Me, my gf and another friend tried a 3-player game last night. We just barely completed the Watcher in the Water (our threat levels were all at 45+ when we finally guessed the right letter) and then failed miserably with Peril in Pelargir - twice.

I ran an Elrond/Mirlonde/Glorfindel (Spirit) deck. My girlfriend used Gloin, Gimli and Bifur, and my friend Aragorn (Leadership), Beregond (HoN) and Boromir (HoN). The first time around we failed miserably at questing as so many enemies showed up (staging and because of the Leaping Fish location effect) and our Gondor player was eliminated from the game. We tried again and actually got to the third stage, but the dwarf deck was eliminated and the Gondor deck again accumulated too much threat. Elrond and Glorfindel could not withstand the thugs as I lost my healers because of engagement effects.

How are you supposed to complete this scenario (or the other Gondor scenarios) without perfect decks and a huge portion of luck? The opponents are so much tougher and their threat higher compared to the previous cycles, which makes questing and fighting extremely difficult. In this scenario, you also quest with your ATK instead of Willpower, which means that most of our fighters are already exhausted when the battle ensues.

How do you manage this? We've tried this before 2-player and we fail miserably every time. There are simply too many enemies and too much threat accumulation.

EDIT: And we play without shadow cards.

A decent strategy is to purposefully lose the scroll as soon as possible (it becomes unattached in stage 2b no matter what so who cares if you lose it on stage 1). A good way to do this with your hero lineup is to attach the scroll to Gloin and let him take an attack (and presumably gain some resources) and then after turn 1 you don't need to worry about the leaping fish's hazardous effect. Here are some other potential solutions for some of the more difficult cards in this scenario:

Local trouble: this card is the worst, the deck with spirit should be packing 2-3 copies of a test of will. Either or both lore decks should have 2 copies of miner of the iron hills. Also consider ditching Mirlonde for Eleanor. Her ability is fantastic and the tactics deck can toss Gondorian shields across the table to make her a capable defender as well.

Zealous Traitor: really just a brutal card. The easiest way to ensure he doesn't affect you is to sneak attack Gandalf into play during staging so he never engages. Otherwise just be wise and have him optionally engage the best set up player.

For questing take advantage of Boromir's ability. All the decks should have as many Gondor allies as possible since his ability isn't limited to one player. An especially good card for this is the ithilien tracker has he can negate threat and any extra copies can still contribute 2 to the quest while Boromir's ability is active

Hope some of this helps

Switching Gimli with either Dain or Thorin wouod be a good start. Pharmboys adivce is also very helpful. I like to play with Legolas or Brand (who could replace Aragorn) to use them with Hands Upon the Bow. That often kills an enemy before he can leave the staging are. Hail of Stones is also a strong card.

Enemies shouldn't be a threat when you play with Beregond and Dain. Threat managment is the biggest problem in this scenario

How are you supposed to complete this scenario (or the other Gondor scenarios) without perfect decks and a huge portion of luck?

My opinion? You are not. I never won it and propably never will (especially since I don't tailor decks for a specific scenario).. The best thing one can do is not to play the EoN quests at all. Me and a friend tried these a couple of times when EoN came out until we were pretty fed up. It's difficulty 4 or 5 right? LOL! Sometimes I feel the designers try to frustrate people intentionally?!