Hi Fin!
First off, I think your project is really cool! Good luck with making that all work. It will be fun for you and your community to have something of your own.
When it comes to developing a balanced pre-made FotR deck, I'm sure that there would be some who would be happy to "throw something together", but I can't guarantee that the end results would be actually be as balanced as you hope for.
If you refer to this link (as well as an additional link refered to within the thread), you can see how much work and testing went into developing the starter decks for our TS Sealed event (which we're still waiting for MarcinS to launch
)
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,9003.0.htmlThe process itself takes not just brainstorming but also several layers of playtesting with all of the different decks to make certain that one deck doesn't have a serious advantage over another.
Basically, you could develop a deck that, stand-alone, feels balanced, but there are variables that, until play-tested, would remain unknown as to whether or not the deck is too strong or too weak in actual play testing.
The list you gave to the original FotR starter decks I think is a good starting point.
Out of all of the sealed events, many have agreed that FotR provides deck options that don't necessarily give you a certain "path" of exactly which deck(S) to choose. Of course this is also including booster packs that are opened to add to the sealed experience. Particularly the Mines of Moria decks were pretty well balanced when looking at them side by side.
I personally feel that following the FotR starter decks, as a model, would give you a better experience in general, than cooking up some other decks off the cuff.
If you were interested in waiting several weeks to a couple months, I'd be happy, with a few others here to redevelop the FotR starter decks through playtesting. It would take a bit of time though to do it the right way.
Good luck and all the best!
dmaz