‘The Last Alliance of Eriador’ by Umagaur the Pale.

This deck was created to experiment with totally 'useless' cards and to try to make them useful, which (surprisingly) resulted in a fun deck. It is absolutely not a 'tournament-grade'-deck which was illustrated at the dutch nationals where this deck got 22nd place (of 24 participants), but it is fun to play casually when you have a few hours to spare.
The 'useless' cards referred to above are:
Misty Mountains: this card has two specific uses, one being avoidance of cave-worms keyed to High Pass and adding a region to your company's range when traveling though High Pass, the other being reduction of the hazard limit in specific regions.
Herb-lore: is only useful when travelling with your wizard (Radagast), so that's what we are going to do! Play it when you expect not to need Radagast during the site-phase and even then just before the end of your movement/hazard-phase. It gives no corruption, so you can just hang on to it until you need to untap/heal two or more characters during an organisation-phase. (Radagast will untap after taping for this effect!)
Fair Travels in Wilderness: This card alone does nothing for your safety, in the space of two against the hazard-limit (the minimum on this card) you can face devastating hazards (Dragon's Desolation, Rank upon Rank of Assassins), but with the aid of Fifteen Bird in Five Fir-trees it can cancel all creatures your opponent can play on you (be sure to have Radagast in your company by this time), and when used with Many Turns and Doublings it can even throw out an event before it resolves (if it was the last hazard your opponent could play on you).
Cup of Farewell: Just adds corruption (1 corruption point per minor item) to your company. So keep your company free of those corrupting items, store a Palantír as soon as you can. Get some Elven Cloaks on important influencers (Radagast, Beorn and Ghân-buri-ghân), bring in one or two Star-glasses if you expect to face undead at the Barrow-downs or Lossadan Cairn and the spare Horn of Anor when Rats! or other thieves have nicked your starting ones. You can use Cup of Farewell's effect during the site-phase, so you're not occupying valuable slots in your hand for some measly minor items, and you get to choose your item instead of hoping to draw the right one at the right time.
Alliance of Free Peoples: Nice extra marshalling points, but there aren't that many dwarf factions and even less elf factions, so you'll have to keep to the north of Middle Earth to make this card work.
Wizard's Ring: Four corruption points for an unstorable two marshalling point item on your wizard!? No thanks! Play this item on your last turn when you store your palantír and bring in a three marshalling point character under your wizard during your organization phase only if you need the points for balance or to tip the scales of marshalling point weighing at free-council.

These cards made the deck. The rest is there to provide an appropriate environment for these cards and to capitalize on effects created by them.
The factions are all located in Eriador or just across the Misty Mountains where you will encounter mostly wilderness. In this area lie the sites that host most of the 4 marshalling-point men factions for minion players, so get them first and protect them with No Strangers at this time (a nice extra marshalling point to boot), No Escape from my Magic and Trouble on all borders (if you must). The wilderness can protect you when you use Goldberry, Elven Cloaks, Ford and Fair Travels in Wilderness in combination with Many Turns and Doublings and Fifteen Birds in Five Fir-trees. This deck is LARGE, so use Radagast to draw those extra cards during movement/hazard-phase to get some speed into it. Play the Noble Hounds in addition to a faction or Goldberry, but in a pinch you can play them in twos or threes on the spare border-hold of Bree. Do NOT forget to keep Gates of Morning in play, since it provides the ability to play Fifteen Birds in Five Fir-trees, the Cock Crows and the hazard limit reducing effect of Many Turns and Doublings.
As for the hazards, you can play No Escape from my Magic safely, since you travel with a lot of rangers (don't over-do it in that departement, since you need some free general influence to protect against Muster Disperses and Call of Homes on your influencers) Be careful with Trouble on all Borders, play them on your own factions only if a wizard is after your factions or minions are in your area. Beornings or the Wood-elves are a good target for this card and No Escape from my Magic, since you won't be traveling there much. Beornings and Petty-dwarves provide huge areas to be affected by this card (eight to nine regions each! let your opponent work around that!). Beornings, Hillmen and Lossoth will provide affected regions containg darkhavens, your Ringwraith/Sauron opponent won't be happy about that! Never ever play Trouble on all Borders on Orcs of Angmar or Orcs of High Pass, since that will do you more harm than your opponent.
The rest of the hazards are simple automatic attack enhancers. Use them when you can, but discard them when not, since you need a lot of slots in your hand for resource combos (eg.: Faction, No Strangers at this Time, Noble Hound or Fair Travels in Wilderness, Many Turns and Doublings, Fifteen Birds in Five Fir-trees). Recycle the one which affect the site type you opponent is most likely to visit with an Unexpected Outpost or Mouth of Sauron. The undead creatures can enhance themselves through Chill Dousers for a mini-combo on ruins & lairs or shadow-holds, but can double for automatic attacks in the underdeeps.
Lastly a one card thief-strategy: Taladan can hit time and time again against a tight-deck strategy taking your opponent's items one by one. If this doesn't work out... Hell, it's only one card in your deck, no significant loss!

I had a lot of fun playing this deck, and hope you will too,

Umagaur the Pale.

MECCG, METW, METD, MEDM, MELE, MEAS, MEWH and MEBA are games from Iron Crown Enterprises. All original artwork © Iron Crown Enterprises.