Beravor or Bilbo - why choose?

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Aurion 861

This deck arose out of the age-old argument about who is better Bilbo Baggins or Beravor. I feel that Bilbo gets a bad rep because he is expensive for his stat-line, whereas Beravor only costs 1 more threat and she has superior stats making her more versatile. On top of this, in multiplayer, you have more control over who gets to draw cards with Beravor and she yields more cards to boot. I would argue however that Bilbo is better than Beravor as his ability is passive, which means that he is available as actually quite a capable defender (which I will talk more about in a minute). Beravor, on the other hand, requires you to exhaust her to use her ability; which means that, without any consistent readying effect, her stat-line is rendered useless. The thing is that her ability is most useful in the early stages of the game but that is also when you need your heroes most for questing and combat as you haven't had time to get any allies out (particularly in the sphere). With Wingfoot being the only in-sphere readying effect available to her, you are forced to use her for questing, so I would argue that her combat stats are less useful if you want to consistently draw cards using her ability.

The main reason I think Bilbo is better though is because he has access to a couple of very powerful cards via his Hobbit trait. Firstly, Fast Hitch costs one less than everyone's favourite readying attachment and when used in conjunction with Protector of Lórien, A Burning Brand and Boots from Erebor enables him to become a formidable defender, capable of buffeting multiple attacks away with no care for nasty shadow effects. The second is Good Meal. This card even makes, dare I say it, Gandalf's Search a decent card. For 1 cost, you can look at the top 3 cards of your deck and take 1 into hand. You can then decide whether it is worth exhausting Beravor this planning phase or saving her for questing/combat. It can also be used, as I have in this deck to help pay for expensive cards like The Houses of Healing.

Anyway, as you can see, after much deliberation about who to use, I asked myself; why choose? Now that the hobbit/ranger synergy has emerged, why not use both of them for an awesome amount of card draw? The result is awesome.

I won't go through each card in the deck as I already did that and got logged out of RingsDB without saving so I will just mention a couple of tricks of the deck:

Love of Tales and The Road Goes Ever On = resource generation. You can then use Erebor Hammersmith to recycle The Road Goes Ever On and if you have 3 copies of Love of Tales out, you effectively play the hammersmith for free and net a resource in the process.

Good Meal turns Lórien's Wealth into another 3 Mithrandir's Advice.

Enjoy!

4 comments

Sep 21, 2018 Wandalf the Gizzard 2415

Oof! I know how getting logged out feels mid-way through a lengthy deck description.

Anyway, inspiring deck! I find myself rarely using either Beravor or Bilbo. I guess it's just not my playstyle to have a subpar defender/attacker/quester/whatever you use Beravor for in favor of more cards on the rounds you don't need her action. Bilbo solves that problem somewhat, but he still usually sits in the binder in favor of a better hero and another means of card draw.

Sep 21, 2018 Aurion 861

Yeah, it's not a power deck for sure but it's nice and thematic and finds a use for both Beravor and Bilbo when, as you say, most people probably don't use them much any more.

Sep 21, 2018 tigormiti 901

Are we sure Beravor is a she ?

Sep 21, 2018 Some Sort 3481

@tigormiti Beravor is definitely a she.

I like Bilbo well enough, but for my money, Beravor is one of the top five or ten heroes in the entire card pool, especially now that Dunedain Pipe can effectively let her draw you three cards per round.