A Path Less Travelled: Shelob's Lair

I have decided to start a variant on the Saga Campaign. Personally, I felt the strict hero requirements for the majority of the official saga campaign to be more frustrating than fun. My main goal is to balance theme with overall fun for playing each of the quests in the saga all while using as many new cards and archetypes as possible.

Frodo teams back up with Sam (spirit Sam ally) and while Sam was out looking for Gollum, while Frodo was busy fighting in the cross-roads, Sam came across some friendly Harads! Standard Harad deck that is surprisingly powerful. Gildor is a great hero with 3 WP and his card draw effect. Mulligan for steward of Gondor and get the smaller allies out prior to quest card 2 when only one ally allowed per round. Jubayr MOTK is amazing (I think I'm first on ringsdb to post a deck with him?!). Once he has the destrier hes defending twice with NO shadow effects. You add on the forewarned boon and use kahliehls readying effect with discarding a harad ally and he's defending 3 times with NO shadow effects! Make sure he's up to 6 defense by the final rounds when Shelob is swinging for 6.

The other deck is standard Silvans. Save host of the galadhrim for the end when you can take off multiple resources from Shelob. Ideally you have 2-3 galadhon archers out and rumil so you're getting 3-4 resources removed with a single play of the host of the galadhrim.

So many brutal treacheries in this encounter deck. Lots of test of will, use of Frodo's effect and Firyal's effect were needed to get through, especially in the early game.