Do Your Job

Each of the decks clearly has its own job. If the jobs start to mix, these decks don't work nearly as well together.

The Dunedain deck takes ALL of the enemies and either keeps them engaged or takes care of them slowly, using Thicket of Spears and Háma to their fullest extents. You don't want to eliminate enemies too quickly though, as that inhibits the Dunedain's capabilities (Fornost Bowman, Heir of Valandil, and Guardian of Arnor), and you may need some of those characters to help the questing deck if the quest forces certain enemies to engage the other player or if too many enemies come off the encounter deck. Most of the weapons are included solely to allow the play of Foe-hammer to keep the hand full and allow for discards for Háma. The main worry with this deck is running out of cards to discard to return Thicket of Spears to the hand, so Foe-hammer and Ancient Mathom (other deck) help mitigate this.

The Caldara deck focuses on questing and game management. In general, all the allies are focused on high willpower and location management. For funsies, you can make a unique ally a hero to make Pelargir Shipwright amazing (4 ) and use Caldara to her fullest. Playing Glorfindel and two Northern Trackers from your discard is super fun, then play Fortune or Fate to call Caldara back. Or use Caldara to bring back three Galadriel's Handmaidens to reduce your threat and avoid engaging an enemy. Glorfindel is great, especially in the late game when you have a bunch of resources and nothing to play...discard Elven-light for Arwen Undómiel, then bring it back and draw. Then quest with Glorfindel, discard Elven-light and draw. Then attack/defend with Glorfindel and discard Elven-light to draw. Or discard a bunch of allies for Glorfindel and use Caldara to bring them back. Even if you never get Caldara's ability off due to lacking a Fortune or Fate (I only included two because I only have two core sets), she's still not bad at questing or archery soaking.

I haven't gotten to playtest that much, but these decks completely destroyed Flight of the Stormcaller the other day (Give the quest deck the Dream-Chaser and the combat deck the Dawn Star).