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| NBarden |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:23 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
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--- description ---
Corruption has always been a problem for strategies such as Dwarves and Gondor. The solution lies in a little hobbit with a little intelligence, and maybe some of his friends.
--- end description ---
The Pippin Engine
Pippin, that fool of a Took, a slightly intellectually challenged hobbit has always had a disadvantage over his fellow, Merry. From Merry, From O’er the Brandywine, to Merry, Loyal Companion, Pippin has not been used for fighting like Merry has. And its obvious why not, Pippin simply can’t survive against those tough minions like Merry can. But, he does serve his purpose. Pippin is superb at easing the load of burdens off of the Ring-bearer, and in this article, I will show you the various forms of what is known as the Pippin engine to pull those burdens off of companions.
So, what is a Pippin Engine? Well, a Pippin Engine is a burden removing engine. Plain and simple. However, the Pippin Engine does not necessarily use Pippin. It is simply called that because the most popular  burden removing engine revolves around Pippin, Hobbit of Some intelligence.
The Basic Pippin Engine
Okay, so this is pretty much your basic Pippin engine. The typical mechanism for pulling off burdens. Who better to do this than Pippin, Hobbit of Some Intelligence? However, in order to fully utilize his text, you need some way to play him again and again. Make Haste returns him to your hand, to play him again. And when you play Make Haste, you knock out a minion or choke the twilight pool. However, you need some way of grabbing Make Haste from your discard pile, so you can use this engine multiple times. Daddy Twofoot, Next-door Neighbor allows you to pull it from your discard pile, to return Pippin to your hand, to play him again. Make sure that you play Daddy Twofoot to your ring-bearer, otherwise he gets discarded when Pippin does.
However, using Daddy Twofoot seems counterproductive. After all, isn’t Pippin’s whole point to peel off burdens? Well…with four copies of Home and Hearth, he peels off four burdens each time he’s played. Home and Hearth also has a considerable healing text you may want to take a look at as well. Home and Hearth not only peels off burdens, it can also heal the ring-bearer up to four times at a dwelling.
So, the complete card list for the Pippin engine is as follows:
Pippin, Hobbit of Some Intelligence
Make Haste x 4
Daddy Twofoot, Next-door Neighbor x 3
Home and Hearth x 4
This is the basic Pippin engine, although there are other ways to run it. The basic Pippin Engine also has a few variations on its style of use.
A sample use of this deck is in the dwarf deck. Particularly, the Solo-Gimli deck. (32 cards)
Gimli, Bearer of Grudges
The One Ring, The Ring of Rings
Pippin, Hobbit of Some Intelligence (Starting)
Make Haste x 4
Daddy Twofoot, Next-door Neighbor x 3
Home and Hearth x 4
Gimli’s Battle Axe
Ring of Fury x 2
Gimli’s Helm
Hand Axe x 4
Proud and Able x 2
Honed x 4
Blood Runs Chill x 4
Disquiet of Our People x 2
Gimli kills all. He’s pretty tough, high resistance, and damage +7 when fully loaded. Honed is a consistently strong pump here, and with Blood Runs Chill, you kill anything in your way. The Pippin engine peels off burdens, and if you run against a swarm or Orcs, Gimli’s battle-axe is always helpful. If you do get a bad draw, you can always try to rough it with Gimli alone, although Gimli doesn’t throw out enough twilight to get swarmed easily. Disquiet of our People is there to ensure that you grab either Make Haste or Disquiet of Our people quick enough to prevent Pippin from dying. Bet one, play Barazinbar, remove the burden with Pippin, get his axe out ASAP, and chances are that Pippin makes it.
Now for the slightly different versions of this engine.
The Skirmish Cancelling Version: Quite simple, just use Warmed up a Bit over make haste and throw in a couple Treebeard, Earthborn. Its riskier, but with bigger payoffs.
The Ring-Bound Version: Also quite simple, throw around a ring-bound Hobbit instead. This is particularly helpful in a solo-Smeagol deck. It can also be more effective if you use Sam, Son of Hamfast. Unfortunately, this is only legal in open, but if you play open, play Sam to remove four burdens, soak up three burdens, return him to your hand and repeat for a total of 7 burdens.
