John Howe: Beorn (1979). I can't stop thinking of this as a New Yorker cartoon.
**
After the debut of the hobbit deck, I made a couple of changes to it: I stole the three Unseen Strikes for the Rohan deck. In exchange, I added in our three Wardens of Healing; the hobbits with their low hit points had been more than a little vulnerable to direct damage in our multiplayer games!
In the meanwhile, we picked up the Land of Shadow saga expansion, which came with a whole pile of cards that looked damn handy for a hobbit deck. For starters, I swapped out the Song of Wisdom and both Burning Brands for three copies of Staff of Lebethron; theoretically that makes the hobbits more vulnerable to the Dol Guldur Beastmasters of the world, but it feels like a better thematic fit, and goes right on Sam without messing about with songs.
I also don't remember seeing a single succesful use of Hobbit-sense in our games, which may well be an artifact of multiplayer. Still, though, I'm dropping it, because how am I supposed to play a hobbit deck with Sam and not include the wonderfully thematic Taste it Again!? A final card from Land of Shadow to make the cut is Anborn, whose ability fits perfectly into a hobbit deck. To make space, I'm leaving out the attractive but sadly unthematic Naith Guide. Keen-eyed Took will also make way for Gimli. Finally, since I intend to try this deck solo, I'm including ally Boromir; for multiplayer games, we can swap him out for the spectacularly succesful Dúnedain Cache.
So this is what we end up with:
50 cards; 15 Leadership, 17 Lore, 12 Tactics, 4 Neutral; 23 allies, 16 attachments, 11 events; starting threat 20.
Sam Gamgee (TBR)
Pippin (TBR)
Merry (TBR)
Allies: 23 (6/8/6/3)
Gimli (TToS) x2
Anborn (TLoS) x2
Bill the Pony (TBR) x2
Gildor Inglorion (THoEM) x2
Barliman Butterbur (TBR) x3
Warden of Healing (TLD) x3
Beorn x2
Boromir (TRD) x2
Farmer Maggot (TBR) x2
Gandalf (Core) x2
Gandalf (OHaUH)
Attachments: 16 (6/6/3/1)
Hobbit Cloak (TBR) x3
Staff of Lebethron (TLoS) x3
Elf-stone (TBR) x3
Fast Hitch (TDM) x3
Dagger of Westernesse (TBR) x3
Song of Kings (THfG)
Events: 11 (5/3/3)
Taste it Again! (TLoS) x3
Sneak Attack x2
Take No Notice (TBR) x3
Halfling Determination (TBR) x3
Multiplayer sideboard:
swap Boromir (TRD) for Dúnedain Cache (TDM) x2
**
Our first stop was, predictably, Passage through Mirkwood. On my first attempt, literally everyone died. A King Spider showed up, exhausting the only character I had who could have defended it, and its shadow card was Hummerhorns, which killed everyone. That spider is just plain nasty.
On my second attempt, the going was tough to begin with: early staging gave us a Dol Guldur Beastmaster and Ungoliant's Spawn, which we were in no position to tackle, soon joined by some threateningly hovering Hummerhorns. We cleared a couple of locations and fought off some Dol Guldur Orcs in the process. Those two points of damage to a questing character made me deeply grateful that I'd included those Wardens of Healing! Maybe they're not a perfect fit thematically, but hobbits are so vulnerable to direct damage that I'm fully willing to argue that Merry's time at the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith more than justifies including them.
We were barely making any progress questing, but I did manage to get some allies into play, including Anborn. With Elf-stone nowhere to be seen, I paid full price for Gildor, but he was worth every resource. Gildor's three willpower turned our questing around, and I began to contemplate a plan to engage Ungoliant's Spawn. My first attempt featured Gandalf, but I was foiled when East Bight Patrol turned up in staging. These super-low engagement threshold cards are potentially murderous for hobbits! Cool art, though.
I did engage the Beastmaster, though, since we had enough attackers to destroy him after taking care of the East Bight Patrol. Next turn, we went after Ungoliant's Spawn. Finally outfitted with a Hobbit Cloak and a Staff of Lebethorn, Sam defended the Spawn and discarded its shadow card. Merry led the attack with his Dagger of Westernesse, the final and decisive point of damage being contributed by Bill the Pony.
