Four hobbits out of the shire (tournament legal) 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0
• 1.0

This is fast becoming one of my favourite decks. Everyone’s favourite hobbit foursome is tearing up Middle Earth. These little guys are seriously powerful.

For 27 starting threat, you can quest for 9 right off the bat; in Frodo Baggins you have a super-defender capable of shrugging off a spear from a cave troll and in Merry your have a starting attack strength which is equal to Treebeard's! To top it off you have repeatable card draw from Pippin and Sam's readying effect makes him a useful all-rounder, particularly with his 3 .

I have beaten every quest I have attempted so far with this halfling quartet and it does not seem to matter how good your starting hand is!

If you want some pointers though, look for a Hobbit Pipe in your starting hand and a Fast Hitch for Frodo, so he can quest and defend. Good Meal and The Galadhrim's Greeting are also a great combination in your opening hand as you can lower your starting threat level to 21 for 1 resource. With Pippin's ability, you effectively have a starting threat level of 17!

Getting the Hobbit Pipes out early and using them in combination with Smoke Rings and Old Toby helps with threat management and card management respectively in the early game. You can also use Good Meal to make sure these don't cost you anything. Don't forget to exhaust your pipes every time you lower your threat to get even more card draw. In the later game when you have Rosie, Robin and Bilbo out, you can quest with everyone and then use Elevenses to remove all of your hobbits from the quest for an easy 7 threat reduction and still comfortably quest successfully. Rinse and repeat and you should stay well below most enemies' engagement cost.

The Hobbit Cloak is for Frodo to make him an even more formidable defender and you can use Arwen to boost him a little more and give him sentinel if you are playing with a friend. The Daggers are meant for Merry, although you can put one on Sam in scenarios where you are likely to be facing multiple weaker enemies at once. I tend to stick the other fast hitches on Merry, so he can fight a couple of times (and ready multiple co-fighters using his ability) or if it's an enemy-light scenario, I might stick one on Rosie, so she can quest and boost one of the other hobbits' .

As you are generating 4 resources each turn, it is pretty easy to get Radagast out if he turns up and he can help pay to get the Descendant of Thorondor out a couple of times (using Born Aloft) once you've used up your Sneak Attacks to maximise the use of its ability to clear troublesome enemies out of the staging area. Gandalf can also come in handy for this, but I tend to use him for further threat reduction to keep under enemy engagement costs.

The only thing missing from this deck is some way of fetching specific cards in your deck as only Bilbo can do it and then he can only fetch a pipe, however, do not underestimate how important the pipes are - it can be worth sneaking him in a couple of times to dig out multiple pipes to make sure you get your card draw really working.

**UPDATE: I completely forgot about the 3 hero limit as I've been out of the game for a while, so I have adjusted the deck to make use of the new Bond of Friendship Contract, which allows you to take a 4th hero. It has some restrictions, so I've had to limit a number of cards to 2 copies each and you are only allowed 10 of each sphere, so I've left out a hasty stroke seeing as we should be picking and choosing when to fight most of the time and Frodo can absorb any increase in attack strength from a shadow card if needs be. As I've had to include more and cards, I've dropped the ring mail and a dagger in order to include Friend of Friends, which I tend to use on Frodo and Sam to boost their and more than anything.

I've also added in some cards to the side board for specific quests. For instance, in the saga quests, you won't be able to use Frodo, so Fatty is sitting on stand-by. Likewise, in the Dwarrowdelf cycle, there are certain quests where you won't be able to use Arwen, so you can substitute Bofur for that quest. Also, I have left Hasty Stroke on the sideboard for quests that absolutlely need shadow cancelation ahem...sleeping sentry...ahem