Hobbit Cloak

Hobbit tribal defense boost

Background

The flavor text comes from Chapter 3 of the Fellowship of the Ring, Three is Company. It comes not long after Frodo leaves Bag End and overhears Gaffer talking to a black rider that is asking after him. It describes Pippin, Sam and him walking silently in the night as they leave Hobbiton.

Card Theme

The game represents the Hobbits affinity for stealth with various bonuses for engaging enemies with higher engagement cost than their threat. This can easily be construed as the advantage they get from the element of surprise. The description of how the Hobbit cloaks help the characters is a bit of stretch to a defensive bonus. It does help them in a defensive manner by avoiding discovery. There already are a couple mechanisms for that in game, engagement and threat control. It seems like threat reduction or increase engagement cost would have been much more thematic in this case. It is not entirely without precedent. Dunedain Warning, the first Leadership attachment with a defense bonus, arguably more about avoiding danger than protective gear.

Card Synergies and Interactions

Engagement Control and Threat Reduction

Threat reduction is better considering there are several more cards for it. Unfortunately, in sphere options are limited to Leadership Frodo and Sneak Attack and Gandalf. Fortunately, Hobbit focused decks have The Shirefolk that can reduce threat by 4 for free and it is neutral. Elevenses is another hobbit specific option can significantly reduce threat mid to late game when lots of hobbit allies are out. Leadership Frodo, Spirit Merry, Galadriel, Fastred, and Spirit Beregond all provide repeatable threat reduction. Galadriel and Beregond won’t help lower threat below more enemies’ engagement costs, but they’ll maintain threat turn after turn that a lower threat deck can still ambush the same enemies from beginning to the end of the game.

Hobbit Heroes

Sam Gamgee is an excellent target for the cloak. His ability also triggers when engaging an enemy with higher threat readying him to defend. On top of that his base defense is boosted to 2 and with the cloak he gets up to 4 defense matching that of Beregond. Sam also has the most base hit points of the Hobbit heroes only matched by his father-in-law, Tom Cotton. Tom also makes a great target since he has the best defense stat. Both versions of Frodo also can benefit from it. Leadership Frodo provides Leadership access and threat reduction to help keep triggering it as the game progresses. Spirit Frodo already is great defender thanks to his ability, but it only works once per phase. The cloak can allow Frodo to save his ability for when it is really needed and still defend some lesser enemies.

Ring Rating

Card Talk uses the highly scientific yet arbitrary scale of 1 ring for the card to rule them all to 10 to be cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came.

I rate Hobbit Cloak at 7 rings. It is fairly niche considering it is limited to Hobbit heroes and conditional on the attacking enemy having a higher engagement cost. The bonus however is fair costed compared to the +1 defense of Dunedain Warning that can go on any hero and no conditions. It is also similar to the other tribal defense boosts like Gondorian Shield, Shining Shield, and Cloak of Lorien that give a conditional +2 defense for 1 cost. It is slightly less powerful considering it doesn’t provide +1 defense all the time like the others. It works well in a Hobbit deck that focuses on utilizing the bonuses for engaging enemies with higher engagement cost. It is not going to see much play outside that deck type.

• Dave – 6
• Grant – 4
• Ted – TBR
• Matt – 7
• Average – 6.67

External Links

• Hall of Beorn
• Ringsdb

Sample Decks