Bifur is, I would argue, one of the best heroes, and quite possibly one of the best heroes period, in the entire game.

For starters, his stats. He's low threat at 7, and for some inexplicable reason is actually undercosted, possessing 8 total stat points, making him incredibly efficient and cheap. And, continuing his theme of efficiency, his stats are fairly concentrated, 2 making him a decent quester and 2 and 3 meaning that he can take a weak attack or two and not die.

Moving on to his actual text box, the first thing to notice is that he has the Dwarf trait. This is extremely helpful as Boots from Erebor is free and can help increase his survivability while Narvi's Belt looks like it was made for this guy due to his action. And, WOW, that action. Moving around one resource a round doesn't sound like much, but trust me, Bifur's ability is game-changing. The key thing is his sphere, , a sphere either famous or infamous depending on your perspective for having a lack of resource generation, basically limited to Love of Tales and the pseudo resource generation of Gríma. Bifur turns this on its head. He's even better than flat-out resource generation in a way because if you don't need resources you can just choose not to trigger Bifur, whereas the likes of Steward of Gondor have a tendency to pile up Graham's Number worth of resources on one hero while you only draw cards that they can't pay for. Bifur's combination of resource acceleration and resource smoothing solves this problem, allowing you to fairly efficiently redistribute resources to the hero who needs them most at the moment. In addition, because Bifur's ability is a raw action as opposed to a planning action, you can wait until the end of the round to see if you need to use it or not.

Bifur is an insanely flexible hero. His low threat makes it so that he can slot into almost as many decks as Glorfindel, his stats aren't that bad for his threat cost, he grants easy access to 's abundance of card draw effects, and his ability allows you to effectively run either a tri-sphere deck or dual-sphere deck with in the minority as if you had 2 heroes. Overall, Bifur isn't a flashy hero, but he is a solid choice if you need to splash in a deck. Bifur is boring. But who says that boring has to be bad?

Another good use of this card might be in conjunction with Guarded attachments, so that you can attach them to the best possible cards for you (a location you can clear somewhat easily, an enemy you might kill with Hands Upon the Bow or Éomer and so forth) and possibly discarding some bad treacheries in the meantime, of course at the cost of the foreknowledge of the encounter deck this cards grant.

I really like the fact that the discount can be used by the next player and not only by the one who played the Toymaker, it really opens up a lot of nice interactions.

Also some strong Santa vibes from this dwarf

Don't let the "0" cost lead you into thinking this card is a "must include".

I'm not a big fan of the Dunedain Pathfinder ally if you mostly consider its near and mid term effect on board state when deciding to play it. Sure the 0 "resource" cost is tempting, but there are other hidden costs....

Just looking at the 53 eligible location cards in the Harad cycle AP packs it comes from, 9 locations have 1 , 23 locations have 2 , and 21 have 3+ . This is counting multiple copies of each eligible location in the encounter decks.

That means roughly 40% of the time you are going to increase the staging area threat by more than the 2 you get from this ally, and another 40% of the time you are breaking even. Short term this is not good.

Now in exchange you get a zero resource cost emergency chump blocker and some long term upside of having 2 more per round for no resources spent - if you can keep the ally alive. However, this is not a "net" +2 as you still have to overcome the additional of the added location card that came with deployment of the Pathfinder before you get a "net" bonus.

And if this poor net / exchange wasn't enough to give you pause, there is also the chance the Pathfinder finds no eligible location, and goes away without deploying. This is equal to one turn of card draw with absolutely no return for it, when you could have drawn something else more predictably useful.

Now let's compare this to Celebrían's Stone, which gives you net +2 on the turn you use it, and every turn thereafter. You are also less likely to lose the hero it is attached to as you would an ally. Yes, this counterexample costs 2 resources, but very few cards are truly "free". ( Unlikely Friendship being an example of one that is almost truly free.)

This card has its uses - quick deployment of a chump blocker for no cost, when quest threat isn't an issue. It is a better card when the encounter deck is mostly <2 locations.

However, the hidden costs of this "free" ally may not be worth it in many situations.

This card is gold! For two resources it essentially either wipes out the attacks of a plethora of enemies, or at least makes them easily manageable. Both of these will usually allow one to take the attack of all enemies undefended, leaving any character not used for questing ready to attack. The fact that there are few cards in the game that can singlehandedly allow one to clear their board of enemies only increases this cards value. Of course, to maximize this cards ability, one must be above forty threat. Normally valour cards are hard to splash into any random deck, but in my opinion this card is the exception. Its effect is straightforward enough that one does not need to change their deck for it. When one plays it in the context of valour, however, it becomes even better. With Hope Rekindled! it can be played for free. Combine these two cards with the Hour of Wrath and the effect is deadly, and crazy fun. Horn's Cry allows one to defend unlimited enemies with Hour of Wrath, without taking much damage at all. To spice things up even more, run these cards with tactics Aragorn. For the price of four resources, you can kill every enemy engaged with every player in the game, as well as all the enemies in the staging area! Talk about value! On its own this card has great value, but combine it with a few others and its effects are legendary.