The Roaming Pippin Engine
Well...now you have the Pippin engine, are you ready for a more condensed version of it? It works in decks that make minions roaming, and it has significantly less twilight.
Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver
Home and Hearth x 4
A slim 5 cards, this deck can be easily splashed into any deck with tons of Roaming minions. Simply throw Pippin into your hand to wound a roaming minion twice, then play him to remove four burdens.
A sample deck with this is, of course, ring-bound wounding. (34 cards)
Boromir, Bearer of Council
The One Ring, Answer to All Riddles
Faramir, Captain of Gondor (Starting)
Aragorn, Strider (Starting)
Madril, Defender of Osgiliath (Starting)
Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver (Starting)
Mablung, Soldier of Gondor x 2
Ranger’s Sword, Blade of Aragorn
Aragorn’s Bow, Ranger’s Longbow x 2
Faramir’s Sword x 2
Faramir’s Bow
Ithilien Blade x 2
Arrows Thick in the Air x 4
Curse Them x 4
Home and Hearth x 4
Henneth Annun x 2
Ancient Roads x 2
Invigorated x 4
Well...the strategy is very simple. Drop all the roaming minions you can. You have three ring-bound companions in the deck, so Arrows thick in the Air shouldn’t be a problem playing. Faramir’s Sword make minions skirmishing him roaming, and his bow exerts him to wound those roaming minions. Mablung just exhausts the roaming minions, so Arrows thick in the Air and Pippin can drop them no problem. Then, you play Pippin back to peel of burdens.
The Condensed Pippin Engine
Okay, this is a condensed version of the Pippin engine. Not perfect, but hey, you’ve got two hobbits going for you. And its smaller. And it cancels skirmishes.
Pippin, Woolly-Footed Rascal
Merry, Learned Guide
Treebeard, Earthborn x 4
Home and Hearth x 4
This engine is not only a burden removing engine, its also a skirmish cancellation engine. Merry and Pippin discard themselves and stack on Treebeard, then play themselves back to cancel up to two skirmishes and peel off eight burdens. You don’t know how annoying it is to play Sauron, The Lord of the Rings, and watch Pippin and Merry cancel the skirmishes and then play themselves back. If your opponent has Sceptre of the Dark Lord out, you can just discard Merry and Pippin during someone else’s skirmish, so Sauron’s Scepter can’t activate! Hehee Sauron, how does it feel to get beat by two hobbits? (Disclaimer: I do not recommend saying this to Sauron).
The great thing about this is that you do not need to have Merry and Pippin fighting to cancel their skirmishes. Simply discard them for no reason except removing eight burdens.
Now, this engine I like to have fun with. Its an easy engine to beat, so you don’t play it competitively, hence the use of x-listed cards.
Frodo, Weary from the Journey
The One Ring, Answer to All Riddles
Sam, Great Elf Warrior (Starting)
Farmer Maggot, Hobbit of the Marish (Starting)
Rosie Cotton, Barmaid (Starting)
Pippin, Woolly-Footed Rascal x 2
Merry, Learned Guide x 2
Tolman Cotton, Farmer of Bywater x 2
Bilbo, Aged Ring-Bearer x 2
Sting, Weapon of Heritage
Hobbit Sword x 4
Frying Pan x 3
So Fair, So Desperate x 2
Chance Observation x 4
Crouched Down x 2
Daddy Twofoot, Next-door neighbor x 2
Treebeard, Earthborn x 4
Home and Hearth x 4
Sam is the tank, although your other guys can do pretty good as well. If you run a shadow with site path manipulation, and you can take a few trips to the Green Dragon Inn. By then, you have Sam at a colossal 15 strength fully loaded, and with Rosie Cotton, Barmaid, you need to be strength 45 to kill him. Use Daddy Twofoot to pull out crouched down or Chance Observation so your hobbits survive. Then just march to site nine with colossal hobbit pumps and a killer Sam. Cancel skirmishes as needed, and flip Merry and Pippin around to abuse Daddy Twofoot. It is slightly big, but coupled with a swarm deck for cycling, you can get through it pretty easily. Add in the Shire Countryside if you like, although I generally like a deck that’s fair to the other player.
