How much vitality can a shadow player throw out in a single turn, anyways?
Assuming only 1 shadow player and excess shadow available:
Bad luck that the opponent has a hand of 8 high-vitality minions. The Balrog, Terror of Khazad-Dum (cost 12, vitality 5), Shelob, any version (cost 6, vitality 8),
Sauron, Dark Lord of Mordor (cost 16, vitality 5), Gollum, any version (cost 2, vitality 4), 4x
Troll of Udun (total cost 28, total vitality 20)
Overall: cost 64, vitality 42
Watcher in the Water, Many Tentacled Creature can pull tentacles out of the discard pile, so it gets around issues of hand limit. The downside is that it discards all non-tentacles, so Shelob and Sauron can't come to the party. Watcher (cost 4, vitality 4), 4x
Foul Tentacle- can also pull any other tentacles from the draw deck if they're not in hand (total cost 8, total vitality 4), 4x
Huge Tentacle (total cost 8, total vitality 8), 4x
Reaching Tentacle (total cost 8, total vitality 8), and 4x
Strong Tentacle (total cost 12, total vitality 8).
Overall cost 40 and total vitality 32.
Another way around the hand limit is stacking things. You really should have discarded their
Goblin Swarms at some point: 4x
Goblin Runner (cost -4, vitality 4), 4x
Moria Scout (cost 0, vitality 8), mor(ia) goblins, mor(ia) problems ...
Only limit on this one is shadow