Six Young Dwarves 1.0

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• 1.0

"Bombur was now so fat that he could not move himself from his couch to his chair at table, and it took six young dwarves to lift him." -Many Meetings, The Fellowship of the Ring

And little wonder! With two suits of Ring Mail on and A Burning Brand weighing him down, how do you expect him to walk a few feet? It would take Unexpected Courage, or at least a few drinks of Miruvor, before you could talk him into that. Plus, his nice Boots from Erebor would be ruined. Far better to let some dwarf allies haul him around.

Bombur isn't the only fat guy around though. This deck is 80 cards! How can you possibly have a functional 80-card deck? It's 60% larger than a normal deck, after all. Well, between the swinging pickaxes of your Zigil Miners, the nice Peace, and Thought Thorin and Oin like to have as their "quiet time" away from Bombur, and Thorin's status as King Under the Mountain, you will actually get through your deck pretty quickly. And Legacy of Durin helps, too. And the large deck size has benefits not realized in a 50- card deck in that you have a lot of variety and options each turn, and each play of the deck is unique and special.

This deck, like my Secret Dwarves are Fun Dwarves deck, is also built with the card pool of one core set, the first two cycles and the two Hobbit boxes. The limited card pool was a welcome challenge, but I was struck by how easily I compiled 80 cards with just those cycles. Turns out most of the old cards aren't trash, and are just waiting for someone to find them and use them well.

In terms of strategy behind the deck, it just plays like a typical dwarf deck: you mulligan for a cheap dwarf to get out and the bonuses will kick into play. I would say that a repeatable card draw effect like King Under the Mountain or Legacy of Durin is probably something you shouldn't mulligan AWAY, as the deck stacks up resources faster than cards, but a cheap dwarf to get the "five dwarves" stuff rolling is essential, as the extra resource from Thorin and the tactics icon on Oin are both necessary to the deck's function. The deck's main deviation from a traditional dwarf strategy is that it emphasizes getting out a lot of attachments and making a "superhero" which most modern dwarf decks don't do. Bombur will end up defending for 7 with 9 hit points if you get all of his attachments into play, which is pretty awesome.

If you are not a dwarf purist, you could consider adding those Imladris Stargazers in the sideboard to the main deck to help set up Ziggy and King Under the Mountain. Unfortunately for my chances of victory, I'm a dwarf purist.

Enjoy the deck!