This deck is actually a work in progress, and intended for a fellowship with Dori, Mablung, and a hero to be named later. It's unpublished but I think I have it set to be visible.

http://ringsdb.com/deck/view/28353

It's a Pippin/SpMerry deck meant to never engage. Merry keeps threat low, Pippin makes sure that if an enemy should happen to engage, it goes back into staging. With Strider, Merry can both quest and lower threat, and most of the allies are temporary or capable of being given to the other player (Riders of the Mark, Blue Mountain Trader and Curious Brandybuck).

There's two things I'm puzzling over:

1) I currently have the potential for five permanent allies (Arwen, Bilbo, and 3x Celduin Traveler). Celduin Travelers are good value for 1 (secrecy), but playing the sixth character nets no gain. I could replace them with Rohan self-discarders, or Gamling *and* more Rohan self-discarders.

2) Who to use for the other deck? I'm torn between using LeFaramir for a "when engaged" theme, or TaEowyn for her awesomeness.

Fun idea, but I'm curious: this deck is meant to pull its weight in multiplayer by... Questing a lot? Bestowing Arwen's ability on others? Test of Willing or GGing? Sending allies around?

It's meant for two-handed solo, so it has no moral requirement to pull its weight

With that said, it has only two purposes:

1) Quest

2) force all enemies to the combat deck.

A minor problem with the questing/combat pairing is enemies that end up with the wrong deck. Ranged/sentinel is one way of dealing with that problem -- forcing them back to staging with SpPippin is another.

Can it quest enough to justify its existence? Possibly. The two heroes only quest for four, but that becomes six with strider and 5 characters or less. Add Bilbo and Arwen as permanent allies and it quests for ten, and with hobbit-pipe hijinks could get serious draw. Meanwhile it can send bodies to the other deck to keep under the limit, which can be used to add a little more questing or even attack. If it runs out of cards, it can recycle Curious Brandybucks for free, and it should also be able to keep returning Courage Awakened to its hand as well.

It's not really (at this point) a support deck. It's just a deck that doesn't do combat. Ever.

After thinking about it, I've swapped out the Celduins and Blue Mountain Traders (you can give Traders away, but they aren't worth much), in exchange for Galadhrim Weavers to recycle with Children of the Sea and Island amid Perils (only 1 threat reduction, but that's enough to trigger pipes). I couldn't resist their inability to attack or defend.

Wandering Took would go well in this deck, so would Song of Earendil.

That all being said.... I just don't know if you're going to have much sucess with this deck. I think it can accomplish it's goal of never engaging, but it's quest power is mediocre, so you'll need a hell of a combat/quest deck to pair it with. You're not engaging, but you're also not helping out with ranged, which hurts, even strong combat decks can get swarmed and killed when they are taking on enemies for two.

I'm not sold on the 2 hero secrecy strider decks in general. The problem is you almost have to get both Resourceful AND Strider in your opening hand just to make up the ground that other decks have simply by having a 3rd hero. You also have no ranged, not a ton of questing, you're like a support deck that has no support.

I know it's a huge restructure to the deck, but I would get rid of Strider, take Tactics Eowyn, throw in some ranged allies as well, Snowmane instead of Windfola, horse breeders, take out curious brandybuck and children of the sea, maybe add the Golden Shield so you can have Eowyn ready after questing and Sentinel with Arwen's ability for 6 defense.

If that goes against the fundamental idea of this deck, then that's fine, it's your call. But as it stands I just don't see this deck working out very well.

Thanks for your feedback. Wandering Took I thought about since I could give it away, but since the allies flow one way I thought lowering threat to raise the other deck's threat would be pretty unfair. Song of Earendil would be potentially more useful in a support role, since it probably has threat to spare.

With the exception of Unexpected Courage, there's nothing in here strictly to support the other deck. It should have good card draw, though, so if a hero in the other deck needed spirit attachments, it should certainly be able to find them. I've already done a hobbit deck serving as nothing for support for a questing/combat deck in the fellowship Dori, Eagles, and Hobbits:

http://ringsdb.com/fellowship/view/112

In that deck the Sam/LoPippin/SpMerry deck was giving away resources and attachments, not allies, and could do a limited amount of combat since it had access to Treebeard ally, two sentinel tactics heroes, one of which could boost Sam's defense, and a third hero who could "steal" enemies engaged by the hobbit deck. It worked out reasonably well.

Would TaEowyn/SpPippin/SpMerry be a stronger deck than this one? Almost certainly -- but Pippin's ability can't be used in such a deck, so far from making Pippin shine, he becomes a low-threat 2-quest spirit body. My premise is to make a deck that would use Pippin's ability *every* time they engage an enemy, and that means hobbits and nothing but hobbits. The premise of the deck very much limits what the deck can do.

Unfortunately, if the goal is using Pippin's ability every time an enemy engages, that limits the number of hobbits it naturally works well with. LoPippin isn't an option. Sam's readying and buff is worthless. Fatty's ability could still be useful, but he has 1 wp and is best suited as a buffed-defender in a hobbit deck, which isn't useful. Frodo's ability is defensive. TaMerry's offensive. So that leaves two hobbit heroes whose abilities work well with SpPippin -- SpMerry and Bilbo (though like Fatty, Bilbo isn't much use as a quester). So a choice needs to be made:

Bilbo/SpPippin/SpMerry (21 threat)

SpPippin/SpMerry (12 threat)

I went with the latter, because I wanted to try Strider and wanted to start and stay in secrecy. The theme of giving away allies was just to stay under the Strider limits and itself may be too limiting. Instead of temporary allies, adding Fatty and a host of 2+ wp permanent questing spirit allies would give this potential as a strong questing deck. Perhaps it's too much to try to use SpPippin *and* his ability *and* run a permanent Strider deck.

It's fair to say that including ranged allies wouldn't really be cheating the no-engaged premise. However, there's no ranged spirit allies.

Whether Strider decks work in general I'm not sure -- I certainly wouldn't bring a Strider deck, least of all this one, to a meetup to play with other strangers. In solo one-handed there's no obligation for a deck to "pull its weight", so if a strider deck fails to get Strider quickly or tanks a questing stage or two early, it affects no one else. In solo two-handed, there's still no obligation for a deck to "pull its weight", because the only person being sabotaged by a suboptimal deck is the player who constructed the decks, and playing decks that are *not* that powerful against regular quests may provide the sort of challenge that drives others to purchase nightmare decks for their finely-tuned optimal decks to crush.

With that said, you may end up being right that this deck's mediocre questing and lack of support will doom it -- it doesn't need to be powerful, but it *does* need to be fun to play, and if it ends up dooming quests from lack of oomph, it'll have to be restructured into something that is actually fun to play, perhaps a dedicated quested deck that adds Bilbo or Fatty to the mix.