Pairings

[Fat Greybeard]

I have just started playing the game in the last couple of weeks, though I bought bucket loads of cards 5 or 6 years ago and never opened them or looked at any of the singles i bought.
So I have most of the full sets up to expansion 10 including most promos, about 6 starter boxes, and i guess about 8 or so booster boxes which we have just cracked open.
We play with the original rules though we use all the cards available, so play number sites in oder, I've posted here as most of the cards are fellowship in the block.   
Anyways, me and my kids have put together 3 decks each, mine are:-
Fellowship.
Rohan horsey deck with Gandalf starting (Gandalf signet reducer)
Elf Archer deck with Legolas at River/Forest & Gondor chap that plays sites if at Forest as starters..
Ent/Hobbit Deck.
Shadows.
Nazgul corruption deck.
Uruk Hai machine double damage deck.
  swarm

So my question what factors help you to decide how to pair the sides up, and what are supposed to be the best pairings.
A couple of obvious things have occurred to me already.
Firstly its nice to have halves that make good use of different site numbers.
Secondly its not wise to pair up your fellowship with it's major weakness, as that obviously helps your opponent if he happens to play your weakness. Though I don't yet know what each fellowships weakneses are.
Thirdly to my cost after pairing Elves and  , if you play a deck that relies on cycling, don't pair it with a deck that might get cards stuck in hand.
Cheers.     
       
     

[sgtdraino]

If you're playing with Fellowship block sites, but using cards all the way through expansion 10, then that's not any kind of regular game format, and it would be tough to tell you what good pairings would be, since that depends on the format you're playing, and most players aren't going to have experience with an irregular format.

Good pairings generally have a Free Peoples and a Shadow that complement each other. For example, Dwarfs and Moria, since both those cultures can take advantage of underground sites, or Elves and discarding Sauron, since both of those cultures can be good at discarding cards. Smeagol and Gollum are also a good combination.

[Legion]

A couple of obvious things have occurred to me already.
Firstly its nice to have halves that make good use of different site numbers.
Secondly its not wise to pair up your fellowship with it's major weakness, as that obviously helps your opponent if he happens to play your weakness. Though I don't yet know what each fellowships weakneses are.
Thirdly to my cost after pairing Elves and  , if you play a deck that relies on cycling, don't pair it with a deck that might get cards stuck in hand.

You call this obvious, but you have no idea how many people miss at least one (and often more) of those three points.  To me it is absolutely fundamental that both the fellowship and shadow are paired together properly. 

One possible thing to add is deck size-it is similar to cycling.  If you have a very niche shadow idea that is designed to key off a perfect hand, you'll need to have a small deck to get those cards before your opponent has rushed to site 9.  On the other hand it is hard to make an effective pipeweed or Moria Archery deck at 30/30 (mine is 46/46 and often decks out!).  It should be pretty obvious whether a certain FP or shadow needs to cycle or not.

Some of the decks on this site might help give you some ideas as to what pairs well with what if you need more advice.