Beorn’s damage flowchart 4.0

• Versions
• 4.0
• 3.0
• 2.0
• 1.0

This is the final version I took through the whole second cycle in 2-handed play (the other deck notably handled shadow effect cancellation). The deck is designed to overwhelm the encounter deck... on defense.

Basic Concept

The goal is to support Beorn with dwarfs equipped with Vigilant Guard and Self Preservation. It isn’t uncommon to have 2 dwarfs taking away 2 damage off Beorn every attack, and healing afterward. In this situation, you can easily ward off hordes of orcs using just Beorn. 2 copies of Dori and 1 copy of Landroval are included for emergency purposes.

How to play

This is a dwarf-mining deck, but I rarely play it in complete gambling style. The main ways to mitigate bad luck are 3 star cards : Glorfindel, King Under the Mountain, and Galadriel. The order you play them is quite important. Here are some situations:

• If of the 3, I only have Gildor in my hand, I don’t use his ability, except when I’m desperate
• If I have Gildor, Galadriel, and an attachment, I use Gildor to put the attachment for Galadriel to retrieve (only Citadel Plate won’t work)
• If I have Gildor and an attachment, I may try to swap it for Well-Equipped (Galadriel can help set this up)
• If I have Gildor, King Under the Mountain and something like Ered Luin Miner or Hidden Cache, I use Gildor to put the latter back on top of the deck, and use King Under the Mountain to activate its effect.
• If I have Gildor and King Under the Mountain and no attachment nor Well-Equipped, I first activate King Under the Mountain to fish for one, so it’s back to one of the previous cases
• Etc. There are lots of combinations.

Always try to play Mighty Warrior before playing Galadriel or Well-Equipped, so that they don’t whiff on Vigilant Guard.

Of course, you need to pay for Gildor Inglorion, Galadriel and King Under the Mountain. I included 3 copies of A Good Harvest to this effect. Bifur’s ability also helps quite a bit. Gloin taking early damage from small enemies tremendously helps in accelerating the deck. One tip : in the early game, against an enemy hitting for 3 attack, I will usually gamble and leave it undefended. If a shadow effect increases the attack strength, I can always fall back on Beorn to take the damage, otherwise the gamble pays off and Gloin gains 3 resources. Getting Gildor Inglorion through A Very Good Tale is also very nice.

For your starting hand, you’ll be in a very good position with 2 out the 3 star cards.

Testing

This deck doesn’t do much the first turn. Once Gloin takes a bit of damage and helps pay for one of the 3 star cards, it can heat up very quickly and Beorn just turns into a wall. There are quite a few big costly cards, such as Citadel Plate (on Gloin of course) or Landroval that you’ll almost never pay straight up, but cheat into play through Well-Equipped or A Very Good Tale. The best is when you have 2 Citadel Plate, 2 Self Preservation and 1 Vigilant Guard on Gloin, and 1 Vigilant Guard and 1 Self Preservation on Bifur.

The deck successfully went through the whole second cycle, including the Nightmare versions of the 3 Khazad-Dum quests, The Redhorn Gate and Watcher in the Water. Unless the encounter deck could find a way to discard defending characters, it was very difficult for it to beat Beorn and his boys. Sometimes I just let trolls hit for 6-7 attack undefended because Gloin could just take it.