What stops you from playing multiculture (if anything)?
I don't play multi-culture for Free Peoples because outside of "splash" cards, I don't want to overextend my deck size by needing too many support cards.
Aragorn, Ranger of the North and
Sam, Son of Hamfast are in every deck and
Legolas, Greenleaf and
Faramir, Son of Denethor could be, but you need a certain amount of cards to warrant having a different culture in the deck. Plus, cards that rock rainbow fellowships are nice to avoid.
Orc Insurgent is a "splash" minion example.
Think about
Faramir, Wizard's Pupil. He has some nice abilities, but wouldn't you rather him just have two good abilities? Or one awesome ability that focused on one deck-type more? I can't think of ever playing
Wizard's Pupil in a Rohirrim deck, so I am missing out on one third of his talent right there! Now think about
Faramir, Son of Denethor. When it's late in the game and the game is on the line, he's a nice companion to throw out there. Assign him to that Witch-King or
Mumakil Commander or whomever...his game text is nice and it works well.
Another example might be
Gimli, Lockbearer. It's a shame that Gimli is so...bland because
Gimli, Skilled Defender or
Gimli, Son of Gloin or
Gimli, Feared Axeman fits so much better into most decks. Granted, in expanded you can have a beefed up Gimli, but then you need his axe and helm and why not just include three copies of
Shadowplay instead?
What incentive would make you play Shadow multiculture?
Most of the Shadows don't interact, and I'm fine with that. In the movie block, until Return of the King, Nazgul were nice minions to throw in every deck, because they were good support. Gollum culture is the same way.
I actually liked that about Movie Block...instead of
culture, you had
culture but people could play Southrons or Corsairs or Easterlings. It was pretty cool, because you could imagine, "Wow, an
Easterling Captain and two Easterling Skirmishers attacked Frodo and Faramir." It's a little less fun (for me) to imagine, "Oh, cool, a
Dunlending Elder happened to team up with
Gollum, Dark as Darkness to attack Frodo while four
Goblin Runner attack Aragorn and Boromir is fighting a
Gate Troll at
Shire Lookout Point." At least if you have a solid army of the same culture, your mind can think, "Well, it's just an ill-planned assault."
More thoughts, I have always seen Gandalf culture as a splash free peoples culture and the Nazgul culture as a splash minion culture.
-wtk