This is the deck I have used to beat Shadow of the Past - A Knife in the Dark - Flight to the Ford solo pretty reliably. Strategy is basically the same as any other hobbit deck with Gaffer: mulligan for Gaffer as top priority, Steward as second priority. Get Steward on Pippin, use his resources to play Gaffer over and over to perma-lock one enemy. Then use Merry and Sam, preferably with some allies or daggers, to murder even Black Riders with relative ease. Sam with Cloak plus Round Shield can tank some enemies that are immune to player card effects (especially with some of the Fellowship boons, he can become an excellent general-use tank), or failing that you can just chump Barliman. Shirefolk can be removed for some quests with relatively few threat spikes, but you can also always get some use out of it with Drinking Song and Protector of Lorien, so I pretty much always leave it in. Frodo's Intuition, Drinking Song, and Pippin will be your reliable card draw, and Gandalf is obviously versatile depending on what you need at the moment.
Obviously, this deck would be significantly better with Rosie and Fast Hitch, and if I can get those cards I will include them. Sadly it sounds like it's unlikely that Fast Hitch will be reprinted, if I am reading the signs right. But right now all I have is Revised Core, Fellowship, Elves of Lorien starter, and Mt Gundabad because I saw it for cheap on eBay. I'm using Elves of Lorien as a companion to this for 2-player. They work quite nicely together.
The biggest roadblock I have hit is what to do about the Balrog in Moria. I really don't want to lose one of my heroes here because I have no good substitutes. Just Fatty Bolger and Bilbo Baggins, which really don't fit well with what I am trying to do here. My best idea has been to restart campaign two-handed with a deck that includes Gandalf because immersion. I really wish they would let you sacrifice ally Gandalf to kill the Balrog and then just forbid you from using that card again until Two Towers. That would seem fair to me, but alas...