I still think this shadow side is the best version of a moria swarm I have ever seen/played with. If I had the cards, I'd build this deck in real life.
Dwarf side still needs a lot of work though, IMHO... After a few more games I've realized the incredible value of
Dwarven Heart and
AoE, however one is far less effective without the other (for obvious reasons). I've found myself discarding DH out of desperation to draw a good shadow hand only to draw
AoE in the next hand... So I might recommend adding more of one or the other.
Another method of "stalling" as you put it is to get your dwarves to
survive more skirmishes!! They lose
way too often. I find myself burning through companions just to survive long enough to overwhelm my opponent with orcs. I've played about 20 games with this deck now and these dwarves lose about 2/3rds of all their skirmishes, with the exception of a few wipeouts against certain shadow sides (i.e. discard-to-wound Isengard orcs get crushed by dwarves).
The alternative to this (and an alternative that still promotes cycling) is to go with the pump-up route as opposed to using all these conditions and regroup events... Throw in a ton more skirmish pumps and I guarantee your dwarves will survive longer. Maybe it's just the way I'm playing them, but it's frustrating to have such a nice shadow side become useless because the fellowship just doesn't last. And if you're discarding 2 skirmish events every turn and the re-stacking them on
Preparations (which I would recommending adding 1 more of, by the way), you'll be cycling well enough to not have to use
EMHR at all.