Ents and fighter Merry

[plnp123]

The One Ring, Answer To All Riddles
Frodo Courteous Halfling
Freeps 35
Companions
Birchseed, Tall Statesman x1 (starter)
Ent Horde x1
Gandalf, The White Wizard x1
Lindenroot, Elder Shepherd x1
Quickbeam, Bregalad x1
Merry, From O'er the Brandywine x1 (starter)
Skinbark, Fladrif x1
Treebeard, Guardian of the Forest x1

Events
A Wizard is Never Late x3
Crack Into Rubble x2
Fireworks x3
Have Patience x2
Roll of Thunder x2
Roused x3
Servant of the Secret Fire x3
Hobbit Intuition x3
Long Slow Wrath x4

Possessions
Hobbit Sword x2

Shadow 35
Minions
Gollum, Stinker x3
Easterling Guard x4
Easterling Lieutenant x4
Easterling Captain x3
Easterling Infantry x3
Easterling Axeman x3
Easterling Trooper X2

Event
Vision from Afar x3
We Must Have It x4


Conditions
Evil-Smelling Fens x2

Possessions
Easterling Polearm x4

You have to get as fast as you can with the help of A Wizard is never Late. Once you're set up, the events should be enough to make you win skirmishes. Roused would be then be a nice +4 pump, but the most powerful card would be Long Slow Wrath. You get a str 14 merry with dmg+7, mix it with any other event and almost no minion will stand. Discard Possessions with Roll of Thunder and Conditions with Crack into the Rubble. If you dont need them you can discard them with the unhasty ents.
 
The original goal of the Shadow side was to corruptbut it seems to be way too diffficult to corrupt in TT with easterlings. So i thought about using the burden bonuses to kill some comps. I removed Gathering to the Summons that may make things difficult against Faramir &Co. but i needed more minions.

What do you think about it. i think my only serious issue would be burden removal. Let me know your opinion
Tnx

[hrcho]

I tried something similar to your Freeps and found it very dependent on the matchup. For example, southron archers will easily exhaust your Merry and then you need to discard cards to allow Lindenroot and Birchseed to skirmish and Treebeard can't skirmish at all. You would run into same trouble against Fierce minions such as trackers or Nazgul.

For that reason I switched to Merry, Impatient Hobbit and Gandalf, Greyhame. This one works great for me.

Your deck is still ok and it might be fun against certain shadows, but against some others it will be quite frustrating having companions who can't fight.

You might wanna add some Greed protection in there. I find Albert Dreary to be the best for the job. If you see your opponent playing Uruks, just pull him out with AWINL.

[plnp123]

Well Ive played a few times with this already and the two worst things that can happen ti me are: losing Merry to Enquea LoM and not getting Gandalf soon. I haven't round anything to counter Enquea yet. Is there anything in TS?

On the shadow sise it seems that everyone uses heavy burden protection in TS. Its very difficult to even get 4 burdens for a little bonus. Gathering to the Summons may be an option but i only see the change for minions and I dont think its a good trade-off