The Healing Pippin Engine
And then, there’s the ever-so-abusable healing Pippin engine, with the ever-so-x-listed card, The Shire Countryside. This engine is rather easy to convert to from a normal Pippin Engine. Four copies of the shire countryside added to any Pippin Engine makes for 16-20 healings and 4-5 burdens removed each turn (depending on the Pippin Engine used). Alas, The Shire countryside is x-listed, and thus this Engine is banned in expanded. However, it can still be used in Open format, and thus makes it worth mentioning. As for a decklist, I won’t post one here, to cut down on the length of this article and to avoid boring you to death. *yawn* Just add four copies of the Shire Countryside to any of the aforementioned decks.
So the next time you run a deck notoriously and infamously well-known for its lack of burden-removing, think of the hobbit of no...erm...some intelligence, and splash in a version of the Pippin engine! If you need me, I’ll be at the Green Dragon having a root beer! 
~NBarden |
Last edited by NBarden on Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:31 pm; edited 6 times in total -Trade With Me
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| Anonymous Prodigy |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:41 pm |
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Well written, clear, and concise. A 5 from me!  |
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| elf lvr |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:43 pm |
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Joined: 13 Jun 2006
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Location: Rivendell
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Cool article! Nice formatting, easy and fun to read. A few splashes of humor... and good advice! A good explaination of the pippin engine.
Although... my one problem with the pippin engine is that if you’re not playing against a corruption deck, you’ve tossed a bunch of worthless cards into your deck. And you even get around that problem by using cards that have their own strategy! For example, the Pippin Wounding or Hobbit Skirmish Cancelling! (Oh, how I love to cancel Sauron’s skirmishes!)
Well, right now I see no reason not to give it a 5. However, I will wait and see if anyone else finds any major problems with your strategy that I missed (being the humble Pippin-like person I am). But hey, if someone does find a problem, and you either 1) Prove them wrong or 2) Change the article, why then, I’d still have to give it a five!
Well, pointed grading rambling aside...
Good one!
DISCLAIMER: Don’t write an article this month if it can’t stand up to this one.
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| macheteman |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:04 pm |
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Joined: 07 Dec 2006
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Location: The Jungle
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| i extremely suggest adding a section about open format play with the shire countryside. with that you stop corruption and wounding at the same time. and it has the potential to completely heal your fellowship each time you play a hobbit. |
Check out my best article The Utterly Corrupt Corruption,
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| raptor22 |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:36 pm |
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Nice article, but I couldn’t help noticing that all of your examples are either Expanded or Open formant.
Oh, and don’t forget, Pippin, Hobbit of Some Intelligence and Home and Hearth both have healing abilities, which you might want to mention.
But overall, good job! |
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| NBarden |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:19 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
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Added a mention in the original engine on the healing abilities and added a section on the healing pippin engine.
As for my use of Expanded and Open format, I’ve never played Standard. My card pool limits me to Expanded and FotR block. And Open. So I’m not very familiar with the strategies of Standard. |
-Trade With Me
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| raptor22 |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:24 pm |
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| Ninja Gimli |
![]() Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:06 pm |
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| great article great formatting, the splashes of humor helped keep me interested, I always wanted to learn more about the Pippin Engines. Great article so I give it a 5 |
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| legoles3333 |
![]() Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:36 am |
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Joined: 28 Nov 2006
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| good article, very nicely written, unless I hear bad things about it and there true, a 5 |
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| sickofpalantirs |
![]() Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 2:27 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
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Location: somwhere, over the rainbow way up high. There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.
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| fine by me a 5. |
Last edited by sickofpalantirs on Fri Mar 02, 2007 2:45 pm; edited 1 time in totalSop's haves/ top wants
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