Once we hit the second quest stage, A Fork in the Road, I had to be careful in case I ended up having to tackle Ungoliant's Spawn again. I spent most of my Tactics resources on getting Boromir in play, and - finally! - played an Elf-stone on my active location. It had taken us long enough to get here, but now, if my sums were right, I was going to win this in one turn.
Sure enough, I passed the second quest stage and drew Don't Leave the Path, bringing Ungoliant's Spawn right back out of the discard pile. First, I used Anborn to deal it one damage and raise its engagement threshold by 5. That meant that when I voluntarily engaged it in the combat phase, Sam readied and got his bonuses. Once again, the Spawn was defended, and finished off by Merry, Boromir and the recently-elf-stoned-in Beorn. That's right: you bring a spider, I bring a bear.
Even though we got off to a rocky start, I was able to bring in a big enough bunch of allies that I managed a hefty chunk of questing and enough attack to knock out Ungoliant's Spawn in the same turn, so I'm very pleased by how this turned out! Playing this deck is just a lot of fun.
**
The next test for any deck is A Journey down the Anduin. As a warmup, I took it on with Team Boromir, and we were succesful. The two decks actually have some decent synergy: while I didn't get to play a Staff of Lebethron on Boromir, Merry did get a very handy Rohan Warhorse, which in conjunction with Fast Hitch enabled Merry to both quest and help Legolas clear all four remaining enemies out of the game on the last turn.
My first solo attempt ended mercifully quickly: Sam had to take two damage when Dol Guldur Orcs showed up, and next turn, The Necromancer's Reach killed him and Merry. Like I said, direct damage... It's almost enough to make me buy a second copy of The Wastes of Eriador so I could get the hobbits their own Honour Guard.
On my second attempt, we got off to a pretty nice start. I was able to Elf-stone in Beorn and Anborn, and we quested through the first stage with no real trouble, sending Chieftain Ufthak into the victory display. When I was eventually ready to engage the Hill Troll, the encounter card I revealed in staging was the other Hill Troll. That put a bit of a wrinkle in my plans, but we managed: Beorn defended the first Hill Troll and the combined attack of Sam, Merry, Anborn and Farmer Maggot finished him off. For the second troll, I had to Sneak Attack in Gildor to take the attack, and then he joined his buddy in the victory display.
After the troll twins, the second quest stage was almost anticlimactic, and we quested through in just a couple of turns. For the final battle, we faced Wargs and Misty Mountain Goblins; the latter were no problem, but obviously the former went right back into the staging area. The next turn, I elected to defend them with Sam, which meant taking two damage, but he could use the Staff of Lebethron to make sure the Wargs stayed put long enough to be killed. So on the whole, a resounding success! In fact, despite both trolls showing up in the first stage, I don't think I've ever got through Anduin this easily.
Flush with success, I decided that clearly hobbits are natural troll-slayers and took a shot at We Must Away, Ere Break of Day. To make a short story shorter, the shot in question was delivered by Merry, dual-wielding his Daggers of Westernesse. We killed two trolls, got our hands on the Troll Key and soon enough, Troll Cave was looted and poor old William was turned to stone.
**
So on the whole, this has been a brilliantly succesful deck. I'm going to keep on testing it; I think continuing the Hobbit quests sounds like fun, and maybe I should also see how the hobbits deal with Moria. So far, I've made very few changes to the deck. Flight of the Stormcaller did bring us Glorfindel, who'd be an awfully tempting and thematically perfect character to Elf-stone in. More card draw would be good as well, but the deck is working so well I don't really want to mess around with it. I'm also thinking that not only would Keen as Lances be great here for our multiplayer games, but the low costs of the hobbit-related cards have occasionally meant that I've found myself sitting on enough resources to almost use it on my own.
I'm horribly tempted to include ally Bilbo and Sword-thain, but that would just be silly. Right? A far more reasonable candidate for Sword-thain is Robin Smallburrow, who's a perfect fit here anyway. One swap I'm definitely making involves Halfling Determination: potentially a great card, but one I don't really find myself using. I want to try Ring Mail, as I think it'd be brilliant on Sam and might even let Merry defend the odd low-power attack.
