This has probably been said elsewhere, but there seems to be a very nice line-up given the four new Hobbits.

Just having Sam, Merry and Pippin is very good for solo. But for coop, the other deck can consist of Glorfindel, Strider and Fatty to get most of the main characters of the first book as heroes. Gildor, Maggot, Butterbar, Bill, they can all enter as allies (and Gandalf).

And it seems it could work very nicely. Fatty himself is a bit underwhelming but should combo well with Strider. Merry can buy Elven weapons for Glorfindel (and Strider when possible). Use the Hammer-Stroke or Son of Arnor combos to get enemies to Sam and Pippin and kill them with Merry and the help of the above two equipped with Rivendell Bows.

There is a slight problem with the Pipe and Smoke Rings. Fatty can play the Pipes on the other Hobbits and they will get willpower boost from Rings but not the threat reduction and thus no Pipe effect, which would be a shame. One has to find a better way around that. And I do hope more Pipes will enter the game, and be attach-able to other characters; Strider, and especially Gandalf, were after all renowned smokers.

ps: I thought Elf-stone was great when I (miss-)read the card so that it only brings Lore allies into play. But it actually brings any, which is just sheer power. The only fact from making this too powerful is the trend of having more and more locations immune (and the ruling changed so that you cannot attach to such), fewer in general, and harder to travel to. Still, in the quests like Into Ithilien, this would be a great card to use the mulligan for.

For solo line up, I would consider Merry/Fatty/Pippin(lore).

Hobbit deck needs a Spirit (Hobbit Cloak and Pipes), so that means Fatty or Spirit Pipping needs to be included.

Hobbit deck also needs Lore for Fast Hitches, which means Bilbo or Lore Pippin needs to be included, and Bilbo doesn't fit the theme of the quest so we are only left with Lore Pippin, which means for Spirit hero Fatty is the only one left.

Had this been anyother deck I would include Leadership as the third Sphere rather than Tactics, but these Hobbits have such a low attack strength that they need a Tactics, and Merry with 4 attack strength just seems too good to pass off.

Fatty can play the Pipes on the other Hobbits and they will get willpower boost from Rings but not the threat reduction and thus no Pipe effect, which would be a shame. .

Why wont't they get the threat reduction ?

The problem is Merry needs two other Hobbits with him, and Sam and Pippin combo exclusively. It doesn't leave any other options, really. I think it is worth it to run Songs of Travel with them. One can have a bit of a song deck for the Hobbits, and Love of Tales (though of course not very potent). But Sam can do with a Song of Wisdom for A Burning Brand. Song of Earendil would then be great to put onto the other deck's hero, or both and run a Wandering Earendil combo. I think I am seriously doing this.

Fatty can play the Pipes on the other Hobbits and they will get willpower boost from Rings but not the threat reduction and thus no Pipe effect, which would be a shame. .

Why wont't they get the threat reduction ?

Only the player who plays the Smoke Rings will get his threat reduced for each Pipe he controls (at least this is how I read the card).

As the days get closer I try to think how to build up decks ... I think two player games cause that would give the chance for more heroes to participate.

1st player :

Pippin (Lo) and Merry work together if they have other Hobbit heroes with them. So player have to think of another Hobbit to add with them. Fatty would be the best option cause the pippes and rings could be used with the three Hobbit heroes. (19 threat)

2nd player : that leaves Sam to be used with company heroes. Glorfindel is an obvious candidate and offcourse Strider. (25 threat)

BUT ... this leads to Sam being in a deck that he will not be able to use a lot of his ability, cause the starting threat is a middle one. Also Spirit and Lore cards are broken between two decks.

So I cannot find the best answer yet . Anyone has any suggestions ?

I plan on playing solo (3) and want to use Sam, Merry and Pippen. I've come to the same conclusions: the hobbits need access to Spirit. I really wish Sam had started out as Spirit and then grown into leadership in the 4th or 6th box, which is how I saw his character development in the series, but we have what we have.

Splashing songs is probably a must, but always chancy. Spurries made a great point in his thread that Frodo can act as a treachery canceller of a sort, but I think that more threat reduction than Gandalf will be needed.

If I were playing double fisted I would add Strider and Spirit Glorfindel and probably send Fatty along. Not sure how I would break up the group though.

I'm going to wait to build my Hobbit decks until I actually receive the physical cards in the expansion, but I'm definitely looking forward to using all the Hobbit-specific cards already in my collection that I've rarely used (such as Fast Hitch and Good Meal)

Since I almost always play two-handed solo, that's the route I'll take with the Black Riders quests too. Plus, all four of the new heroes wouldn't even get to see play time if you play one-handed solo (and by the looks of it, everyone is ditching poor ole' Fatty!)

I have been playing around with the idea of a two-hand line-up of Sam/Glorfindel secrecy and Merry/Pippin (Lo)/Aragorn (Lo).

My line-up that I have officially beat all three quests with is as follows.

Deck 1 Heroes: Sam, Pippin, Strider

Deck 2 Heroes: Merry, Fatty, Glorfindel (Sp)

These were not only very thematic, but after tweaking the card pool in each deck several times, very efficient in dealing with each quest. After playing them all, I find A Knife in the Dark to be both the longest and most difficult quest of the three. This quest required a tweaking of both decks to add some staging area enemy attack cards to take out that slime that is Bill Ferny. I also had the OHaUH version of Gandalf in Deck 2, who proved to be a very powerful addition. Finally, I believe the best new player cards is, hands down, the Dagger of Westernesse - it is so powerful once you add two to one hero. Strider kicked some serious Nazgul butt throughout each quest!

Overall, each quest feels very unique. I couldn't be happier with this expansion!

You can check out this deck I put together in Strategy and Deck-building forum.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/91042-happy-hobbits/

It's meant for single hand solo, and loaded with attachments.

Merry, Pippin lore, and Sam are the way to go for a solo deck, it is really hard to remove one of them.

I wanted to try out the pipes and the event, so i took out pippin and added Glorfindel sp. It worked okay, but card draw dropped off big time the pipes only helped out a little in this area. Threat was low though, which was great. When Pippin lore is in the line up all you have is Gandalf fro threat reduction, but Pippin's abilities are key. I think his the card draw pays off more than the pipes, and i found his ability to raise the engagement cost of enemies essential to the deck. I also lost the fast hitches without Pippin, and had to rely on Unexpected Courages which were too costly. Also losing master of the forge in a attachment heavy deck kind of destroys the strategy.

I also tried to remove Merry for Lore Aragorn, so I had Glorfindel sp, and Sam. It was a flop, they never made it out of the shire.

I can see that playing two handed would be cool to add all these heroes together, but that's usually not the way i play.

Oh yeah, the quests are great, some of the best we have had in awhile, they are manageable, but they require a big effort, and it feels like you accomplished something when completing a scenario,

I had a lot of success and fun with these thematic lineups:

Deck 1: Sam, Merry, (Lore) Pippin
Deck 2: Strider, Sprifindel, Fatty

Fatty is great with Strider and can keep some of the threat off of the Hobbit deck, especially early in the game when there are high threat enemies in the staging area and it is a struggle to quest. I found that the Hobbit deck didn't need threat lowering until the end of the game because of Pippin, and Take No Notice helped a lot with that. An occasional Galadrihm's Greeting from Deck 2 and a Desperate Alliance Strider took care of any other threat problems.

And, I posted about this on another forum, but an alternate approach to dealing with Bill is to use Fatty to raise your threat until he engages you, then dropping it back down with Strider.