Echo'ed. I don't think "lack of creativity" is the issue (it's a "tournament", after all, people shouldn't be playing it to "be cute", so as to spark interest in the game again), but rather: "the deck does nothing but throw beef at the table and stroll along, and it still bet me", which is, as ket put, bitching. In a meta full of Shadows designed to take advantage of the unspoken Rule of 5, with carefully conceived combos, the guy simply thought outside the box, said f* that and went for it, 9 companions, full rush, screw everything else. And it seemed to have worked. So, yeah, it IS creative. It is metagame thinking, at least, even if it was not intentional. I, for instance, do not even played
Shotgun Enquea in a lot of my Moria decks back in FotR Block simply because "everyone else did", so it saved me 2-3 precious slots for other stuff (while people still neve went above 5 companions) and I won a lot of tournaments simply by using "advanced" thinking like this. Another example was playing
Can You Protect Me From Yourself? x2 in Uruk-hai decks packing
Orthanc Berserker, since if you take most FotR Block lists, simply put, decks played Aragorn, so the benefits far outweighted the rare times I got stuck with it in hand (plus, Berserker STILL is a nasty minion without his ability anyway). Again, metagame thinking. It can - and will - steal you some games if done properly. If you check the discussion regarding the banning of
LR, I said several times that the card was not THAT dominant as people said, which again brings a point: if I was to play movie and everyone simply player
LR Elves, I woulnd't #$&*@! about losing to it a bunch of times and ask people to "be creative", I'd simply build a Shadow side that was not hosed by her completely, and that punished puny elves. Simple as that. Play
![Isengard [Isengard]](https://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/Smileys/classic/isengard.png)
, splashing 2-3 Enquea and 2
Greed if you're losing to this.