Sites:
[1] Steps of Edoras
[2] King's Tent
[3] Beacon of Minas Tirith
[4] Anduin Banks
[5] Pelennor Flat
[6] Minas Tirith First Circle
[7] Osgiliath Crossing
[8] Northern Ithilien
[9] Dagorlad

Frodo, Hope of Free Peoples
The One Ring, Answer To All Riddles
Legolas, Greenleaf
Arwen, Fair Elf Maiden

Free Peoples (36 + 2 = 38):
Aragorn, Defender of Free Peoples x4
Boromir, Son of Denethor x2
Elrond, Herald to Gil-galad
Galadriel, Lady of the Golden Wood
Sting
Naith Longbow
Gwemegil x2
Asfaloth, Elven Steed x2
Ranger's Sword x2
Flaming Brand x2
Aragorn's Bow x2
Athelas x4
The Last Alliance of Elves and Men x2
Strength of Arms x2
Agility x2
Trust x3
Valor x3

Shadow (38):

Isengard Flanker x4
Shelob, Eater of Light x4
Gollum, Old Villian x2
Isengard Retainer x4
Isengard Servant x4
Isengard Warrior x3
Orc Commander x3
Orc Overseerer x2
Web x4
Spider Poison x3
Larder
Fat One Wants It x2
Promise Keeping x2
Captured by the Ring x4

As soon as I saw the new rare Shelob premiered on Decipher, I know I had to have 4 copies of her in my deck. I had to try out how well a Shelob based deck would play. So I preceeded to start building the deck even before the set came out.

But first, I needed to find what kind of Free Peoples deck I wanted to use with it. I wanted something kind of fun to play, and wasn't too sure. So I started to look back on a Gondor/Elven deck. Only trouble with that was every time I have ever built a deck like that, it almost always relied on archery to a pretty high degree.

Now, don't get me wrong, archery is still kind of cool, but Decipher has been making cards that kind of make archery-only type of decks a bit risky to play. Some examples of this are new (common/uncommon) minions with 4, 5 vitality, and very high strength. And, coincidently, Shelob as well, with her 8 vitality.

Ok, so I decided to try to build a Gondor/Elven deck that didn't try to rely so much on archery, but instead try to win skirmishes, and have archery in a small amount in the deck.

So, on to my choice of companions. Legolas and Arwen are pretty much standard choices. Arwen, Fair Elf Maiden is a pretty good card choice to use, since most (but not all, I know) of the minions in the game that have a large strength are fierce, and thus, she will get the +3 strength bonus from a variety of minions. Much better than Daughter of Elrond, who only gets that bonus from Nazgul. And as for Legolas, Greenleaf, well, I did state I wanted to have archery as a secondary thing, so I decided to still use him. He can still be quite useful.

Now, I needed to choose 2 Gondor companions. I knew I'd use Aragorn in it, but had to decide which to use. Then I thought back to the Ents of Fangorn set, and all the cards that they made that tried to give a better blending to multi-cultural decks. As soon as I found the card Trust, I knew I just had to have Elven tokens in the deck, since being able to make a man strength +2 and heal a companion is a really great ability. So since I was going to use Elven tokens, I figured Aragorn, Defender of Free Peoples was a very good choice.

Now for the other companion, usually nowadays people use Faramir, Son of Denethor. Which is a good choice, but my decks always tried to have cards to be able to pump up both Faramir and Aragorn, and always was a bit too bulky. SO I decided to go with his older brother, Boromir. Having a defence against Moria never hurts, especially when archery wasn't going to be relied upon as much as I used to. And I know from other decks, Boromir, Son of Denethor saved Frodo from being overwhelmed countless times in the past. He is still a good card to use in my opinion. which is a bit ironic for me to say, because before Two Towers came out, I rarely used him. I was always using Lord of Gondor or Defender of Minas Tirith. But when Two Towers came out, and requiring a Ranger wasn't as important (at least, it wasn't as important to me), I started to use Boromir, Son of Denethor a lot more.

The rest of the deck pretty much came together after that. Arwen wins her skirmish, put a token on Strength of Arms, play a Trust to then pump Aragorn +2 strength (and heal a companion too), and then remove that Elven token to make a minion skirmishing Aragorn strength -3. The idea seemed pretty sound. Through in the Athelas', and Elrond and Galadriel for the extra healing, it seemed like a good deck idea to me.

Now, shadow cards that can hurt my fellowship? Well, as you can see, Grima Wormtongue can hurt quite a bit. Now, my justification for that is simply that I have only ever seen 1 person actually use him in my area, and that was when I had a bunch of cards on Faramir, Son of Denethor. Since he was Ring-bound, he was immune. So I figured, what the hey, I'll risk putting a lot of cards on Aragorn.

Another possibility is that your opponent can play Shelob as well, in which case, this deck is pretty much toast. I guess I better pray that just doesn't happen.

As to the Shadow side of the deck, I knew I wanted to play Shelob. But I needed to pick the orcs to use with her. My first reaction was to use Isengard orcs. The ability to exert to make the Free Peoples player wound a companion, and then stack them on a Web seemed to flow pretty nicely. So I decided to use them.

But after a couple of playtests, I realized I should use something more. So I decided to use threats in addition to wounding, since (hopefully) Shelob will either kill a companion near the end, causing all the threats to be assigned to companions, or a companion took a wound, which means I could exert someone from Promise Keeping. This was when Gollum entered the scene.
Using Captured by the Ring, and Fat One Wants It, kept the threats up there. And best of all, I could stack Gollum on a web, and then play him later on when I run out of Captured by the Ring. (Thus, this is my justification for using 2 Gollums). And, on top of that, I found that my deck cycled a bit better because Gollum allowed me to discard excess cards from my hand to either win a skirmish, or just to prevent him from being overwhelmed.

The Shadow side of this deck works quite, quite well. Between the Spider Poisons, exerting to wound, and threats, the wounds pile up, and Shelob gets bigger and bigger. Only trouble this deck could face are some Gondor cards, and Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver. Use a card to exhaust Shelob, and then either use Pippin, a Gondor Bow, a Ranger's Bow, or some other card to wound Shelob, and she dies. The only concellation that you would get is maybe being able to transfer a Spider Poison.

Another possible bane to this deck is the discarding hobbits from Two Towers. If set up right, both Merry and Pippin can keep facing Shelob, become discarded, and then played again without too much problems. So by that time Shelob is kinda dead weight.

There may be other possible weaknesses to both the Free Peoples and Shadow sides of the deck, but I can't think of any more right now.

But, all in all, I think at the very least this deck would be a fun deck to play, and am looking forward to my first chance to play it. Hopefully I won't run into too many other people playing Shelob/Gondor-exhaust-a-minion decks. ;-)

~Ivo Ciric