Book Club: Scouring of the Shire 1.0

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Scouring of the Shire or "Savage Dropbear Hobbits!"

"Before he got to the lane's end there was Farmer Cotton with three of his lads, Young Tom, Jolly, and Nick, hurrying towards him. They had axes in their hands, and barred the way." - Return of the King

So I'll admit when the news rang out on the Wednesday before GenCon that our second hero for Mountain of Fire was Tom Cotton, I was a little perturbed. The box didn't have a Scouring of the Shire quest, we're at the end of the saga culminating in an epic battle at The Black Gate as the ring-bearer stands at the crack of doom right? We should have a suitably 'epic' hero to stand alongside Éomer?

Well after finally getting the box in hand and seeing the other cards supporting this new Hobbit hero, I was pleasantly surprised by how tight the synergy was in the box, and how many possibilities the new cards brought to old Hobbit cards languishing in a binder somewhere.

So the moral of the story kids? A bird in the hand is worth two in the....wait no that's not right is it? A bird in the hand is worth a stitch in time? Nope. Well maybe just wait until you have all the information before making a snap judgement?

Opening Hand:

Ok so we've built this deck as a very combat proficient Hobbit deck, that isn't much of a slouch when it comes to questing either. We're kind of flexible with what we want to see in the opening hand. Song of Kings is a good start, Tom Cotton's ability is going to help us play the occasional ally, but having the song is going to help us with Tom's defence with Hobbit Cloak as well as support our inclusion of Fireside Song, which is going to go on Frodo Baggins

Friend of Friends is also a great card to see early as it requires 2 to be in play to get any benefit from it.

At the Table:

So the deck can be a little fiddly to keep the engine going. If we have some off-sphere allies in hand we need to keep an enemy engaged with us until the next planning phase in order to get the benefit of Tom Cotton's resource smoothing. We'll want some of our Willpower boosts pretty quickly so our heroes can handle questing more effectively, allowing us to use our newly recruited Hobbits for the attack bonus provided by Tom.

Frodo should get our Fireside Song as we've only got a couple of songs, one of which, Song of Eärendil requires a Spirit hero. Frodo Baggins ability can let us soak some damage even if he's exhausted so him being our primary quester shouldn't be a problem.

Rosie's a great ally and there's a good argument for her getting the first copy of Fast Hitch we see if she's in play giving us a targeted stat boost when we need it, though I think given our somewhat weak attack stats across the board it'll be that she's needed for most often.

Keen-eyed Took is an interesting card with Tom Cotton because he has the ability to return to hand (albeit with a little bit of a penalty for you and your fellow players) so you can keep playing him for his attack boost if you need to without having to "waste" resources putting a Hobbit ally you don't need at the time into play or if you only options in hand are a unique Hobbit you already have in play.

Curious Brandybuck is probably one of best Hobbit ally to go with Tom, you can put him in to play for free, just for travelling to a location (which you'll be wanting to do anyway for the most part) and he's ready during the combat phase to get Tom Cotton's attack bonus.

We're packing the full suite of Hobbit Pipe threat reduction and card draw, which is a great engine once all the pieces get into play and with the recently released Old Toby we can get some thematic healing into the deck for our squishy Hobbits.

Sideboard:

I think you've got a bit of flexibility with the build depending on your preferences. You could remove some or all of the Hobbit Pipe engine and replace Frodo Baggins with Merry to handle your threat reduction.

Sub in Sam Gamgee for a more Leadership focus, and work towards promoting Rosie Cotton to Hero status with Sword-thain.

Newly released Folco Boffin can give you a huge threat reduction and easier access to Resourceful to help with juggling all 4 spheres in one deck. Or you can mix and match any of the above, just so long as Tom Cotton's still the focus of the deck.

As a side note there's a unique Hobbit ally due in the last pack of the cycle, The Crossing of Poros that might be worth some deck space, even if only as a 1x.