Dinner With The In-Laws

This deck is part of a Christmas holiday themed deck series called Dinner With The In-Laws. Each deck embodies this theme by having the hero line-up consist of a couple from The Lord of the Rings alongside one of their parents. Because what better way to spend the holidays than a nice dinner with family and friends? With these decks, you can make your holiday season even cosier by enjoying a nice thematic game with your loved ones!

For a full list of the decks that make up this series and the accompanying Fellowship, check out the list below. I hope to post the remaining decks over the course of the next few days once I finish up their descriptions. When I do, I will update the list below with the correct links to the published decklists.

• Hobbits Ever After

• Ithilien Christmas Trees

• Dúnedain In Rivendell

• King, Queen & Prince

• Fellowship: Dinner With The In-Laws

• Bonus Deck: Unlikely Friendship

Hobbits Ever After

This deck features Sam Gamgee and his wife Rosie Cotton, who are of course joined by Rosie's father Tom Cotton for a nice family dinner. What's more, the whole Shire seems to be invited! Sam Gamgee's own father, Gaffer Gamgee, is of course joining in, and so is just about everyone else.

Word spreads fast 'round these parts, and talk of such grand festivities is sure to Raise the Shire. With The Shirefolk being such a merry bunch, there should be no lack of A Very Good Tale this fine evening. Heck, word even seems to have travelled far enough for the nearby Rivendell Scouts to pay a visit!

While nothing will ever feel quite the same for Sam Gamgee now that his dear Frodo has left, he remains surrounded by many who love him. His story still continues, and with Frodo leaving the Red Book of Westmarch in Sam Gamgee's care, there are many more pages yet to be filled.

Playstyle

The jobs of your heroes are rather straightforward: Sam Gamgee quests and Tom Cotton defends. Rosie Cotton can be used depending on what the situation requires. Typically, you will use her for questing during the early game. However, shouldn't be a problem for this deck late game, so at that point she can instead turn Tom Cotton into a beastly 5 tank (or 7 when he has a Hobbit Cloak).

The deck's core strategy is to bring out as many Hobbit allies as fast as possible and buffing them through global effects like Bill the Pony, Red Book of Westmarch and Tom Cotton's boost. Some of the most important allies that I want to briefly highlight are:

• Gaffer Gamgee, who can be played thanks to Tom Cotton's resource smoothing and can repeatedly cancel attacks.
• Pippin, who can usually quest for 2 and attack for 2 (or 4 during the turn he enters play).
• Keen-eyed Took. Yes, Keen-eyed Took. He's actually amazing for several reasons:
  1. He has 2 (or 3 with Bill the Pony) to soak up some archery
  2. His scrying effect allows you to plan ahead
  3. He can keep bouncing himself back to hand, which effectively heals him, thins your deck and lets him reuse Tom Cotton's 2 boost as often as you like! This is especially valuable late game when resources pile up and you may not have anything else to play anyway.

The deck starts out at 20 threat and can therefore benefit from a single turn of secrecy. This allows us to play Rivendell Scout for free, cheat other allies into play with Timely Aid or get our resource acceleration going through Resourceful. Don't worry, the deck isn't too dependent on the secrecy mechanic, so it's fine if you can only play 1 or 2 of these cards on your first turn. Plus, you can always get back down to under 20 threat later with The Shirefolk or Sneak Attack + Gandalf.

Try to mulligan for cards that accelerate your game plan: Resourceful or Red Book of Westmarch for resource acceleration, Bill the Pony or Rivendell Scout for some free allies and early on, and Raise the Shire, Timely Aid or A Very Good Tale to dig a little deeper in your deck.

A Very Good Tale

A Very Good Tale is especially good in this deck. The high ally count makes it naturally effective, but there are a couple of unique combos here:

• Bill the Pony and Rivendell Scout, while free to play, still count as 2-cost allies when they are exhausted.
• When you exhaust Keen-eyed Took, you can return him to your hand afterwards and him play him again to effectively ready him. And he'll benefit from Tom Cotton's 2 boost again in the process!
• Just before an ally you put into play with Raise the Shire would return to your hand at the end of the round, you can exhaust that ally again (since they will have been readied during the Refresh Phase) to pay for A Very Good Tale. The only downside is that those allies won't benefit from Tom Cotton's boost since the next round will start immediately after.

Closing remarks

While this deck will eventually be part of a 4-player Fellowship, it can actually hold its own in solo against the average quest. I've reliably beaten Escape From Umbar several times. It has some problems with questing early on, so definitely try to get your up as soon as possible. Thanks to Sam Gamgee built-in readying, Tom Cotton's decent bulk and his boost, you should be relatively fine with combat in the early game. However, it's important to keep up the pace in order to not fall behind on developing your board state.

I will be posting the rest of the decks that make up this Fellowship over the next few days. Most of them are already done, but I have yet to write out the descriptions and I like to take my time with those. So be sure to keep an eye out for those. I'll update this description with the links to the remaining decks once I've published them!