Don't forget that shire deck has another huge counter and that is gollum ninja decks.
So far i have found only 3 cards to be able to mitigate that threat:
1) one that's always present, the one ring, to prevent ninja massive wounding/triggering you need to be prepared to let rb skirmish a lot and take burden as wounds, so no gollum abilities from him or condition triggers (al least the most annoying ones)
Keep in mind that you need many burden removal or in a couple of sites you are in deep trouble, even with 12+ res frodo
2) Consorting with wizard, keep bilbo alive and you have nothing to fear from gollum
3) The not so much used "
saruman's power" version to clear the gollum conditions:
Clever Hobbits you can use this in every deck, even if you don't have smeagol, but since it's a 2 cost event it's a bit tricky to use because of
Deceit. You need to use 2 or more to clear the whole table, but once you did it you can mostly run.
Don't forget that 1) and 2) have some sort of countermeasure, since having only one of those can be countered by
Shelob Her Ladyship and nertea.
Keep in mind that most ninja decks have gollum and shelob as main fighters and nertea/nelya/enquea as supporters, so in that game you will face 3 heavy shire weakness:
- monoculture hate
- key condition discard that cannot be saved
- and massive wound in skirmish (if you cannot prevent some damage with the three methods i told you before, for shire alone it's impossible to keep companions alive)
In my shire deck i have gollum (to counter monoculture), site manipulation (for path control), high res frodo,
Clever Hobbits (can be a super pump for smeagol), and Consorting with wizard.
As the other already says shire culture is too dependant on skirmish abilities and his conditions, but the worst part of all is that even without
Cavern entrance or mass condition discard you could get you #$&*@! wopped by the most crucial factor for shire deck (IMHO).
It's the setup! Because shire deck need many and many cards (possession/condition/events/followers) to be fully operative, so when you make a shire deck you expect the first 3/4 sites to be crucial to the game: because you need to survive (with base weak companions), get yourself built up (without giving too much opening to your opponent) and don't let your opponent fp run too much in the meanwhile (or your fp proceding too slowly).
Once build up hobbit hospital are nearly unstoppable (win most or all of the skirmishes, heal all the wounds, clear most of the burdens. Even Balrog at
cavern entrance or sauron with scepter aren't a problem when you have a 30+ str pippin and the other hobbits are at elast 12 str (except bilbo))