I play LOTR:TCG with my wife a couple times a week and just picked up this expansion. I want to implement it while keeping the essence of this expansion alive.

Is anyone else doing this in two player mode and how are you choosing to implement it?

Are you only using cards from this expansion and the BASE set only - Avoiding the other expansions? Was it really designed best to use just these sets?

What heroes are you using? Are you only using Hobbits and not adding people like Galadriel etc?

If you are just using hobbits hopefully things scale well as you get into later packs - It seems harsh that to add Aragorn later in the campaign you have to add a permanent +1 threat to your threat wheel at the start of each subsequent adventure (as per campaign rules).

We are still working through Dwarrowdelf right now (almost done) but wanted to start figuring out how to make this work best.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Re first question we are using all cards from all sets.

In the interest of thematic purity we are going to limit characters to Hobbits, Dunedain, and Elves and require play of Sam/Pippin/Merry/Aragorn.

My deck will be Sam, Pippin and the Lore version of Merry.

The other two decks will feature Aragorn/Elrond/Glorfindel and Legolas/Elrohir/Elladan

We will likely alter the threat penalty rule to have it apply to a game loss rather than a hero change-out. There is no thematic justification for the latter though it does make a bit of sense in terms of deterring suicidal play at the end of a scenario. (the permanent loss of a hero is enough of a deterrent)

BTW does FFG know you have a bootleg copy of Galadriel? ;-)

One deck used Theodred, Eowyn, and Dunhere. The other used Merry, Pippin, and Sam. They both did a good job questing, and more often than not it seemed worth having Merry pay for a dagger of westernesse on Dunhere along with dunedain mark and Pippin helps keep things in the staging area for Dunhere to snipe. Both kept threat as low as possible and did a great job of only having to deal with black riders on our terms. The stuff that goes into a Rohan deck typically all come from the first cycle, but the hobbit deck was entirely from my friend's core+black riders. The decks did very well going through campaign mode.

I played with Sam, Merry and Pippin in first deck and with Glorfindel, Aragorn and fredegar in second. It worked really well, we managed to pass all three scenarios without taking any burdens in third. Hobbit deck was build mostly of new cards plus fast hitch, Gandalf etc., but the second had none of these left, so it used cards from earlier sets.

I've been using Merry/Fatty/Glorfindel for tactics/spirit and Sam/Pippin/Aragorn for leadership/lore to avoid running tri-sphere. Merry and Pippin are slightly less effective this way, so it's a tradeoff. I'm avoiding any Gondor/Rohan/Dwarf cards except for the healer, and including at least one copy of every playable hobbit card (like second breakfast, which I almost never actually use).

I'll probably swap out some heroes in the future expansions and ignore the +1 threat thing. You just have to make a Gimli/Aragorn/Legolas deck. Maybe Theoden/Merry/Eowyn, too.