5 - The Hills of Emyn Muil (Progression Series)

This is another fellowship continuing on in my goal to play through all of the quests in release order to learn how all (or most) of the cards interact with one another. The first fellowship for the quests in the core set can be found here, and it contains a slightly more detailed overview of what I'm going for with building these decks. As always, any feedback is appreciated so that I can continue to learn more!

This quest is all about dealing with locations, where as the Rhosgobel was all about dealing with treacheries. Having jumped into the game well after the first cycle, it's kind of fun going back and seeing how the devs in the early days went about forcing you to tech for a certain quest. A lot of folks list this as one of their least favorite quests, but I liked it well enough the few times I played it with this fellowship.

Northern Trackers are the most important card to get on the board quickly, because they help us churn through the locations while in the staging area instead of having to quest through them. Snowbourn Scouts and a variety of Spirit Rohan allies and events also help get rid of some of the nastier locations without having to deal with their effects as the active location.

The questing deck is pretty straightforward, I included Frodo as a hero for the first time for his low threat cost and ability to absorb some damage as threat in case some of the horse thieves managed to engage this deck (ideally, that won't happen, as there are no real ways to deal with that. I thought about some Son's of Arnor in the combat deck, but decided it was unnecessary). Theodred tosses Eowyn a resource each round and hopefully I have a copy of Test of Will available for some of the nastier treacheries. After two of the Northern Trackers are on the board it should be smooth sailing. Thalin is here to kill off the crows before they can surge.

The "combat deck" is mostly just a support deck. I decided to use Imrahil because there are a lot of chump blocking options on the table for this deck, which allowed me to quest with him and still have a decent attacker ready to go. Once Beravor gets Unexpected Courage and Steward of Gondor she should be able to get the other deck drawing cards at a rapid enough rate to find the Northern Trackers and Rohan allies. Theodred gives his resource to Eowyn/Frodo on most turns in order to fund that even further.