This is a threat to discuss decks and strategies for winning in Into Ithilien.  This is not meant to be a thread for discussing whether or not you enjoy the quest -- it seems to be a divided issue, and there's plenty of discussion already going on here.  Let's try to keep this thread focused on figuring out a winning strategy.

I realized there's a similar thread going on here .. I'd read it a few days ago then forgot about it.  Oops!  Good stuff going on over there. Anyway, I've changed my decks a bit and will try again this evening.

Alright, finally had victory against this scenario with 2 players.  Only took 13 tries!!  I've said it before, I'm not the strongest player, but 1 in 13 is ridiculous even for me.  We switched to Dwarf decks, and I cannot credit deck construction for winning the scenario.  Rather, lucky draws from both the Encounter deck and our Player decks.  Still, there had to be something done right in the player decks or we wouldn't have even gotten that chance!  For anyone interested, here is the play-by-play of the game, and below that a deck list.

Heroes: Beregond, Thalin, and Dwalin for player 1, and Dain, Gloin, and Ori for player 2.

Victory came on the fourth turn.  Spirit/Tactics started with A Test of Will, which we used to cancel a Blocking Wargs on turn 1.  I also played a Dwarven Axe on Thalin, increasing his questing power to 5 on a Battle quest with Dain present.  Lore/Leadership quickly filled up her party with dwarves (and, funnily, forgot to use Ori's ability to draw extra cards on the last couple of turns).  The newer Gandalf card made an appearance at the end.

Our strategy was to rush and engage as little as possible (yeah I know, extremely unthematic for this quest, but it worked). Everyone except Dain and Beregond quested whenever they could contribute.  On turn 1 we finished Ithilien Road, and the two defenders took the Southron Companies out of the staging area (one returned there after attacking due to a shadow effect). On turn 2, we finished 1B and went to 3B with Celador stlil in play. At that point a Southron Company was still engaged. Beregond blocked, and Celador plus an Ithilien Guardian, who had just jumped to Beregond’s party, finished it off with the aid of a timely Ithilien Guardian shadow effect. We turned an Archery enemy in the staging area to our advantage by placing damage on Gloin and getting paid for it.  Stage 3B was finished on turn 3, and at that point our threat was just 30, so only a 25-threat spider engaged us (and a lucky thing it was too, as there was a Mumak in the staging area). The spider nearly killed Beregond thanks to a shadow effect and its When Revealed text, but Blade Mastery pushed his defense up to 5 and saved his life. We finished the game on the next turn, counting Willpower and not Defense on 4B because our threat was low.  But we didn't win without a last scare: Blocking Wargs came out again, and this time we could not cancel it. Several allies were killed (also removing Celador from the game in the process), but we still came out with 26 willpower versus 9 threat in the staging area, and victory!  Extremely lucky encounter draw, I think.  Final score 106 (30 points for three refreshes, plus 31+31 for threat trackers, plus 14 damage distributed among heroes).

And the decks.  It took these particular decks 5 attempts to win at this scenario.

Into Ithilien - Dwarves, Spirit/Tactics