Finally, with the arrival of the Sands of Harad, The Storm Comes is pretty much a must-have for a deck with allies from all four spheres, and we'll see if we couldn't make some use of Halfling Bounder as well.
The moral of the story? Make a hobbit deck. You'll enjoy it. This one's also been a big hit with people new to the game.
**
53 cards; 15 Leadership, 20 Lore, 10 Tactics, 2 Spirit, 5 Neutral; 25 allies, 19 attachments, 8 events, 1 side quest; starting threat 20.
Sam Gamgee (TBR)
Pippin (TBR)
Merry (TBR)
Allies: 25 (4/12/5/2/3)
Gimli (TToS)
Anborn (TLoS)
Bill the Pony (TBR) x2
Gildor Inglorion (THoEM)
Barliman Butterbur (TBR) x2
Halfling Bounder (TSoH) x3
Robin Smallburrow (TDRu) x2
Warden of Healing (TLD) x3
Beorn x2
Boromir (TRD) x2
Déorwine (TotD)
Glorfindel (FotS)
Bilbo Baggins (TRD)
Gandalf (Core) x2
Gandalf (OHaUH)
Attachments: 19 (6/6/5/2)
Hobbit Cloak (TBR) x3
Staff of Lebethron (TLoS) x3
Elf-stone (TBR) x3
Fast Hitch (TDM) x3
Ring Mail (TLD) x2
Dagger of Westernesse (TBR) x3
Sword-thain (TDR) x2
Events: 8 (5/3)
Taste it Again! (TLoS) x3
Sneak Attack x2
Take No Notice (TBR) x3
Side quests: 1
The Storm Comes (TSoH)
Multiplayer sideboard:
add Dúnedain Cache (TDM) x2
**
As part of my deck-building spree, I was going through the rest of our cards, and it occurred to me that there is, in fact, a thematically delightful and tactically excellent hero to build a deck around specifically to combine with this hobbit deck: Beorn.
My thinking is that with his inexhaustible sentinel defence, Beorn could get the hobbit deck out of quite a few defensive wrinkles, at least until Sam gets kitted out, and even then he could be invaluable against annoyingly low-threshold enemies like Dol Guldur Orcs and so on. Since this deck is specifically meant to work together with another deck, a hero with a ranged attack would be supremely useful, meaning I've finally found somewhere to use Bard the Bowman. That's basically our defender and attacker right there, so we still need a quester. Did someone mention ranged attack and Dale?
With her readying ability, Lanwyn can provide questing and also chip in on the attack. Since the theme of this deck is pretty clearly the War of the Ring North nation and ranged attack, I pretty much went through the rest of our Spirit and Tactics cards and grabbed everything that suited that theme. This is what I ended up with:
50 cards; 17 Spirit, 32 Tactics, 1 neutral; 16 allies, 10 attachments, 23 events, 1 side quest
Lanwyn (TTitD)
Bard the Bowman (OtD)
Beorn (OHaUH)
Allies: 16 (2/14)
Northern Tracker x2
Landroval (AJtR) x2
Descendant of Thorondor (THoEM) x3
Eagles of the Misty Mountains (RtM)
Rúmil (TTT) x2
Fornost Bowman (TDR) x3
Galadhon Archer (TNiE) x3
Attachments: 10 (4/5/1)
Thror's Key (OtD) x2
Warden of Arnor (TTT) x2
Support of the Eagles (RtM)
Great Yew Bow (OtD)
Blade of Gondolin x2
Mighty Prowess (TDF)
Song of Travel (THoEM)
Events: 23 (10/10)
Fortune or Fate x2
The Galadhrim's Greeting x2
A Test of Will
Hasty Stroke x2
Tides of Fate (FotS) x3
Swift Strike x2
Feint
Hands Upon the Bow (SaF) x3
Quick Strike
Close Call (TDT) x3
Straight Shot (OtD) x3
Side quests: 1
Double Back (EfMG)
**
Since this deck was literally created by grabbing everything that looked interesting, I really had no idea what would happen when I played it. Therefore the safe thing to do was to shunt it off to an unsuspecting victim while I played the Hobbit deck. We passed the first test by beating Passage through Mirkwood fairly effortlessly. I next got my partner to put aside Team Boromir for once in favor of the hobbits, and tried Beorn and pals myself. We made several attempts on A Journey down the Anduin, which turned out to be an educational experience. I'd wondered if Northern Tracker could possibly be worth including in a deck with only one Spirit hero, but he saved us from near-terminal location lock. Sadly, that wasn't enough, as we drew two Necromancer's Reaches in the same staging, which killed Lanwyn and wiped out the hobbits. Next time around, we were making great progress on the second stage, until we drew Necromancer's Reach, Evil Storm and another Necromancer's Reach in one turn. At that point we decided to try something different.
