Overall Score: D-
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The fourth expansion of the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle brings us to The Hills of Emyn Muil, also known as one of the most boring places in all of Middle-Earth.  Ok so clearly from the score on this one I’m not a huge fan, this was and remains to this day one of the most boring expansions to the Lord of the Rings Living Card franchise.  Why?

Well this entire expansion is based on one of the most un-fun and most frustrating ways to lose in Lord of the Rings, but more importantly the most anti-climatic.  Lovingly referred to as “Location-Fucked”, its about the equivalent of being mana fucked in Magic the Gathering.   The vast majority of this encounter deck is filled with Locations that in combination with a few treachery cards can leave you in a situation of being unable to produce enough questing to deal with the threat and you ultimately just drown in it and that’s pretty much the whole expansion pack.

There is no clever mechanic, or unique encounter deck adaptation, its just a bury you with Locations and Instant effects.  Which is why the quest is so easy to beat, because all you have to do is quest like hell.  I beat this quest on my first try, to date the only quest that I have ever managed to do so and on the third round.  There is no puzzle to solve here, no clever deck building required and you’ll beat it before you see even a 10th of the encounter deck.  I played it several times to be sure, everyone with the same result.  To put it plain and simple, its a complete dud on the quest side.

Fortunately expansion packs are not just the sum of the quest, you always get some new cards for deck building and thankfully you gain some nice cards that I actually have been using quite a bit.

Brand son of Bain is a pretty great hero in cooperative play with a fellow adventure, but he is quite useless in solo play unless you duel wield your solo games.  It bothers me , this is among the worst art in the game, the illustration looks unfinished.

You get Descendant of Thorondor & Meneldor’s Flight to finish off those Eagle decks.  You get the fantastic albeit expensive top deck controller Gildor Inglorion.

You also get the all important Song of Travel, to help with those cross-over decks.

Conclusion

Sadly while you get some great cards for deck building, the questing aspect of this expansion is a complete dud.  Fortunately this kind of thing is rare and few in-between in Lord of the Rings The Living Card game, so I suppose we were do for a bad one.