This deck is not creative at all, it is a crowdsourced Hobbit ally deck.
I looked at all the decks with Tom Cotton to see what the most used heroes were with him. The most popular heroes used with him were Sam Gamgee and Pippin. I analyzed decks with that lineup from 11 different creators.
To turn my analysis into a deck, I used the median deck card count to apportion card slots to the most popular choices in each category, trying to use the most popular count for each individual card until I ran out of space. I also limited the cards to a single core set.
The end result should be a stereotypical Hobbit ally deck -- one that only includes cards that others have used the most (by percentage, not raw count) in their own decks with this lineup. If you want the typical Tom Cotton experience, this may be a good fit -- and if it's not, don't blame me, blame the committee!
Because of Halfling Bounder a high proportion of decks had side-quests in it, though low median counts also made room for multiple side quests. Tom Cotton's ability to ignore sphere match doesn't have any benefit except for resource smoothing, the only spirit ally is Curious Brandybuck, which doesn't require a resource match to put into play with its response. Everything in here wants to deal with higher-engagement enemies, so The Shirefolk and Gandalf are essentially to keep the threat down. Tom Cotton will be the heroic defender and Sam recast as the attacker, though all the hobbit allies can pack a punch on the turn they are played.