This card is mental in a Dale deck. My first game playing a Dale deck I played two of these (number three was lost somewhere in the bottom of the deck) and gained 11 resources. Less the cost of the card, that’s a gain of 9 resources for two cards. (!)
Long story short, in the right deck this card is an awesome resource accelerator.
Bilbo is, without a doubt, a terrible hero.
I know, I know, build him up with half a dozen attachments and he's good- but any hero is good if you do that. He literally has no good stats, which means all of his usefulness comes from the attachments. That means if you attached those cards to a hero that is already good at that thing, they're going to be better than Bilbo every time.
The usual advice is to build him up as a defender with cards like Protector of Lórien and A Burning Brand - but in the same sphere and for less threat (yep, actually less threat) I could have Denethor as a defender, who has +1 and . Bilbo will have to ditch a card to Protector every turn just to have the same defence as Denethor starts with, and he's more likely to die if you mess up. Suddenly the extra draw for Bilbo doesn't look so great.
If you want card draw and a hobbit, the obvious choice is Pippin at just 2/3 the threat cost. He'll most likely draw you more cards over the game anyway and you don't need to build him up so much, as the obvious place for him is questing.
The big issue with Bilbo though is opportunity cost. The time you really need your heroes to step up is early, before your board state is very advanced. Bilbo is hopeless then; he's not built up yet (it will probably take several turns to get him to "ok") so you are basically down one hero. He works against the hobbit theme of low-threat turtling to get set up, because his threat is so high. The passive +1 card is a trap - he'll use early card draw and resources just to get him to the level of other starting heroes, meaning that he is a net negative in both cards and resources.
I think Bilbo suffered from coming out so early in the game's development, and was just a complete miscalculation by the game's designers. If he came out now, I think he'd be only 6 threat at most (I personally think he should be 5). That may seem extreme, but his one stat higher than 1 is , and that is the one stat where it isn't very helpful to have a value of 2- the mechanics of defence basically mean that <3 often might as well be 0. His passive draw is not helpful when you need several cards to get to "break even" point, and you don't even get the draw yourself every turn.
Really, the only reason to use Bilbo is if you want to handicap yourself. I rate him as the worst hero in the game, and by some margin. The only question to me is, are you better off having only two heroes rather than taking Bilbo? And that is a pretty sad indictment.
Let's try to ignore the fact, that Frodo's ability is awesome, simply because it set us free from fear in questing, and let's take look on his other qualities. For very nice 7 threat, you get very good stats, which makes him quite good quester and defender. With Fast Hitch he can do both. There are lot of boosts in sphere (Fireside Song, ...), so there is lot ways to boost him even more, and when it comes to , Hobbit Cloak can make it better. In his specific case is not really important how many HP he's got, but when you don't want to use his ability all the time, one pair of Boots from Erebor would suit him well. As every hobbit, when you'll feed him well with Good Meal, he will offer some pretty nice discounts on event cards as Light the Beacons, Fortune or Fate, O Elbereth! Gilthonial!, Out of Sight, The Galadhrim's Greeting or very nice Stand and Fight which basically allows you to bring to the game from discard pile any ally from any sphere for 2 less then it's the real cost and you don't have to be in secrecy. He also works very well with Song of Mocking. His ability allows him to absorb damage from basically anything in the game and so his only weakness (or yours when you'll play him) is threat management. Luckily sphere is a specialist for threat management. Beside those events mentioned above, there are several cards which helps you to manage that, like Hobbit Pipe with Smoke Rings, Elfhelm and maybe even better cards for multiplayer: Wandering Took, Song of Eärendil and so on. So Frodo Baggins is really great hero, which is very well designed, even from thematic point of view. The artwork is great. Verdict: 5/5.
A cool concept for a trap, but too expensive in my opinion. It can be compared to Hands Upon the Bow, which also lets you make a one-time attack into the staging area, but with several differences: Ambush allows multiple attackers and is not restricted to a ranged character, but also suffers from three severe drawbacks:
1) You have little control over which enemy Ambush is attached to (always a challenge with traps), whereas you can target specific enemies with Hands Upon the Bow to make sure you can actually eliminate them with that one attack (otherwise attacking into the staging area is somewhat pointless).
2) Ambush results in a Combat action, whereas Hands Upon the Bow can be played before quest resolution and can therefore even help with questing.
3) Ambush costs 2 resources, whereas Hands Upon the Bow only costs 1.
Of course there are some further subtleties to consider, but as it is I would only consider Ambush in decks with Damrod. And even at the reduced cost and with one extra card drawn it is not clear to me that Ambush would be favorable over Hands Upon the Bow. As a house rule, I would reduce its cost to 1 and/or add some defense reduction to make the card more attractive.
