TL;DR: Use Galadriel to keep your threat low while you find Gandalf, Westfold Outrider, Gamling, and preferably Narya. Proceed to Use Westfold Outrider to snipe enemies after "Resolving Enemy Attacks", Gamling to recur Outrider, and Gandalf/Narya to have Gamling ready to do something else! Enjoy.

This deck, originally titled Lord I Was Bourn A Gamlin' Man, is the brain child of a rules discussion on the COTR discord chat revolving around the interaction of 3 cards: Hero LeaFaramir, Gamling, and Westfold Outrider.

Now when you look at the latter two cards it's obvious that they work well together, but when you add Faramir into the mix, it can be confusing as to the legal order of effects them between. Long story short, it was determined that you can in fact 1.) use westfold outrider to engage an enemy, 2.) exhaust Gamling to return Westfold Outrider to your hand, and then 3.) trigger Faramir's ability to ready Gamling in order to save other Rohan Allies.

So I began my quest to build a deck that answers that (rather specific) rules question with yet another question: How and WHY do I even want to do this with Gamling?

The why was easy. 1.) Action Advantage is huge in this game, and 2.) You can trigger Westfold Outrider after the Resolving Enemy Attacks step (even if you arent engaged with an enemy) in order to engage an enemy that can no longer attack you, hopefully dealing it a killing blow to follow.

Problem #1

Threat

In order to achieve the dream of this combo I would need Hero Faramir, a spirit Hero (*to play gamling), and a Tactics hero (to play Westfold Outrider). The obvious choice for Spirit was Théoden to give me a continuous discount on my combo Allies. Shit already at 23 threat. Maybe TMerry or TEowyn for my tactics slot then for lower threat? I went TEowyn for the Willpower. 29 threat. Not so bad right? Wrong.

I learned in testing that the threat was just too damn high. You see, Outrider needs to be in a turtle-y deck in order to reach it's full potential. Sure you can still use him before quest resolution in order to pull an enemy from staging so that you can increase progress... but I want to essentially feint every enemy with Outider, not just pull an enemy down for a progress benefit.

So maybe no Theoden? How about SMerry, LeaFaramir, and TEowyn? Lame. No discount. Little to no card draw and just slow slow slow.

Solution #1

No Faramir

Narya can achieve the same thing I am trying to do with much more power. But holy crap Cirdan and Hero Gandalf are Threatacular! What about Ally Gandalf? Yes! And which Hero can best offset the threat gain of 2 per turn while simultaneously finding you all of the pieces you need through her mirror and also having access to a ring which smooths over lore resources...?...gasp for air Galadriel.

Wait what? Lore? With no Faramir we dont have to shoehorn Leadership into the strategy, we can instead go for the lowest threat possible with Pippin, and Merry. This gives us access to a bunch of Ents, Mablung to return enemies to staging if need be, #Pippin's card draw, and Fast Hitch.

Problem #2

Gamling and Outrider can be expensive!

Solution #2

being in secrecy with Elrond's Counsel and Galadriel means we can play Resourceful.

So anyway, this deck has a ton of moving parts but I hope you find it as fun as I do!