Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Alright. I have a really strong offensive heavy deck with 9 slots for defense cards. I am including only the Christian Martyr evil dominant currently and am utilizing Lampstand in my deck as well. Please include any sites, fortresses, artifacts, characters, dominants, curses, and/or enhancements you would use for a small but effective defense. I have built five already but would love to hear your suggestions since I am still in the playtesting stages with my new bad guys.

So after I started this thread I found this one again. Seeing as the major tournament season is in full swing, I am wondering if these (in the old 8 card thread) are still viable options or if you posted in that thread, what would be your nineth card...
http://www.cactusgamedesign.com/message_boards/type-1-deck-advice/8-cards/

EC's:

Uzzah
Gomer
King of Tyrus
Wandering Spirit
Spirit of Temptation
Trembling Demon

Fortress:

The Gates of Hell

EE's:

Haman's Plot
Destructive Sin

Assuming your offense has a temple and you can find room for Holy of Holies, this defense should do the trick more often than not. If you can find room for a Manasseh and Magic Charms, then you're gold.

Yeah, I thought there was too, but I could not find it either. I the idea of running Mayhem, but with Lampstand I rarely get to use it.

ProfAlstad...your idea is a combo of two of my nine card defenses. I am running Disciples offense (like a lot of people) if that makes a difference with what you suggested. Holy of Holies would mess with several of my disciples in a very negative way I think.

Thanks so far. Any other ideas? I would not mind running either a theme defense or a bunch of chump blocks. Both would slow an opponent down at least for a little while.

Yeah, but for us mortals who don't have the ability to will a card into our first hand draw, it is a little less reliable.

Mayhem
Philly Outpost
12FG
Garrison
Armorbearer
Goliath
Foolish Advice
Bringing Fear
One other card...probably KoT.

There. Now if you draw Mayhem in your first hand draw, you win the game, and if you don't, you can discard it with Outpost.

Fair enough...and I agree about OBP being useful right now specifically.

You don't have Lamp active for the whole game usually. And a first turn Mayhem not only wins you the game 90% of the time, but is much more common then you probably think.

There's like a 20% chance of getting it first turn. In six rounds it is way more likely not to see one (by either player) then to see one or more, assuming proper deck building (not everyone is going to have a Mayhem anyway, so that might equal it out to an extent).

http://www.cactusgamedesign.com/message_boards/type-1-deck-advice/8-cards/msg414871/#msg414871

Add Goliath to the black one.

There's like a 20% chance of getting it first turn. In six rounds it is way more likely not to see one (by either player) then to see one or more, assuming proper deck building (not everyone is going to have a Mayhem anyway, so that might equal it out to an extent).

From where I was sitting, I'm fairly sure that 5/6 games both had a Mayhem.  One game, my second turn Mayhem won it for me.

*does statistics*
There's a 14.5% chance of no first turn Mayhem those five games.  Which is still better than the chance that I'd do as well as I did.

Also: I think I may have used it on Justin or Sam.  My memory fails me.

Confusion of Mind does nothing if you don't have any evil characters to block with.

As soon as your opponent realizes you're playing a speed deck (which will be known as soon as you put down a hero, which will hopefully be the first turn), they won't care if they're smart.

The 4 ECs probably won't benefit from CoM. Haman will die after playing Plot, and Gomer is entirely dependent on their defense. KoT would be a much better choice than CoM, as it still negates their abilities, and it's not so easy to get rid of, and it's actually an EC, and if they do beat it, you can play Plot via Gomer.

Alright...I am almost a Mayhem convert, but a little curious about relying on banding to an opponents defense. Does anyone still play WoP?

You are not including evil dominants right?  So I assume your defense already includes Burial, Falling Away, DON, Martyr?

If you can still have dominants, and they don't have an annoying card like Fishing Boat, and all you want to do is slow your opponent down, I'd go with sites.

Be careful about adding Nazareth (since it stops a lot of things that you might later want to do) , maybe Pergamum, and the new site that protects your other sites, then either mix up the remaining site colors or go all silver and hope they are not playing Angels.  Babylons and Bab Banq Hall are also good options.  Maybe add an offensive card or two that can search for a site.  Then add Wastelands and either Captured Ark or Confusion of Mind.  Another option is to add a Philistine and the territory class EE that takes an opponent's site.

Make sure you are using the Two liner LS, the Site doubler LS, First Round protect LS, and then the NT lost souls that allow you to stop dominants and/or shuffle your LS.

Seriously, unless people put a ton of site access into their deck, or have a lot of "access to any site" heroes, this will stall a fast deck.  They can't play Harvest Time.  They can use cards like Hopper and Am Slave, but hopefully you can take care of those with your own dominants.  They basically have to wait until their site access cards appear, and once it does you can hopefully either shuffle it or discard it (or steal it).  Use a the maximum number of cards in your deck per lost soul, to reduce your chances of drawing a lost soul.

Anyway, I know that many out there today say that sites are dead, and it may be true for site-lockout, but sites are still a very good stall defense in my opinion.

steffer, he has Martyr, no other dominants.

I think steffer may be on to something. If you use site stall, the speediness of disciples is hurt bad because they can't use Fishing Boat.

7 Green Sites
Mayhem
Burial?

The main thing is make sure you have plenty of heros and ge's to make a successful ra each turn. If your offense is solid, then you're really only looking to make a couple successful blocks.

I like the 1/1 PG with Confusion, but it's pretty risky. If you're going to do that, I'd use a small PG defense with that included.

The defenseless site stall vs disciples is about worthless. It can work, but usually you just hand them free ls's. Imo, it's better to use real ECs (uzzah is a beast), because they're going to have access or enough ls's out during the game to win quickly.

I'm hoping that at Nationals this year someone will play OT heroes and put Rome destroys Jerusalem in their deck.  I'd really like to hear about Disciples players who forgot about that card

Uzzah
PO
PG
PAB
12FG
KoT
Amal's Slave
HP
Mayhem

I think you should also have two fluff cards in your offense that can be removed for FA and Burial as well.

Bringing Fear? Only one of the best enhancements in the game for philly's.

Foolish Advice>Bringing Fear

Mayhem people. You cannot forget Mayhem in these defenses.

Foolish Advice>Bringing Fear

Mayhem people. You cannot forget Mayhem in these defenses.

Foolish advice may have more toughness (and it's from the Women's set) but Bringing Fear makes it so your enhancements aren't negated.

A. This is a mostly offensive deck. Mayhem needs to be added, essentially making these defenses 8 cards.
B. In an 8 card Philly defense, you aren't going to have room for more than 2 enhancements, so it really doesn't matter if you need to play your enhancements. Especially since the other one will probably be Bringing Fear anyway.
C. I cannot think of a good card that negates Foolish Advice. I guess The Battle is the Lords will do it, but if they're using red, you've already won. Or lost, since a Philly defense dies against red.

AHHHH...a seven card defense?!? LOL

So anyway, Gabe, you think that Unholy Writ is worth it with all of the anti-capture stuff floating around now? Alright, so I need to add Unholy Writ and Mayhem. Any other staples I should include? I might end up making this an all offense deck at this rate.

Also, what is GiC

Got it...thanks John. I can always count on you.  Oh and you left your lemonade at our house. I added it to my sweet tea...mmmmm...Arnold Palmer (not the golfer, the drink).

Burial Shroud could be good. I'm not really a fan of it, but many great players like Daniel Whitten swore by it, so it's worth consideration.

Another one of his favorite plays was Claudia+ET+Obedience of Noah choosing his own Woman as Snares to give himself lost souls to rescue FTW!