I'm glad you enjoyed the game, it was interesting to see how things would turn out...
My brother isn't a massive LotR fan so he felt if he was it would have been a more interesting game and have more appeal
What he did like was having no idea what his opponent would play and hoping to predict the rght combination of spells to save him from damage and cause maximum damge, He agreed with you about there being little point to the "advantage" of being close to the Palantir. Overal though he enjoyed it, even though he lost
Thanks again for playing :
J