Cactus Game Design Message Boards
Redemption® Collectible Trading Card Game HQ => Deck Building & Design => Complete Decks => Topic started by: Warrior_Monk on August 12, 2013, 02:02:06 AM
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So I was driving to Midwest Regionals when I get a text from Olijar saying that Simeon was a musician. The logic behind this is that he wrote Nunc Dimiitis. We started looking further and discovered that Isaiah was also a musician, as there are several Songs of Praise in Isaiah. So I built The Deck again at 3:30 a.m. the morning before MW Regionals, as both John Earley and Jordan Alstad agreed that they fit the definition of musician. However, at nationals there was dispute and it was agreed that they should look into it further before changing the REG identifiers, and the former definition stood. Because of this, I dropped King David and Chenaniah, but I still thought The Deck was the best play. I made a few other changes, like dropping Lot's Wife and Stone of Thebez, as well as switching the dominants around. My nationals list looked like this:
Total Cards: 51 (I think my list was actually at 52, but I'm not sure what card I'm missing. Probably a hero?)
Lost Souls: 8
2 Liner
Resurrection
Revealer
Wanderer
Thorns
N.T.
Female Only
Hopper
Dominants: 7
Son of God
New Jerusalem
Angel of the Lord
Mayhem
Falling Away
Vain Philosophy
Destruction of Nehushtan
Fortresses: 1
Herod's Temple
Artifacts: 4
I am The Best Artifact In the Game (I am Holy)
Urim and Thummim
Darius' Decree
Lampstand of the Sanctuary
Heroes: 11
The Strong Angel (WA)
Captain of the Host (WA)
Seraph (RoA)
The Angel Under the Oak
Michael (Kings)
Isaiah
Daniel
Simeon
Moses
Aaron
Phineas
Enhancements: 8
Eli's Sound Advice
Isaiah's Call
Wheel Within a Wheel
Angelic Guidance
Birth Foretold
Two Bears
Striking Herod
Live Coal
Evil Characters: 7
Sabbath Breaker
Emperor Vitellius
Emperor Tiberius
The Entrapping Pharisee
Proud Pharisee
Hard Hearted Religious Leaders
Foreign Wives
Evil Enhancements: 5
Sorrow of Mary
Pretension
Balaam's Disobedience
Scattered
Tenants Kill the Son
Going into the tournament, the members of Portland, OR (Hamachi network I frequent) had pretty much decided that Pharisees were the play. I built this deck to beat Pharisees. The play is to always know what they have in their hand and play around it, the main threat being Scattered. So while The Deck focused on so much banding that your opponent can't take care of it, this version of The Deck changed the style of play to more single heroes, like TSA. If they had both Tenant's Kill the Son and Scattered, I could go with Moses with Eli's Sound Advice, but unfortunately couldn't get around the Balaam's Disobedience. Other defenses were also not a problem. Babylonians could give me trouble with Nerg, but Nebuchadnezzar's power was drastically reduced with two Daniel heroes, and I could interrupt any enhancement not played on Nerg. Canaanites can only target humans with Stone of Thebez, and often Gibeonite Trickery doesn't have the numbers to take on a band. Egyptians have the most options, but struggle against the Daniel band, not having the numbers for Wonders Forgotten and Failed Objective being negated. Magicians pretty much only hit humans as well, so I wasn't concerned about that matchup either.
However, this of course assumes I can get my searches off to set up my offense, but I ran into a grand total of 1 Nazareth and 1 Darius' Decree (which I quickly DoN'd). I am Holy also does a lot of work clearing my opponent's hand of troublesome enhancements, and with Isaiah, Isaiah's Call, and Wheel Within a Wheel, I could recur cards from my discard pile easily enough.
The only surprise on defense might be that I didn't include Scribe. Everybody yelled at me for it, but I felt Sabbath Breaker was more important, as the defensive speed helps to fix the offense's lack of drawing.
As far as I know, I was the only person running "The Deck".
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Could be way off here but was Cheribum your missing card?
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Could be way off here but was Cheribum your missing card?
Nope. I really wanted the CBN by evil, as Tower of Thebez and Covenant With Death can cause problems. Jacob was also not the other card. I unfortunately dismantled the deck for my Teams deck, so maybe I'll find something when I pull out my unsleeved cards. I know I used 5 silver heroes, 2 teal, and 2 gold. I feel I may have had an extra green hero, but I don't know who it would have been.
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Zeal by chance?
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Zeal by chance?
I'm going to guess that this is correct.
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It's not.
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Gotta be honest, I wouldn't be able to trust that defense. An opening hand Gabriel/Striking Herod, and your opponent walks in every turn.
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Gotta be honest, I wouldn't be able to trust that defense. An opening hand Gabriel/Striking Herod, and your opponent walks in every turn.
I couldn't tell you the last time I've seen a Gabriel other than when John Earley and I specifically tested it in this style of deck earlier in the year and agreed it's just not as effective as we want it to be (primarily because there's almost always a better way to get a soul).
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In a deck like this, Gabriel won't often be the best option. However, in a balanced deck where a player is drawing offense and defense more or less equally, being able to recur a battle winner or negate (Live Coal) every turn is great IMO--especially against this commonly used defense.
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Yeah, true. Probably the only good play is something like band to Proud Pharisee, play Tenants, hope they only have Striking Herod. Westy and I played totally different version of the gray defense, so I don't want to defend it too much, because I think he's playing it really suboptimally. I do think we should have been using one negate and/or interrupt though.
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And by no means am I bashing this defense when I say I couldn't trust it. In fact, it's probably just me being so used to T2 that it's hard for me to use anything but balanced decks for T1 2P. ::)
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The defense works remarkably well despite its size. Just needs to draw and stall with a few blocks while underdecking that Sog/NJ play.
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If you have decree you need idol gossip. Otherwise I would drop decree and add Gold Shield.
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Decree is just generally good against the meta...territory class enhancement abuse, soul tutors, punishing Disciples players that overextend, etc. It's a solid add regardless if you have the Idle Gossip to combo with it or not.
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As I said, Pharisees struggle against Angels, which is why I use Angels, but thankfully I didn't see too many Angels all day. The defense IS unreliable at times, and if that happens I take my time and try to soul drought my opponent.
Also, Gabriel gets killed by Tenants when you instead the Striking Herod with Herod's Temple, or if you band.