Bears, Beets, Battle of Helm's Deep! (Post-Con Updates)

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Werepossum 274

This deck is designed to abuse Thengel to flip your cheap Beorning and Rohan into Giant Bears and other warriors. The Last Alliance lets you use your Rohan recursion card, like Gamling and Squire of the Mark, on your Beorning allies. This also applies to the Rohan sacrifice cards.

Beorning Skin-changer is probably the best card in this deck. You can use it to get two allies for the price of one with Thengel and can be used to sneak expensive Rohan allies in with The Last Alliance. I would hold off sacrificing him until after you have some recursion available.

Need Brooks No Delay is good enough to risk a few misses from Thengel (Thank you NERD for the suggestion), as it pulls Birna, Gamling, and Beorning Skin-changer for 1 resource when you use The Last Alliance. I would select Birna early, if you don't absolutely need to Beorning Skin-changer imminently, as she lets you double up on your Skin-changers, and shuffle in your previously used Beorning Guardian and The Riddermark's Finest (with The Last Alliance) later in the game.

Elfhelm pulls double duty in this deck. He is a early threat with a build in sacrifice at end of phase, and a decent ally to flip into with Thengel. Don't feel bad about dropping him end of turn for a cheap flip if you don't need him for anything thing else. Note that it's worth sacrificing your disposable unique allies earlier so you can flip into new ones.

The mix of cheaper self-sacrificing Rohan allies can be changed to fit the scenario, but remember that there is only one hero, so try to use the cost reduction from The Last Alliance to make double allies cheaper early on. I leaned towards more The Riddermark's Finest, as it matches Giant Bear and Beorning Pony in addition to all of the Rohan. Its also good to note that Beorn is a warrior, so it can be pulled by several of the Rohan. If you are going up against a siege or battle scenario, Éowyn can be replaced for Éomer.

Finally, the deck requires a critical mass of allies of both traits, so the number of events and attachments this deck can support is limited (13 might be too many as is). If you find yourself missing to many flips, you could replace the Beorn's Welcome with cheap allies, but I think the extra resources for Grimbeorn the Old, Birna, and Beorning Pony make it worth it.

4 comments

Oct 04, 2022 NERD 808

Fantastic! How is the card draw? It seems low. Perhaps Horn of the Mark of the mark would help? I think you could probably cut a copy of Ride to Ruin and Worthy of Remembrance for two horns.

Oct 04, 2022 Zbeckert 43

I made a similar deck and I would highly recommend adding muster of Rohan, if you use the Contract it’s easy to play and gets a ton of allies out that can be either beorning or Rohan and it very synergistic with beorning allies as you can use the skin changers and birna to get other allies out permanently. Mustering of rohirrim is also pretty good in a deck like this.

Oct 04, 2022 Werepossum 274

@NERD I never really felt like I was wanting for cards and Ride to Ruin and Worthy of Remembrance both pulled their weight in the games I played. They got me and my fellowship out of some sticky situations, and gave me a way to sacrifice Beornings early on if I didn't have the Skin-Render train online yet. I normally had 2-4 cards in hand most games, as you normally want to save a resource for Grimbeorn the Old. The only game I actually felt like I stalled out was using a previous version that had 3 Théodwyns, and I drew 2 with one in play and no way to sac it.

Oct 04, 2022 Werepossum 274

@Zbeckert It's worth trying a The Muster of Rohan, though you will only get one Thengel flip off of it. 4 is a pretty steep cost, particularly early on, as you tend to want to keep hitting with Grimbeorn the Old (though this is based on a lot of 4 player games).

It does works well with Beorning Skin-changer, but a lot of the good hits need resources open, like Beorning Pony and Birna. You also miss on Thengel a little more with every event / attachment you run. I have thought about running more than 50 cards just to improve the ratio of allies to events, but there aren't many more Beornings worth running to keep the balance with Rohan right.