The Free Peoples here is both fun to play and very good. Shadow, I'll be honest, is lackluster.
Ring-bearer: Frodo, Courteous Halfling
Ring: The One Ring, Such a Weight to Carry
Adventure deck:Dunharrow Plateau
King's Tent
Hall of the Kings
Anduin Banks*
City Gates*
Minas Tirith Second Circle
Ruined Capitol
Morgulduin
Haunted Pass
Free Peoples Draw Deck: (33)
1x Gimli, Son of Gloin (Starting)
1x Farin, Dwarven Emissary (Starting)
1x Fror, Gimli's Kinsman
1x Gloin, Friend to Thorin
4x Aragorn, Defender of Free Peoples
1x Sam, Resolute Halfling
1x Thrarin, Dwarven Smith
2x Dwarven Armor
2x Dwarven Axe
3x Dwarven Bracers
1x Gimli's Battle Axe
1x Aragorn's Bow
2x Athelas
1x Hobbit Sword
1x Ring of Barahir
2x Axe Strike
2x Disquiet of Our People
1x Power According to His Stature
1x Dark Ways
1x My Axe Is Notched
3x Stout and Strong
Shadow Draw Deck: (33)
3x Berserk Butcher
1x Berserk Slayer
3x Lurtz, Servant of Isengard
1x Orthanc Champion
1x Troop of Uruk-hai
2x Uruk Captain
4x Uruk Hunter
1x Uruk Rear Guard
1x Uruk Warrior
2x Uruk-hai Band
2x Uruk-hai Horde
3x Banner of Isengard
1x No Dawn for Men
1x Saruman's Power
2x Attack on Helm's Deep
2x Down to the Last Child
2x Greed
1x Scaling Ladder
How to play (or at least, how I play it):I bid 2 to go first, which is higher probably 40% of the time and then you'll win the tie another 30% of the time. Very few people ever bid 3 or more, and I'm one of them
You don't need your site 1 though, I just use it to pull My Axe Is Notched, or Stout and Strong if I've already drawn that. If I happen to have both I won't use the site at all -- Dark Ways is something you want to draw later.
If you get anything at all to increase Gimli's strength, you should be able to win some skirmishes at the start. Don't get him killed by an opponent's skirmish pump, of course, but accumulating some tokens early means smooth sailing most of the time. Your big twilight drop is Aragorn, at 4x in a pretty small deck you should be drawing him early anyway. After that you've got a decent amount of choke going on, the only times you add notable twilight are playing companions (which will be able to help you survive whatever your opponent musters by dying if nothing else) and playing Gimli's Battle Axe. I'll discard Gimli's Battle Axe if it comes at a bad time and I'm not playing against Orcs to avoid the twilight, but boy does it do wonders against Morc decks.
Other than that, it's just a solid little Dwarf build. Play free possessions and move then around as needed. Kill off companions to make room for more (Gloin in particular is just a warm body here). Win the skirmishes that matter and then it really doesn't matter what happens in the others. Aragorn's Bow and Athelas, plus just Aragorn being 8 strength with 4 vitality, are also contributing factors to the deck's staying power. If you struggle to get tokens or your conditions get tossed you're still going to be able to make it pretty far as long as your hand doesn't get clogged up with minions. Reconcile them away if you have too many!
Not much to say for the Shadow. The inspiration here is Banner of Isengard + Uruk Hunter. Turn sites into wounds! But I don't lean too far into fierce minions because of Arwen, Fair Elf Maiden, and Isengard is pretty bad at taking sites, sooo... What actually happens is the site control doesn't really come online and I play one or two big minions every turn. That's enough a surprising amount of the time, if not to get kills then at least to get stops: high strength minions with high vitality and a damage bonus means that even when the minions lose their skirmishes they stick around and dissuade a double. Greed covers a majority of the troublesome Rohan builds that prevent any minions from surviving to the regroup phase so there's not much left to worry about. The site stuff is still there and all, it just ends up being there to distract my opponent. And me, I guess
Other stuff I wrote because I can't help it:The Free Peoples here have a lot of good matchups. Morcs are token farms for Gimli and Farin especially, which in turn means that Gimli will basically always be able to beat whatever Nazgul is in play thanks to Aragorn. The Pale Blade is no concern when Gimli is 18 strength without really trying! Athelas is for Black Breath, one of the only cards that will stop you in your tracks (Red Wrath is another one, beware using Gimli when you don't have bracers). Wounding decks lose skirmishes often which means healing for you. Gimli is nigh on unbeatable with 4+ tokens in the bank and Dwarven Armor keeps anyone else alive, covering you against beatdown. Swarm decks can't compete with Disquiet of Our People, plus you can use Aragorn to heal Thrarin and have him cover a weak minion turn after turn if need be. It's a cute little combo if nothing else
And of course Aragorn's Bow is great for knocking off the occasional troublesome minion(s).
