Bilbo's Retirement Party 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Bilbo is a hero that has been out of favor for awhile, partially because he came out so early in the game's life, but mostly because of his high starting threat (9) combined with low stats. However, I decided to build with Bilbo using a modern card pool to see what I could come up with. Thinking that his ability centers around card draw, and we now have a whole archetype centered around discarding cards to fuel effects in the Noldor, I combined the two. I liked the fact that this combination also fit well in terms of theme, given that Bilbo retires in Rivendell at the end of his life, hanging out with the Noldor.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Bilbo serves as the main defender using the tried-and-true trio of Fast Hitch, A Burning Brand, and Protector of Lorien. This combination still works as well as ever.
• The main card draw engine is Bilbo, Gleowine, Elven-light, and occasional uses of Peace, and Thought. The idea here is to generate potentially as many cards per turn as Erestor does, while having greater flexibility than Erestor since you get to keep any remaining cards at the end of a round.
• The rest of the deck is fairly straightforward and follows a typical Noldor strategy. Get To the Sea, to the Sea! out early and drop the big Noldor bombs on the table: Glorfindel and Gildor especially. Those two, combined with Quickbeam and Treebeard can do a ton of heavy lifting.
• Vilya is mostly there as an additional bonus. This is definitely not an Elrond/Vilya focused deck, but if it nets you a few additional cards, then all the better (and the extra Spirit icon is helpful).
• I decided to settle in at 52 cards, since this deck draws so much, I wanted to add a bit more variety to it without impacting the consistency too much.

That's about it. Enjoy Bilbo's retirement party!