Deck: Beorn Attacks!

Inspired by the discovery of the animated art above, here is a deck featuring yours truly and some of my dwarven friends from The Hobbit. With a nice mix of some of the more powerful dwarven cards, couples with two of the lesser-used dwarven heroes, this deck should be competitive as well as thematic. Featuring three spheres, it can start a bit slowly but once it gets going this deck should be able to handle many different kinds of scenarios.

Because of the constraints that come with three different spheres, we will need to take advantage of multiple different resource generation effects to allow this deck to play for cards. The Leadership sphere gives us access to King Under The Mountain and We Are Not Idle, two of the most efficient forms of card drawing in the game. The extra cards that we draw from these effects will make resource acceleration all the more important. A handful of great cards do us no good if we cannot afford to pay for anything.

To help with resources, we will need to deviate a bit from a strictly Dwarven theme. By including Errand-Rider and Gaining Strength we can quickly give a single hero the three resources that will be needed to pay for the more powerful allies and attachments. Once we have fielded an army of Dwarven allies, We Are Not Idle and Lure of Moria can also major resource accelerator. Once we play Fili or Kili, they fetch their brother which gives us perfect targets for A Very Good Tale. The Errand-Riders also worked perfectly as chump blockers once they have finished serving their initial role and our army is mustered.

The basic strategy here is a common one for dwarf decks, we will flood the board with as many allies as we can. Once we reach the critical 5 dwarf threshold, Oin will be able to help pay for Tactics cards and Dwalin becomes the best 1 cost ally in the game.

We have multiple copies of Dwalin and Gloin because they never need to be a dead card. With Dwalin in play along with four other dwarves, if we draw another copy we can simply us him as a chump blocker (with Sentinel no less!) and the replacement is almost free. Gloin, likewise almost pays for himself once we have 5 dwarves in play, so he can be sacrificed strategically to provide repeated resource smoothing.

Dwarves are a precious resource, especially early on, so Beorn is the perfect compliment to help us avoid chump blocking while we get everything setup. Later into the scenario, our dwarven army should be able to handle most of the blocking, but for the first few rounds it’s great to have a giant Orc-slaying bear along for the adventure. We can use Balin’s ability to cancel any nasty shadow effects that would put too much damage on the bear. Once we have some damage on Beorn, we can stop using him from defending and keep him exclusively for counter-attacks.

While this deck can be solid for solo play against many scenarios, pairing it with a deck featuring Dain Ironfoot will obviously unlock its true potential. Rather than design yet another Dain/Thorin powerhouse, this is a fun exercise in how to maximize the usefulness of some of the less-heralded Dwarf heroes. Besides, it’s always a party when you bring a giant bear along to help with the Orc-smashing.

Heroes:
Beorn
Balin
Óin

Allies: 25
Veteran Axehand x2
Erebor Battle Master x3
Bofur (TRG) x1
Imladris Stargazer x2
Zigil Miner x3
Kili x2
Dwalin x2
Errand-Rider x3
Fili x2
Glóin x2
Gandalf (Core) x3

Attachments: 9
Cram x3
King Under the Mountain x3
Narvi’s Belt x3

Events: 16
Feint x2
A Very Good Tale x3
Gaining Strength x3
We Are Not Idle x2
Sneak Attack x2
Lure of Moria x2
A Test of Will x2