Overall Score: B
Difficulty: 
Theme: 
Fun Factor: 

The third expansion of the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle brings us another kind of classic theme we see in the original Lord of the Rings story, but like Conflict at the Carrock, one not really connected to the theme of the cycle itself (hunting down Gollum).

This departure doesn’t really hurt the story or quest any, its a kind of side quest that has the players escorting an injured eagle to safety while simultaneously seeking out medicine (Objective cards hidden in the encounter deck) to heal him.  The mission is to ensure that by the time you complete the final leg of the quest your eagle is fully healed.  Should he die at any point, you lose the game.

This is one of those adventures where with the right deck the difficulty drops down quite significantly, in fact, simply by leveraging Lore (green) heroes and deck this entire adventure becomes considerably less difficult, but as a whole its still a fairly challenging quest.  Your eagle takes automatic damage each round, acting as a clock of sorts, but more importantly there is a wide range of treachery cards and shadow effects that will have you dealing damage directly to the eagle as well as your heroes.  Some of these combo in really nasty ways like Exhaustion  and Festering Wound which can end your quest real quick like.

There are other nasty surprises Swarming Insects which compiles the problem leading you down to a single conclusion, you need to control the encounter deck and have some healing handy.  Not exactly a tough puzzle to solve, you have great heroes like Denethor which are pretty much tailor made for this quest, giving you access to Lore (healing) and allowing you to toss out those poorly timed hazards.

I personally really liked this quest, mainly because it ties in so well to the feel of Lord of the Rings story with the eagle theme.  Its also a bit more in tuned with a first adventure cycle which I kind of felt should be a little bit easier as its assumed that you are doing this first so your kind of a novice at the game.  The puzzles should be easier to solve.  After the bashing you probably received at Conflict At the Carrock, this one is going to feel like a cake walk.

There are some pretty great cards in this set for your deck building here as well which was a nice bonus for this adventure.  Ancient Mathom is really fantastic for the spirit decks, almost an auto add in my humble opinion.  You also have To The Eyrie which really rounds out the eagle deck as well as the big power card of the set with Landroval which lets you save heroes.

Conclusion

Personally I found this to be a great quest, in particular for novice players. It scales well and comes with some great player cards.