Feeling a little bruised by the non-stop treacheries, we dug out Hunt for Gollum and gave it a shot. It's not a particularly tough quest, but it can take a while, so you do get some feel for how the deck works. We took ages, managing to draw every single copy of Signs of Gollum as a shadow card. Lanwyn's readying/willpower-boosting ability came in handy quite a few times, and an unexpected bonus was how useful Thror's Key was. I included it because it caught my eye and has at least a dubious thematic connection to the deck, but when The Old Ford came along, I was very happy to have it! I also got to try the then-almost brand new Tides of Fate when I used Bard to defend an attack; my interpretation is that it wouldn't work on Beorn. It's not quite Hasty Stroke, but the +3 defense is usually enough to handle an attack-boosting shadow, and it's free. Finally, we got some Signs and set up our last questing push. This was very damn nearly derailed by Goblintown Scavengers and some very unlucky discards, but luckily I had a Galadhon Archer standing by, and Hands Upon the Bow saw to the goblins.
After that game, I had a sudden, bizarre revelation. Instead of Bard, should I actually use Brand, son of Bain? His ability could potentially create a massively stupid combo with Merry where they ready each other. Also a little less threat!
Switching from Bard to Brand, it turns out, was a great idea. He works ridiculously well with Merry; when we tried Temple of the Deceived, they fairly wiped the board clean of enemies every time. I even got to use Fortune or Fate to bring Beorn back after he defended a bunch too many attacks.
This could obviously be a much better deck if so many of the good Spirit and Tactics cards weren't in use elsewhere. One addition I did make, because it felt perfect: Ally Imrahil from Flame of the West. Should Beorn leave play, he can step in to help generate Spirit resources for Fortune or Fate. Also, now that Tactics Éowyn showed up, my partner gave up Bofur, who also fits in here quite nicely. So this is what we end up with:
53 cards; 17 Spirit, 30 Tactics, 2 neutral; 23 allies, 8 attachments, 20 events, 2 side quests
Lanwyn (TTitD)
Brand son of Bain (THoEM)
Beorn (OHaUH)
Allies: 23 (4/19)
Northern Tracker x2
Prince Imrahil (TFotW) x2
Landroval (AJtR) x2
Descendant of Thorondor (THoEM) x3
Eagles of the Misty Mountains (RtM)
Bofur (OHaUH) x2
Rúmil (TTT) x2
Fornost Bowman (TDR) x3
Galadhon Archer (TNiE) x3
Marksman of Lórien (TDRu) x3
Attachments: 8 (2/5/1)
Thror's Key (OtD) x2
Support of the Eagles (RtM)
Great Yew Bow (OtD)
Blade of Gondolin x2
Mighty Prowess (TDF)
Song of Travel (THoEM)
Events: 20 (10/10)
Fortune or Fate x2
The Galadhrim's Greeting x2
A Test of Will
Hasty Stroke x2
Tides of Fate (FotS) x3
Swift Strike x2
Feint
Hands Upon the Bow (SaF) x3
Quick Strike
Close Call (TDT) x3
Side quests: 1
Double Back (EfMG)
The Storm Comes (TSoH)
**
For now, teaming a bear up with the hobbits is working very well, and the hobbit deck remains my favorite solo deck of them all. Again, I highly recommend trying one; all you need to get going is the Black Riders box. I've managed to infect my enthusiasm for Beorn decks onto another poor soul, so hopefully I'll be able to bring you some updates on how building a Beorn deck from the core set on goes. Next time, though, it's time to tackle another deluxe expansion!
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