Evil Men Archery - Shadow (Expanded)

[wrigh516]

As the physical cards are getting harder to find these days, I gathered a large physical collection of common and nostalgic decks to play with family and friends as a pre-built game.  I'm posting these decks as a reference and for feedback.
The decks are split into free peoples and shadow sides, all interchangeable at 35 (36 as I added more cycling and discard decks) cards each.  There are some obvious drawbacks to doing it this way, but it is 100% worth it to allow mixing/matching.  It allows enough combinations to keep each game unique and interesting.  The idea is to have thematic and fun strategies while maintaining a balance.  These are built with physical cards, so any in the $150+ range are not always going to make it in due to the costs and to maintain balance among the decks.  I follow the Expanded format and rules before errata, but some decks might also fit into other formats.  This is one of those decks:

Evil Men Archery - Shadow (Expanded)
My version of the Men Archery strategy that turns minions into archers instead of using the weak inherent archer minions.

Minions:
Mumak Commander, Giant Among the Swertings x3
Voice of the Desert, Southron Troop x4
Fletcher of Harad x4
Mumak Rider x4
The Mouth of Sauron, Messenger of Mordor x3
Easterling Runner x2

Possessions:
Long Battle Bow x2
Pavise x2

Events:
Elevated Fire x4

Conditions:
Countless Companies x2
Howdah x4
Rapid Reload x2


Strategy:
The Mouth of Sauron, Messenger of Mordor is there to get Countless Companies, Long Battle Bow, and importantly, Pavise out early and on the board.
Mumak Commander with a Pavise is 4 exertions.  Elevated Fire is another 3 to archery, and we are using minions with 2+ vitality to allow the Toil to help us out.
Voice of the Desert is an insanely good minion that can stop fellowships at site 2 or just make every minion an archer at sites 4-6.  Fletcher of Harad with some plains sites can do the same at all regions.  This with Long Battle Bow helps get tokens on Howdah.
Save the Howdah conditions until you can bomb with archery later in the game.  Easterling Runner is great for making the tokens on Howdah conditions more efficiently arranged for the bomb.
Rapid Reload is such a powerful card.  It punishes large twilight pools and gives flexibility to shut down many fellowship strategies.


Some people use the weaker archers (Archer of Harad and Southron Murderer) with Precision Targeting.  I find the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of Elevated Fire is better.  Plus, killing companions with Precision Targeting is great, but you still have to kill the rest of the (presumably the stronger) fellowship now with less twilight and less efficient events.  I don't have a problem piling up tokens on Howdah using promoted archers instead.  On top of all that, these are stronger minions with more vitality to possibly stick around on double-moves.
I never had the cards to make this deck when I was younger.  Now that I do, I see why people didn't like the new sets as much.  The power creep was real.

I would love to hear any feedback/suggestions.