House of Dain 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Hey n00b, check out my deck which shows the quality of one card - Beorning Beekeeper. I feel I've risen the bar for deckbuilding with this sweet card, and you can too if you add a bear to your repertoire. Wanna win? This deck has successfully defeated Passage Through Mirkwood!

Let me begin by telling you that Beorning Beekeeper is the deck's linchpin, with many effects designed to get the most use out of his ability. So what can we say about this card. Well, he is a tactics ally and costs a 4. In the art he looks like an intimidating mountain man tending to his bees.

This is reflected in his ability, presumably to represent that he's gotta let the bees fly. It makes sense. We want to drop this guy from the deck and deal damage from afar to filthy orcs and other nasties who are coming to eat our honey cakes.

We have a number of cards to maximise this ability. Since he discards to use it, we have recursion. Beorning Skin-changer and Stand and Fight both let us pull allys out of the discard . (Try using Stand and Fight on the Skin-changer and then swap to the Beekeeper - that's a bargain!). Not enough recursion? How about Dwarven Tomb to replay Stand and Fight?

Let's talk about the heroes. Hirgon is our resource engine, we will want to play our allies at a discount if possible. Dáin Ironfoot can provide early defense, and also allows us to speed up our deck by putting cards into the discard that we can recur. Even better if he can chow down on some Cram. Bard son of Brand will help us play our attachments more easily and let us keep them if our allies leave play for any reason.

Speaking of which, we don't want to just discard our Beekeepers. We're going to demonstrate that they are total beefcakes and can go toe-to-toe with the forces of Sauron. Round Shield and Squire's Helm to buff up this man in a bearskin, and Spear of the Citadel to allow some damage that ignores defense (sadly only 1).

Beorn's Rage and Swift and Strong boost the combat power even further. Beorn's Rage lets us deal lots of damage, and also opens up the possibility of a Straight Shot. Have you ever seen a bear fight an oliphaunt? With this combo, Beorning Beekeeper becomes the proverbial Reaper.

Even with this support, we might find our Beekeepers succumbing to their wounds, and for that we have another auto-include: To the Eyrie. Beekeeper in trouble? Just have him grab hold of an eagle! Born Aloft is also included in case any Beornings want to fly around. Eagles are needed to enable the Eyrie strategy, so we're packing Meneldor, Eagles of the Misty Mountains and Vassal of the Windlord.

It wouldn't be a good Beorning deck without the OG Beorn in attendance. we can even orchestrate a surprise bear drop thanks to Stand and Fight or Beorning Skin-changer.

A few more cards round out the deck. We have a Hail of Stones to blot out the sun, for when our Beornings want to spend all their energy chucking pebbles. We're very heavy on cards, so we need help to play them all. The Beornings get on much better if they're spitting rhymes to a Song of Battle. Finally, Grappling Hook will let the deck quest successfully every once in a while.

I think this deck demonstrates that Beorning Beekeeper is the bee's knees. Shuffle him up and let the carnage commence.

Here I say goodbye.