Os-BEAR-a 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Well, I know it's been a while since we've seen the use of Osbera up on RingsDB, but I'm a little behind the times. And so, vastly out of date, I'm finally ready to post my deck making use of a creative archetype and a very intriguing hero.

Presenting...[drum roll!]....Os-BEAR-a!!! (it's a terribly original deck name, don't you think?)

This is a typical Grey Wanderer deck making use of Osbera and the new Beorning allies to fuel a horde of battle-ready bearish monsters.

Grab Strider as your Setup attachment, and mulligan for at least 1 Beorning Skin-changer, along with one at least one of the expensive Beornings (Giant Bear and Beorn). Resourceful and Song of Battle are also great cards to start with. Also, Boromir is when of the best cards to get out early, as he can defend and attack quite a few times until he finally dies (when you'll hopefully have another defender out!).

You want to get a strong quester out right off the bat (preferably Firyal), as most Beornings struggle with . Timely Aid can help with that, and it's also quite useful for a number of other allies (and Gildor Inglorion can set it up). After some time, though, Osbera should be giving you a pretty regular -3 to -5 every round, so make sure you spread your Beorning damage thin.

Try to get Beorning Skin-changer out right away, and use it to pull a big bear into play. A best case scenario is when you can do this, use Birna to pull the Skin-changer back, discard the Skin-changer, and get another hefty fighter. This little trick allows you to get up to 11 resources worth of cards into play for only 3 resources, which Osbera can easily generate every round!

Some miscellaneous tips:

Treebeard can be used to pay for the Ents in the deck (Quickbeam and Derndingle Warrior), saving you some money. Once you get Gandalf into play, keep him as long as you want! The other Gandalf and Galadriel's Handmaiden keep your threat low enough to survive till the end - thanks to your starting threat of 10, it'll be a long time before the encounter deck overwhelms you!

This deck struggles with card draw, so we have lots of events to help us out. We also have two of the best card draw allies in the game, Legolas and Gléowine. Try to get one of these early, and hopefully they'll provide your engine with sustainable fuel. Also, Beorn's Welcome is helpful in regenerating all the resources used to flip Osbera - though by mid-game, you should be getting 5 resources a round!

After you've pulled off all these tricks and are finally ready to actually finish the game, you should have a pretty impenetrable board state built up. At this point, all you have to do is keep buying allies until you win!

Happy q̶u̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶...er, fighting!