Knights / Gollum - Finding the ideal SftF Shell

[Witchkingx5]

I'm back.

Ring-bearer: Isildur, Bearer of Heirlooms
Ring: The One Ring, Answer To All Riddles

Adventure deck:
Steps of Edoras
Rohirrim Camp
Base of Mindolluin
City of the Dead
Steward's Tomb
Minas Tirith Sixth Circle
Osgiliath Crossing
Northern Ithilien
Slag Mounds

Free Peoples Draw Deck:
1x Gandalf, Leader of Men (starting)
1x Smeagol, Poor Creature (starting)
1x Aragorn, Captain of Gondor
1x Faramir, Defender of Osgiliath
1x Garrison of Gondor
1x Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth
1x Ingold (starting)
1x Sam, Son of Hamfast
2x Banner of Westernesse
4x Gondor Bow
1x Sapling of the White Tree
1x Scroll of Isildur
1x Deep in Thought
1x Roll of Thunder
4x Saved From the Fire
1x Terrible and Evil
1x Citadel of the Stars
1x Fifth Level
4x Fourth Level
3x Sixth Level
2x Stone Tower

Shadow Draw Deck:
1x Gollum, Dark as Darkness
1x Gollum, Mad Thing
1x Gollum, Old Villain
1x Gollum, Stinker
4x Shelob, Her Ladyship
1x Desert Lord
1x Sauron, The Lord of the Rings
2x Shotgun Enquea
2x Web
4x Captured by the Ring
4x We Must Have It
2x Evil-smelling Fens
1x Fat One Wants It
1x Final Strike
1x Hidden Even From Her
3x Promise Keeping
3x They Stole It
1x Unabated in Malice

For a little while, I've been trying to make the good old Saved from the Fire / Ninja Gollum Combo work. For those of you unaware of this interaction: SftF allows you tu kill Smeagol, and then grab three key Gollum cards to have an incredible setup for the shadow site, grabbing whatever you're missing from your starting hand, and basically ensuring that you'll be threatening them from the very beginning. I've gotten concessions as early as site 3 when it worked, since the combination of Shelob, HL taking out the best fighter, Promise Keeping and threat generating cards like Fat One Wants it, CbtR etc. gets out of hand really, really quickly. Especially if shelob gets to soak up some undirected archery or exertion.

Having tried several different variants, there are certain strategic aspects that I encountered, which challenge both the deckbuilding, as well as playing style elements. Some of these, but not nearly all, are:

1. The Fellowship has to work well enough to survive the extra burden from Smeagol, as well as the loss of a card (SftF), and the addition of 3 Twilight with SftF by basically not helping the Free People's at all.

2. Starting out with Gandalf and having a deck size small enough to get SftF reliably.

3. Getting to go first to a) set up your shadow and b) avoiding possible site 1s, worst case being Rohirrim Road, while Sleeping Quarters can also get annoying.

4. Having a Free People's side which can function through discarding cards with We Must Have it, They Stole it, Gollum OV etc. At the same time, it should not clog your hand too much.

Gondor Knights are the current build, but I'm not too excited about it. Yes, ti can grind like crazy and, similarly to the Shadow side's resilience through Web, function without any cards in deck. However, it still is quite vulnerable to a lot of things, and feels like it needs setup. One direction this eck could evolve win would be to play more of a chocke deck centered around gandalf (maybe the grey pilgrim ?), but SftF can burn a hole in that approach real quick. On the other hand, Ents might be a way to go, just throwing down massive minions, taking dozens of wounds like real champs and letting Gollum do the rest. Rohandalf might also work, but most of my attempts at some sort of rainbow wounding have put too much of a strain on this already on too unfragile build.

To be more concrete, the Freeps don't rely on Gandalf too much - he can be sacrificial fodder in the right matchup, the goal here is mostly to survive and recur, while also being incredibly effective at punishing bad draws. I usually bid 1 and get away with it, starting with 2 burdens total, because both scroll and Sam help... and you don't actually need to "win" the Freeps too often.

The Shadow does have some specific choices, I really like Gollum, DaD for it's twilight adding ability, as more experienced players will try to add only 9 twilight to prevent Gollum+Shelob on sites 1-7... and a single burden circumvents that whole counter. Sauron, TLotR is there against decks that think they can flood the twilight pool against Gollum and not get punished (like the aforementioned Ents), but can be easily discarded if not needed.
Very important - I play 4 Shelobs. You could run 3, but you basically want it in any hand, can discardx it withou your discard outlets, and are often times not doing much without it. As far as conditions go, I'm playing more wide array of choices, while focussing less on events, since I can grab whatever is missing with SftF early. ESF allows the player to discard any minions more carelessly, however, for Shelob specifically, I don't want to rely on it, as I'm trying to set up other conditions first.

Some other cards I've been thinking about:

So polite: situational, but can circumvent some of the choke nonsense, since adding threats is easier than adding burdens in this build.
Heavy Burden: same idea, making DaD more effective, while also being a condition. Gollum unfortunately survives to the Regroup phase way less often than I'd like, so I'm really unsure about this one.
Grima, Wormtongue: Dwarves is probably one of the worst matchups for this deck, so possibly recurring Wormtongue might seem really effective. However, if you look at the actual play patterns a bit more in detail, you'll realize that for Grima to be truly effective, you'd need a good setup with gollum already.. so he's kinda just a "cheaper shelob" for those situations, which can be fine, but might also be overkill.

I could spend hours more writing about the concepts of this deck.. but dinner awaits, and I'm the designated cook. Any critical feedback would be highly appreciated, I'd love to get some activity back in this forum, as people keep asking about strategy on facebook, in the GEMP chat... instead of coming here. Merry Christmas everyone!