Opponents with condition discarding can be trouble, but generally they have to spend precious twilight to do it. If you anticipate condition discarding (Orc Patrol, Discovered, Saruman's Power), just use up your tokens with Aragorn at the slightest need. Oh, and be sure to use tokens evenly so there's no obvious target for individual removal. I tend to cap Stout and Strong at 3 and put extra tokens on My Axe Is Notched so it's a more attractive target when there's a surplus. That way your opponent can remove the greater number of tokens or the greater utility, but not get both at the same time. Then again, there's extra S&S and no spare MAIN so I could see an argument for doing it the opposite way.
There's a lot going for this FP even when you don't have any tokens, too. 0 twilight cost means the stuff transfers for free so any dwarf with Armor and Dwarven Axe can take 2 wounds from a 20 strength minion, then you just move the gear to a healthy Dwarf next turn. I've got Sam, Resolute Halfling over Son of Hamfast even though there's plenty of healing because I'm not running any condition discarding for Sauron Grind. I try to double move as often as possible against that deck to prevent my opponent from getting very set up, but Orc Patrol at 4x will make it hard to rely on your tokens for healing. If you make Sam the Ring-bearer you can safely soak UtWE exerts and deprive your opponent of a good target for Hate (can't get any kills without 3 copies all at once), then Disquiet of Our People means that you really only need to get to site 9 with Sam and one Dwarf with 2 vitality to win. That's very easy to do, and I don't know if it'd be possible with Son of Hamfast.
However, while typing this up I realized that by switching to Son of Hamfast I might be able to swap Such a Weight to Carry for Answer to All Riddles. SaWtC is more useful against corruption and swarms -- Sam covers the first and the rest of the deck is pretty well teched against the second already, so in theory it's just an upgrade. The extra vitality, meanwhile, might be enough to compensate for less healing in those instances where it matters.
The big downside I see in changing The Ring this is that my starting bid of 2 is much riskier. If Frodo has to skirmish early I'm hitting 4 burdens for sure, and who knows when I'll draw Sam to bring it back down. I don't remember ever being troubled by burdens, though maybe I never played against corruption with this deck (only 2-burden Easterlings). I think I can mitigate the danger by either putting Son of Hamfast at 2x or putting in more pumps for Gimli and starting SoH.
That would be nice since it'd allow me to increase my starting bid to 3 or even 4, but it's such a weak start that I'm not even sure I'd want to go first anymore. I don't want to increase the decksize much either, there's already so many things I want to be able to draw depending on the matchup. Some things to experiment with over the next few games.
Unrelated to all that, Frodo could swap too. I'm not terribly worried about Tower of Barad-dur and initiative Sauron for this deck and that's my main reason for picking Courteous Halfling most of the time. Blocking Din of Arms is nice, though again if Gimli can get some tokens stored up he will probably pick up the slack without trouble. Son of Drogo is always a great partner to Resolute Halfling while Wicked Masster! would go just fine with Son of Hamfast. Old Bilbo's Heir would open up Bounder, Reluctant Adventurer would probably lean me towards including There and Back Again... Even Tired Traveller removing one burden is probably better than dodging discard effects from a competitive standpoint. Of course, simply not having to
deal with discarding effects has its merit in casual play
Anyway. It's a good thing I rambled on about the Free Peoples because I really don't have many nice things to say about the Shadow yet. It's a first pass at a... Uruk-hai Site Control Grind? deck. I don't even know what it should be called. No Dawn for Men is cool if you can nab a site because you can effectively bench many 3-vitality companions with a single wound. I don't know about Uruk-hai Band vs Uruk-hai Horde so I've split 2x between them to see which one better. My money is on Horde, 4 for 12 seems a lot better than 5 for 14.
A more serious attempt would probably scale down the Banners and Hunters to 2x to get 4x Attack on Helm's Deep and 3x Down to the Last Child? The hope would be that you draw them ASAP and maybe claim a site before an opponent can clear the conditions with Vilya or Fortress Never Fallen or whatever. I don't want just one site though, that's more suited to We Are the Fighting Uruk-hai. I want 3 sites so that Uruk Hunter deals 8 wounds after winning 2 skirmishes
Right now it's got plenty of expensive minions so I think there's room to cut some of them for more impactful supporting cards (skirmish pumps mostly, maybe an Uruk Spear or Broad-bladed Sword). Then it'd just be a matter of finding the best such cards for the matchups that are least likely to let you take (and keep) sites. I'll keep tinkering and maybe come back with an update one day, but I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any!
I mean, I can't be too hard on it. It does fine. The real problem with the Shadow is that if you are doing well and able to take sites, you really don't need to take sites. You're already doing well! There's something to be said for being able to snowball, but I don't know what matchup there could be in which taking sites offers a particular advantage compared to using other, less vulnerable cards. As you can probably tell though, in-game my focus is almost always on my Free Peoples. Shadow can afford to be a bit of a throwaway for those kinds of decks, I think -- an opportunity to try something
different. Still, seeing it laid out like this makes me think I haven't given the Uruk-hai the attention they deserve. The core of this Shadow can become reasonably frightening even if this particular brand of Uruk site control doesn't make much sense
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