Very clearly designed with the victory display archetype in mind. Works extremely well with Fatty Bolger. In most scenarios, the majority of enemies all share the same trait. Simply get rid of an enemy with Fatty's ability within the first round or two. Now, every time an enemy is added to the staging area (with the same trait as one on the victory display), the opportunity is there to play the shirriff from your hand at a discount. There will be many opportunities to play this card during the course of a game (most commonly during the questing phase). We can also get an enemy into the victory display with cards like None Return and Out of the Wild.

If you can get this card in for the 1 resource, then the stats are simply incredible! 2 on a cheap ally is always great (and the 1 is also nice to quest if needed). The cherry on top is the ranged keyword. One thing about the victory display archetype is that your threat is generally relatively low (in order to play cards such as Out of the Wild, Fear! Fire! Foes!, Needful to Know, Risk Some Light, and Resourceful under secrecy) and don't engage many enemies. This can be fine is solo play, but in multiplayer this can prove to be a problem. The Buckland Shirriff allows the victory display deck to contribute more the combat and be more useful. In my experience, these decks can struggle with combat. Buckland Shirriff and the Horn-call of Buckland help with that.

The devoted keyword is unimportant to victory display decks (which generally use Rossiel as one of the heroes and would therefore be unable to use the devoted keyword on Buckland Shirriff) but expands the use of this card to that of traditional hobbit decks. Even ignoring the ability, 3 resources for a ranged 2 hobbit ally is still a reasonable price. The devoted keyword only makes it easier to play (especially for BOF hobbit decks which can only have 1 hero).

One final thing that I would like to point out is that the hobbit keyword gives Buckland Shirriff interaction with Elevenses, Tom Cotton, Lily Cotton, Raise the Shire, and Odo Proudfoot. Much needed card for the victory display archetype and a welcome addition to the hobbit one as well.