflict of views between Rand and the female channellers will be resolved later during the LB and before the strike at SG, but we'll see.

What can be said about Egwene at the moment is that she appears to have accomplished more for the LB by not planning her actions in prevision for it (as Rand has done on his side), but for a long term reunion. It would have been ugly had she failed, but she didn't fail, and not now what's she has accomplished will be useful.