by Ben Litz

When you look at the Dwarven Culture one thing that jumps out at you is their ability to win skirmishes and kill minions. In fact, many other Dwarven strategies key off winning skirmishes. The Dwarven discard mechanic powered by Dwarven axes and Nobody Tosses a Dwarf key off winning skirmishes, as does the Legolas/Gimli combo using Final Count and My Axe is Notched. Keeping the Dwarves on top of each skirmish is the mass selection of pump cards that they have available to them. One of the newer cards that has been added to the selection is Best Company.

For zero cost Best Company gives your Dwarven skirmisher a +2 strength bonus anywhere on the site path, but its when you are on a Battleground that Best Company shows its true power. When used on a site with the keyword Battleground Best Company yields a devastating +4 Strength for the same zero cost. Few cards yield such a bonus, and getting it for zero cost makes it especially useful.

With the standard format now in the mix the Nazgul are becoming more prevalent, which means high strength, Fierce minions at every site. Usually just one copy of Best Company will keep your Dwarf from being overwhelmed, and two or three of them will more than likely win the skirmish, enabling your Dwarven damage bonuses to kick in, and hopefully killing the big minion before he has time to come back in the Fierce round.

Best Company's true benefit becomes apparent when playing against an Uruk-Hai deck that employs minions that use the Battleground keyword to become Fierce, or stronger. Being able to beat, and use the Dwarven damage bonuses to kill, these minions in the first skirmish can make a big difference to the health of your fellowship. To some extent, this makes choosing Best Company as one of your Dwarven skirmish pumps dependent on what opponent's you expect to face, though there are enough Battlegrounds that you are likely to encounter them from many different deck-types.

Back in the days when Fellowship block was all you could play, one of the fun things to do was to have Gimli kill the Balrog, with the correct combination of weapons and skirmish boosts - it was truly a sight to see. Gimli's role as the killer of large minions has now been somewhat usurped by Eomer, Third Marshall of the Riddermark, but as long as the Dwarves keep in the Best Company, Gimli's crown will be safe.

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