Trouble in Tharbad progression

This quest is special as you will decrease your threat a lot. As such, it is a perfect opportunity to put Secrecy to some good use... However that is ideal when you are near Secrecy treshold anyway. At first, I'd tried to use Secrecy more, but my questing suffered and I had many secrecy cards on my hand with little use. Also, I initially went with Hero Faramir, but I really needed more card draw and Ally Faramir's boost is also quite handy here, so I'd swapped Beravor in, and cut the Secrecy cards down.

The strategy here is to quest a lot since the beginning and build Haldir and Dúnhere as strong attackers, so they can snipe enemies out of the staging area without you having to engage them. Eventually, Aragorn will become a superb quester/defender with all of the toys - Steward of Gondor, Blood of Númenor, A Burning Brand, Ring of Barahir, the Sword that was Broken and Celebrían's stone. However, you need to get all those cards on your hand first, so once you can afford to not quest with Beravor, keep her back for the card draw, and always have a spare chump ready for emergencies.

If you manage to make it work, a very satisfying combo is to put the Elfstone on the Tharbad Hideout location when it's active, then swap it out for a different location with the West Road Traveller, clear that location and travel to the Hideout once again - as a result, you get an extra 1 turn protection from the time mechanics. Once I'd saved 4 Time progress in this way because of all the other removing effects that didn't trigger.

Cards you ideally want to see on your starting hands: Steward of Gondor, Gléowine, Spear of the Mark and some cheap chumps for both decks. Initially, move any free resources towards Aragorn, once he has Steward, you can redistribute them in the other direction.