Next on the list is a Erestor/Arwen/Cirdan Noldor deck. Raw analysis is here:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1519606/deck-analysis-part-twelve-noldor

And the deck itself is here:

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9260/a-stereotypical-noldor-deck-1.0

The median ally/attachment/event count only summed to 49, so I added a side quest to make up the difference and arbitarily picked Gather Information over Double Back (both were picked twice in the sample decks). I'd be happier with the deck if it had more allies, and it's definitely better at questing than fighting, but it should be a fairly representative Noldor/Erestor experience.

Hmmm. First, I had Gather Information in my deck, too. But you can pick not many useful cards, because of Erestor. Besides Elronds Council you just can pick a Elven Light or Glorfindel to discard it - or any card which you do not want to draw.

Yes, the timing of Gather Information is unfortunate for this deck, you probably wouldn't want to complete it until you've found and played a Silver Harp (unless you want to get Elven Light/Glorfindel/Lords of the Eldar in the discard pile). I don't think any of the lore/spirit available side quests are really compelling for a Noldor deck -- Keep Watch would be useful for the shaky combat ability, but is out of sphere.

While there are a lot of cards I would quibble with here the fact is that it is a very stereotypical Noldor deck. Dale has done a great job of capturing the essence. Most of these decks build themselves for the first forty cards or so, it’s the last ten that personalize it.

And that’s what makes it great.

Have we seen Dale’s Dale deck? (Sorry)

With the Dale cycle still in progress I'd prefer to delay generating a "Stereotypical Dale deck" as long as possible. For the same reason I want to hold off on Eagles -- we know there's one more coming, and I'd love to see an enabling hero (Radagast!) among the two unrevealed heroes.

Three other tribal decks aren't known to have supporting cards in the newest cycle, but have fairly recent cards. Harad decks are self-contained in the last cycle, but need a little time to percolate -- I think some of the ally attachments from this cycle could work wonderfully on powerful Harad allies. Tom Cotton hasn't been out long, and I'm always hopeful some more hobbit allies might trickle in -- Harad cycle gave us a few. Quickbeam is the very last hero released before the current cycle, and I've got an idea that the very best Ent deck might be Lore/Quickbeam/Treebeard-ally. Not that I expect that combo to become the stereotypical deck, but I do expect the thematic Treebeard-Quickbeam-<hobbit> lineup to become a contender in time. With the Gondor deck I'm publishing today, that covers all the tribes; so I think I'll fall back on some well-worn archetypes -- traps, Vilya, mining, secrecy, Rossiel, Elladan/Elrohir, and maybe even Caldara (though I think most Caldara decks may still be pre-errata).

Of course, if FFG takes their usual many months to start getting APs out, I may go ahead with a Dale deck anyways :).

I don’t think Lore Treebeard will ever top the ally in an ent deck.

Personally I think any deck with Erestor in it is an “Erestor deck” and so it can’t really be a vanilla flavor “Noldor deck” with him in it. But I guess the community disagreees with that sentiment.

I agree that an Erestor deck is an "Erestor deck" and is an archetype in its own right. However, if I did A Stereotypical Erestor Deck (and I originally planned to do exactly that), I think it'd end up being a Noldor deck. Erestor can accelerate anything. But of all the tribes, Noldor meshes best with Erestor's unique style.

But you bring up a good point in that while Erestor is the second most popular hero in my sample, 55% of the Noldor decks I looked at *didn't* have Erestor, and since he's so game-warping the stereotypical experience really *isn't* an Erestor deck (though not by much!). So if I made a Stereotypical non-Erestor Noldor deck, it would have very similar contents but play quite differently. Maybe I should do that. I think the most popular non-Erestor lineup was Arwen-Cirdan-Galdor, though with only six decks (one of them mine, from a Dori fellowship) it's a smaller sample to analyze than the 24 Arwen-Cirdan-Erestor decks.

That's akin to Ent decks, really. Even using Entmoot as the "Ent deck" indicator (where a starting Ent like Treebeard makes the card useful from round one), the majority of the decks *don't* use hero Treebeard because his ally is so darn useful. So when the most common hero lineup has Treebeard in it (practically certain), it's actually going to provide a different experience than most Ent decks actually have.

I went ahead and whipped out a non-Erestor Noldor deck:

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9273/a-stereotypical-non-erestor-noldor-deck-1.0

After thinking about it further, I decided I really don't need to wait for the end of the current cycle to look at the archtypes that are actively being developed. I can just do a 2.0 version of the stereotypical deck after all the cards are out, and see how different it is. I'll just put them at the end of the tribal list in order to give a little more time for new decks to be published.