This card is super effective!... in pipe decks. It is pretty bad in decks not dedicated to the smoking pipe archetype as most of the time you could be paying 2 resources for one card and one damage healed.

On the other hand, in a pipe deck it becomes one of the mvp's of the deck. I included it in my song and pipe deck and ended up drawing four cards or more with it and healed my heroes. It works well along with Smoke Rings to provide a lot of momentum to the deck later in the game. It works with Hobbit Pipe, Wizard Pipe, Dwarf Pipe, and Dúnedain Pipe, all of which are in the proper spheres for these two archetypes.

Hobbit pipe also combos with Smoke Rings so the song and pipe archetypes work together so well.

Also, the picture is incredible. It just looks awesome and is so well done.

Awesome card as it works with Grimbeorn the Old and Beorn very well, especially the latter. It let's Beorn take less damage an dealing more, it's another one of the Bernstein Bear's toys like Horn's Cry, Honour Guard, and Bofur.

It also works similarly with Grimbeorn the Old as they both want to maximize their effectiveness in battle. It's kinda like the hobbit card that raises all of one hobbit's by 2.

I have had a lot of success with this card in my beorning deck with Grimbeorn the Old.

When I first saw this card, I immediately knew that he was gonna be great, but just how great came to a surprise to me. What went right over my head was the fact that his abilities' trigger is a combat action. I thought "oh, he's a way to save resources on beornings, cool" but there's more to it than that.

It lets you quest with him before bringing in an beast Giant Bear or Beorn. In , 1 is great, anything helps in that sphere. This let's you choose if you want to transform him this round or wait and quest with him for another round.

Another thing that is great about him is that his ability let's you put in beornings from your discard pile. It doesn't restrict you to just cards in your hand which combos well with other beornings like Beorning Guardian(I think).

Also, it's nice that they are adding more resource "generation" in the other card types besides leadership.

Way better than I expected.

If I had to give this hero a score it would be an A, possibly even an A+.

I included him in a beorning deck for fun and thematic purposes, and boy was he fun. I underestimated him at first thinking that he would be a fun gimmick, but not as good as his younger self, and I was proven to be dead wrong. I would put him on par with his other version if not better. That's saying something considering I like the other hero Beorn a lot.

For one thing, he has sentinel which is great for me because I only play on multiplayer so I can support weaker combat decks.

His ability is reeaaaallllllllyyyyy good! I was so impressed at how many times I found myself using it. It is basically built in action advantage with a bonus that he reduces the enemies by 2, effectively giving him a boost in attack power.

His stats are also all in the right place so he functions effectively as a defender AND attacker.

I can see that Fantasy Flight designed him to help the player with combat for the early rounds before your deck gets set up. I wonder if you're allowed to make a deck with Grimbeorn the Old and Beorn? That would be fun!

Good designing Fantasy Flight! You guys have my approval.

Tom is a very fun card to use. I had a blast messing around with him in a semi-combat based hobbit deck. He combos sooooooooooo well with Raise the Shire, espesially when used with one of the stronger hobbits like Farmer Maggot. His first ability allows you to play allies from any sphere(Yay we can always have Rosie Cotton) and his second one increases the of hobbit allies the turn they enter play. Not to mention he is an amazing low threat here that can defend very well.