Ride to Bruin 1.0

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• 1.0

Scene 1: Location: Mordor

Messenger: Lord, the Riders of Rohan have come to Mordor.

Sauron: Hmmph. Squash them.

Messenger: They're riding giant bears

Sauron turns his Eye to his gates. He sees King Thengel riding Beorn and Thengel's son Théoden riding Beorn's son Grimbeorn.

Sauron summons The Mouth of Sauron. In around ten minutes The Mouth of Sauron rides out and declares Sauron's surrender.

Scene 2: Location: Rivendell

The White Council is gathered. Saruman is strangely huddled in a corner of the room, seemingly hunched over something. The Council tries their best not to think he is a creep.

Elrond: The threat of Sauron has grown greater. We must attack Mordor.

Galadriel: With what force? We do not have an army capable of overthrowing him. Attack would be folly.

Gandalf: We could take the Ring that the Hobbit Frodo Baggins has and sneak in to Mordor and then throw it into Mount Doom. Maybe that would do something.

Elrond: That will never work.

The Council hears a wail from Saruman's corner of the room. Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf walk over. They find Saruman weeping over a Palantir.

They look into the Palantir and see the hosts of Mordor bowing down to Thengel riding Beorn.

Saruman, in a high, shrill voice: "I was supposed to overthrow Sauron and take over Middle-Earth! Not Thengel! That young lad Gríma clearly wasn't doing his job well!"

The Council lock up the clearly deranged Saruman, and then go to Thengel and Beorn's celebratory feast, at the Hall of Beorn, which is now located in Edoras.

oh man! I literally made a deck exactly like this earlier today, i haven't published it yet.

Have you encountered any resource smoothing troubles? I'm guessing that The Last Alliance helps keep your bears cheap, but Grimbeorn the Old still needs plenty of honey to fuel that (stupidly good) Response. Also, how's threat? Morwen Steelsheen looks stupidly good for maintaining your threat, but does she work like that in practice?

Other than that, this looks like as much fun as a barrel of honey and half-a-dozen bears. I can just imagine the sheer joy of going "I have Beorning Skin-changer in play. I discard him to get Beorn into play from hand and trigger Thengel to get Giant Bear in play. I just turned 2 resources into 11." This deck really looks like the kind where no game plays the same; some games you go full-on bear cavalry, others you play a Rohan deck with some Beorning tech thrown in. Aside from the pain of shuffling so much, this deck looks like it would be a blast to play. Only change I would make is SOMEHOW getting Prince Imrahil in here for maximum "search for an ally and put them into play"-ness, but that's just wishful thinking.

I wish there was some way to fit Prince Imrahil into this deck, however the contract precludes him. He will certainly be a powerhouse in Rohan + Gondor versions of The Last Alliance.

As for Grimbeorn, he is much more paws off in this deck. Unlike every other deck I've built around him, he doesn't need to use his ability. In earlier versions I had some attachments for him, but I quickly realized that they diluted the deck and detracted from the main ally mustering theme. His ability is a nice to have, and in the middle game there is a good chance you will have some Tactics resources to spare (assuming you are able to use trickery to get your Beorning allies into play). At that point, he can easily help out with combat. When this deck is running at full speed, you should not actually need his ability, as Beorn and an army of Giant Bears can help mop up enemies.

Morwen is a nice option for healing him, if you do use him in combat. If you want to emphasize him more in your particular build. Just be warned that the more attachment slots you dedicate to a Voltron Grimbeorn theme, the less consistent you will make all of your mustering/sacrifice triggers.

@Truck hilarious

I just played this vs Escape from Umbar. It was really fun, so many interesting interactions! Congratulations AleP for some great new content, and great job deck building Beorn!

Nice! I’m glad that it worked well for you. Escape from Umbar is one of my favorite quests to use for testing out new decks.

I played this deck and it is very fun, indeed. Thanks to @Beorn. This contract + mechanics ( ideas in Beorns deck) work very well with Outlands trait (Hirluin and his cohort).

Fantastic deck. Good to see a deck that promotes the Rohan right to bear arms!

I love this! I hope there's an alt art bear calvary deck in in the future!!