User:Cease/Hobbit Hospital
Hobbit Hospital is a Free Peoples strategy that appears in many 
Shire decks. It's an engine that uses Shire allies to heal Frodo, Sam, Merry, and/or Pippin. Under ideal circumstances, it can heal five wounds a turn, with extra capacity for burst healing when needed. Along the way it can also choke, remove your opponent's support area conditions, and protect the hobbits from being overwhelmed in skirmishes.
The strategy is most powerful and popular in Fellowship Block, but still appears in every later format where cards from that block are allowed. It falls off somewhat due to the addition of other strong Shire healing engines, like The Shire Countryside (3R113)
/Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom (10C112)
/A Light in His Mind (10U108)
, or Fates Entwined (13U148)
.
The Hobbit Healing Pipeline
Unlike many engines in this game, Hobbit Hospital isn't a loop that gradually runs out of steam, but rather a pipeline that absorbs wounds on your Hobbits then disposes of them. The far end of this pipeline, the part that actually reduces the number of wounds in play, consists of Hobbit Party Guest (1C297)
and (almost always) Frodo, Old Bilbo's Heir (1R289)
. (You can use some other version of Frodo; it just doesn't work as well.) Each of these cards remove one wound a turn: the Guests from themselves, and Frodo from a hobbit ally of your choice. But healing companions is much more useful than healing allies! So you use Farmer Maggot, Chaser of Rascals (1R288)
to heal Merry or Pippin, and The Gaffer, Sam's Father (1R291)
and Rosie Cotton, Hobbiton Lass (1U309)
to heal Frodo or Sam. Those allies all exert to heal your companions, effectively transferring the wounds from your Fellowship to your support area. From there, the Guests and Frodo dispose of those support area wounds, freeing up those allies to keep healing your Fellowship.
That's already a significant amount of value. But, if you ever don't need to heal hobbit companions, you can use that healing other ways. The main beneficiary is Bilbo, Well-spoken Gentlehobbit (2U96)
. He can consume your tale conditions to wipe out your opponent's Shadow support area conditions. More importantly, he can use Consorting With Wizards (2R97)
to choke out your opponent's twilight income, reducing the number of Shadow cards they can play at all. Bilbo also allows you to use Practically Everyone Was Invited (2U111)
to set up your allies (or a straggler hobbit companion, even), and The Book of Westmarch
to draw through your deck faster.
Support Cards
That's the core of the engine, but there are a few more additions that see some play. If you're using Frodo, Old Bilbo's Heir, you can also use Bounder (1C286)
to help prevent your hobbit companions from being overwhelmed in a skirmish. (Guests can't heal Bounder, since his home site isn't site 1.) The only other Hobbit ally of consequence that isn't home site 1 is Bilbo, Retired Adventurer (1R284)
, but he's rarely played due to his weaker game text and inability to be healed by Hobbit Party Guest.
If you're choking with Consorting with Wizards, other choke cards, like A Talent for Not Being Seen (1U316)
, Sting (1R313)
, No Stranger to the Shadows (1U108)
, Aragorn, Heir to the White City (3R38)
, and Legolas, Dauntless Hunter (4R73)
go along with that gameplan. This is most effective in Fellowship Block, since that block's site path generates less twilight than later formats' paths, and many of these cards are banned in later formats.
Hobbit Farmer (1C295)
only works with Fellowship Block's site path and doesn't really need to be healed, but he can set up Green Hill Country (1U323)
to help you choke or Town Center (2C117)
to help go through your deck. Westfarthing (1C326)
is also an option to reduce the cost of non-Hobbits. You can exert Hobbit allies to pay for it, but it doesn't stack with multiple copies of the Farmer in play like Green Hill Country does.
Since you've got a ton of healing, you can get a lot of use out of cards that exert hobbits for some productive effect. Merry, Friend to Sam (1R302)
is versatile and powerful, and is popular in every format where he's available. Sting (1R313)
, Frying Pan (3C108)
, and Filibert Bolger, Wily Rascal (2C101)
are all strong options in Fellowship Block, although they are also banned in some later formats.
