This is roughly my plan:
1) Elven Shores should connect to Forochel area. Cirdan sent mariners to rescue Arvedui that way. I wasn't planning to put a site at Tol Fuin, it's just visually-correct.
2) Forodwaith connects Forochel to Withered Heath
3)Rhun connects Iron Hills, Dorwinion, and Horse Plains.
Dorwinion's boundaries connect to the Sea of Rhun coastal sea region as it's supposed to. ICE introduced The Corsairs of Rhun faction so really this sea should not be blacked out.
4) Umbar is a region, with Umbar the City of Corsairs, a site. Near Harad will have a city site from the ICE MERP map.
Why would anyone go down there you ask? For a Hero deck to play high MP factions! In
Against the Shadow, ICE started doubling up factions per site, but that means you can only play one or the other there. This way you can play both! For example you can go to the Southron Oasis and play Southrons, then cruise to Harad and play the Haradrim! You can play Black Numenoreans at Gobel Mirlond and then go to Umbar and play Corsairs of Umbar.
Resource space in a deck is at a premium, so cards that attempt to extend the limits of the map are wasteful in my opinion when the map itself can be amended. That's exactly what ICE did. First they made a card named "Harad", then they altered the southeast corner of the map connecting regions behind Mordor and made their Harad resource redundant. No one ever plays with such cards anyway, because there are always better resources to select. I'm just continuing their trend.
Yeah if the new game is mapless or sucks, I won't play it, but if it's artistically appealing, I'll probably collect it because I enjoy looking at Middle-earth.