It's not wholly effective, but it's not toothless either. Main weaknesses are Easterlings, Southrons, Uruk-hai Archery, and Elven allies, which you'll likely see every other game.
White Wizard, Black Rider, Red RoverRing-bearer:
Frodo, Old Bilbo's HeirRing:
The One Ring, Answer To All RiddlesAdventure deck:
Isengard RuinedWest RoadHall of the KingsAnduin BanksCity GatesMinas Tirith Fifth CircleRuined CapitolMorgulduinDagorladFree Peoples Draw Deck (38):
1x
Gandalf, The White Wizard1x
Smeagol, Poor Creature1x
Pippin, Hobbit of Some Intelligence1x
Sam, Proper Poet1x
Thrarin, Dwarven Smith3x
Barliman Butterbur, Prancing Pony Proprietor1x
Bounder1x
Glamdring, Elven Blade1x
Brace of Coneys2x
Sting, Baggins Heirloom1x
Gandalf's Staff, Focus of Power1x
Narya1x
Mithril-coat2x
Deep in Thought3x
Depart Silently1x
His First Serious Check1x
Keep Your Forked Tongue1x
Mysterious Wizard3x
Roll of Thunder4x
Servant of the Secret Fire1x
Strength of Spirit1x
Terrible and Evil1x
Power According to His Stature1x
Behold the White Rider1x
Echoes of Valinor1x
Gandalf's Wisdom1x
Moment of RespiteShadow Draw Deck (38):
2x
Grishnakh, Orc Captain2x
Orc Assassin2x
Orc Cutthroat1x
Orc Patrol2x
Orc Pursuer(2)
1x
Orc Scout3x
Orc Scouting Band3x
Morgul Spawn4x
Morgul Spearman1x
The Witch-king, Lord of the Nazgul1x
The Witch-king, Morgul King1x Úlairë
Attea, The Easterling1x Úlairë
Cantea, Faster Than Winds1x Úlairë
Cantea, Lieutenant of Dol Guldur2x Úlairë
Enquea, Lieutenant of Morgul1x Úlairë
Lemenya, Assailing Minion1x Úlairë
Nelya, Ringwraith in Twilight1x Úlairë
Toldea, Winged Sentry1x
Memory of Many Things2x
Too Great and Terrible1x
War Long Planned4x
Under the Watching EyeFree Peoples: It's best to either go first or plan to stop their free peoples at site 2 and pass them. The first iteration was just Gandalf and Frodo, but I've had to put in 3 redshirts to survive sites 7-9. Generally it does pretty well before then, perhaps because there's not a lot of choke played in King Standard and nobody builds for it. Play nothing in the Fellowship Phase that will put you at risk (sometimes that means you don't get to play
Moment of Respite or
Glamdring), use Gandalf's events in Maneuver to blow up the twilight pool.There's a ton of utility cards because I cycle like crazy - I don't save anything unless it will undoubtedly win me the game.
There's a lot of fine-tuning that could be done (swap The Ring, for instance, up
Moment of Respite count to draw it early). Smeagol helps with cycling early game, so I keep him alive as long as possible. As a rule, everything is expendable and whatever I draw next will be better than what I have now. The choke helps this Free Peoples play much better than it looks, as both Gandalf and Frodo can beat/survive whatever the Shadow player can afford (until site 7). 10 twilight at site 6 doesn't go as far as most shadow sides need, but once Gandalf is dead Frodo's pretty much a goner. Barliman goes a long way. The shadow is fully mismatched, but I think the title is clever so I've kept it
Shadow: Multicultural shadow sides are practically my trademark, and they rarely ever work. This one is especially fragile because it depends on 4 culturally-enforced conditions (
Under the Watching Eye) which are gone whenever any sort of condition discard hits the table,
especially Secret Sentinels. Hence
Memory of Many Things, with
Too Great and Terrible to knock out Gandalf before he can remove any conditions either. Provided I manage to get
UtWE and a
orc in hand, the goal is for the exertions of
Morgul Spearman and
Morgul Spawn to exhaust the Free Peoples, allowing free assignments to the Ring-bearer.
I had
Ulaire Otsea, Lieutenant of Morgul to allows them to cause two exertions, but by set 7 everybody's got some sort of damage bonus so the minions rarely survive the skirmish anyway.
War Long Planned is one of my favorite skirmish pumps; it's cheap and usually you get the +4 out of it. The twilight has to be very carefully balanced because you'll never have enough (or won't be effective trying to exert so many companions). The Nazgul need to be chosen better.
The biggest problem is that both Free Peoples and Shadow sides need a card advantage, so I pick which side has the best chance at winning early on and run with it. The Shadow side has no cycling, making it sub-optimal. The Free Peoples is pretty bad at double moving because of all the twilight (hopefully) generated after the Fellowship phase, so if I'm not in the lead I probably won't win with them. With a nice Free Peoples hand it's possible to play nothing, merely survive this site, double move, then unload at the second site to make it through. Usually this is only worth doing on the moves to site 6 or site 9, but it's won me games.
What I like about the deck is that I can shift the way it plays as needed, but it requires some discipline in what cards are played. Yes, the Shadow side could be just Mordor Orc grind or Sauron grind, but if you want a truly competitive strategy you've missed the point