B Grade Hobbits Lead a Fine Fellowship 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

The Black Rider trio of Hobbits have long been the standard for a Hobbit deck but we've slowly been getting more Hobbit heroes that change the way hobbits can be played. I built this deck primarily to try out the new Fellowship contract card, but I decided to make an effort to not use those standard Hobbit heroes found in the Black Riders. That deck often focuses on powering up Sam and Merry to handle combat while this deck doesn't look to outfit the heroes with equipment, but builds up a Fellowship of strong allies around the Hobbit heroes.

The Heroes

Bilbo is an unlikely choice here and probably not optimal but with Folco Boffin coming at 4 threat, Bilbo becomes affordable, especially with 7 threat Frodo instead of 8 threat Sam as the third hero. This deck can take a few turns to be ready to take on an enemy and Bilbo can counteract the disadvantage of leaving an enemy in the staging area and slowly chip it down at the same time. Frodo is a little resource hungry, but I find him incredibly powerful in this type of deck. He can maintain your threat level to keep Secrecy cards viable and with all the large allies in this deck, you can always have a decent defender ready in case of an attack in the combat phase. My favorite combo with Frodo is readying a fresh Treebeard. [Edit: can’t us his ability on a new Treebeard because it has to be a questing character. I need to read the cards!] Frodo's ability would probably be fair with just the threat reduction, but the readying on top of that is really remarkable. Folco is uniquely suitable for a Fellowship deck. There's a strange moment in playing a Fellowship deck where you have 9 characters in play but you have a strong ally in hand and resources to pay for it. But you can't! Once you get those 9 characters, you often don't need the resources coming from your heroes and in this case, it can be a perfectly fine choice to ditch Folco for the threat reduction and play a stronger ally character to take his place. Nearly all the allies in this deck have better stats than Folco so if you're at that point in the game, sack Folco and upgrade your Fellowship! Ruthless, but effective.

The Allies

With the goal of getting 6 allies into play, the Fellowship deck archetype has to balance playing cheap allies that will get you there quickly and playing heavy hitting allies that will make the end-goal worthwhile. This deck only includes a couple cheap allies, then several ways of getting more allies into play for free or at a discount. Ioreth is the easy one (Henamarth is supposed to be in the deck as well but I missed him somehow!) and Merry and Gleowine are your next best allies for the early game. After that you want to see an Elf-stone or Timely Aid pull a big ally into play. It might be prudent to add a couple more cheap allies like Mablung, Rosie Cotton, Henamarth Riversong or Gaffer Gamgee, but when you get get to 9 characters, you want all 9 to really count. Treebeard is amazing after he gets that Fellowship boost. A 3/5/4/5 ally! That's like a 17 threat cost hero with self readying! Legolas, Yazan, Quickbeam and Merry are the designated attackers while Boromir, Deorwine, Gimli and Gildor make good defenders. Raiment of War on Boromir is crazy good while keeping your threat low. He's defending at 5 with 5 hitpoints! Gandalf is there to keep the deck moving forward and in secrecy in the early game but you can also bounce him into play during the combat phase to give yourself a ninth character and boost the rest of your crew.

Attachments

This is a One Ring deck but it really wouldn't have to be. That cancellation from [The Master Ring}(/card/21009) and the reduction of your threat elimination is of no worry in this deck. The Arkenstone is amazing in a Fellowship deck as well as every character will benefit from the willpower boost. +2 WP to everyone is pretty great. I threw Sting in there as well for Bilbo to have fun with. With his direct damage plus Frodo's readying, you can plan to ping an enemy within one hitpoint of death, trigger Frodo's response to ready old Uncle Bilbo, defend with Bilbo and knock out that enemy before his attack resolves. Not a huge part of the deck but worth it in my experience. With Frodo's reduction, The Shirefolk and Gandalf's reduction, you should be able to stay in secrecy for a good while making Resourceful an easy card to get out well into the game. I put the first copy on Frodo to make his response easy to trigger and the next copy can go on either hero, depending on the allies you have in hand.

Events

Timely Aid is a great card to see in your opening hand. With well 19 allies that cost 4+ in the deck, you're likely to pull a good one on every play. I really like The Master Ring event. It feels pretty powerful, but not insane like Test of Will. You still have to face something, but you can avoid that card that will really hurt your deck. The Ruling Ring can help you knock out an early enemy without having to face the attack but I haven't found it as helpful yet. With all these traits in play I couldn't resist tossing 1x Free Peoples into the deck! With only 2 traits on the heroes it can take a while to be viable, but I couldn't leave it out. I meant to include Drinking Song instead of Daeron's Runes but either event will help.

Early game willpower can be a little weak if you don't get a timely aid right away, but with low threat and lots of ways to get allies into play, this deck has worked really well for me so far. I've handily defeated the first two scenarios in Shadow in the East with this deck and it's proved fun to play.