Make Pippin great again! 1.0

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• 1.0

OK boys and girls. Let's make Pippin great again!

For once however, this is NOT another joke at his expense. Instead it's a serious attempt to actually let him shine a little. Here his ability actually feels useful, and he has synergies with the other cards rather than sabotaging them.

To make him useful you need to be able to take advantage of enemies being sent to the staging area, while not requiring non-hobbit heroes. A tall order, but there is a solution. TRAPS! This means that we're not just building a deck where Pippin is useful. We're also building a trap-deck without Damrod , which is a bit of an oxymoron, but Bilbo can compensate the lost card-draw and Resourceful can compensate for the lost cost-reduction.

The classic problem with Pippin was that while you could use him in a low-threat deck to bounce enemies that slipped past your low threat (like an early http://hallofbeorn.com/LotR/Details/Goblin-Swordsman-KD?Lang=EN or something similar, which could be a real problem for such a deck) it was only postponing the problem, not fixing it. The enemy would be back next round, and at the same time you where starting a spiral that would lead to more enemies getting past engagement-checks. Now, imagine that same enemy having stepped on a couple of Poisoned Stakes first. Suddenly bouncing it for a round seems much more viable.

Another problem with Pippin was that raising your threat would negate other hobbit-abilities that relied on the enemy having a higher engagement cost than your threat. Using him could leave you without a proper defense (like no readying from Sam and no bonus from Hobbit Cloak), and also reduce your ways of killing them (like getting less from Dagger of Westernesse). That left you without ways to deal. This deck doesn't rely on those abilities. You can Snare or Spike enemies regardless of their threat, and Poisoned Stakes and Ithilien Pit still do their work even if they requires an extra bounce. Tough his ability still comes with a price, and you will still get in trouble if the spiral goes to far, the ability on Pippin is much safer to use a bit here.

To make the deck run you really need to mulligan hard for Resourceful. The deck is a bit more reliant on it than I like, but that couldn't be helped. Some card-draw in your opening hand is also nice (as always).

Your main weapons are Poisoned Stakes and Ranger Spikes as they take care of an enemy completely and they don't require any supporting cards to work. Erebor Hammersmith or Anborn let's you recycle the Poisoned Stakes. Another star of the deck is Mablung. If an enemy isn't trapped (either double in a round with surge, or if bad draw left you trap-less one round) you can engage it with Mablung, and bounce it into a trap with Pippin. Then you can lay down a second trap the same round to get you back on top. Mablung can also combine with Forest Snare. In fact Mablung is so useful you can consider chump-blocking with him (if you need to chump) just to let you play him more than once. Hobbit-sense also helps you Snare your foes, and Quickbeam and Anborn can kill whatever wanders into your Ithilien Pit. Emyn Arnen Ranger can be a monser-quester and a Ranger Bow can sometimes help you in a pinch (either pick off something without a trap on, or speed up the Poison).

Boss enemies are a problem, but if they don't engage automatically you can snipe at them with Ranger Bow even if they almost always come with “cannot have attachments”. Quickbeam , Anborn and Folco can also combine with a chump to do some decent damage. Bosses will be tough, but some will be doable.

This isn't a “power-build”. There are better trap-decks and a lot of quests this deck won't work against (to many to list), but Pippin actually works. In addition to helping you handle enemies with low threat (and double-trapping with Mablung) Pippin can also help you against enemies that get put into play engaged by nasty treacheries and effects. Those can be real troublesome for a trap-deck, but here they're just sent right into a waiting trap in the staging-area.

Saying Pippin is great might still be an exaggeration, but for once he actually feels useful... And that is something :-)

PS: I couldn't list it in the “inspired by” section, but great thanks @Warden of Arnor for a solid review of Pippin. It was a great inspiration.