I’ve played around some more with this deck, and the Into the West contract is very powerful. I’ve taken the deck up against some more difficult quests, and the emerging pattern is you end up with a ton of allies on the board, and a threat level well below your starting threat. Even against Carn Dum, it struggled only modestly before finishing off Thaurdir.
I added Brok Ironfist as a joke. But if you can get him into play with Vilya and attach the contract to him, you end up with a turn where he is questing for 2 (without exhausting thanks to Galadriel), pitching in a competent defense or assisting with an attack, and then generates 6 resources when he leaves play. Not bad for the worst card in the game! Maybe he even exhausts at the end of the turn for A Very Good Tale to get another massive ally into play! He’s not exactly a linchpin of the deck, but I’ve never been unhappy when Imladris Stargazer sees him coming in the future.
Frodo Baggins has been a good hero in the deck, and makes it at least a bit thematic. His ability is nice to potentially allow Elrond—-or another big ally—-to quest. But I could easily replace him for another low cost hero. Gildor Inglorion, would perhaps be a candidate to replace Frodo. I could even see adding a non-Leadership hero, at the expense of losing Steward of Gondor and A Very Good Tale, which are very nice to have, but not necessarily essential to the decks function.
If you want to go thinner than a 60 card deck, I would drop the following:
Additional card draw, such as Daeron's Runes and Drinking Song could be added in, but that may impact your ability to rely on a blind-Vilya, which you will want to do in the earlier rounds.