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One possible proposal for a cost system! I'm new to the game, but after playing several games with my two sons I agree that a lack of cost system of some kind feels unbalanced. I don't have to weigh options to bring heroes or evil character out; I can bring them all out at once as soon as I get them, and even use them right away! It eliminates a lot of decision-making during gameplay, in my short experience. Since the core components of the game are the heroes, evil characters, and lost souls, I had a thought for a cost system exclusive to heroes and evil characters that wouldn't require printing new details to the cards and could be used across all sets. Here's something for consideration: Prayer and Bondage (working title?) counters. These could be colored beads, gemstones, tokens, Polyhedral dice, etc. (and Cactus Game Designs could even fabricate their own official counters or dice with the product brand for sale -- for those that like the cool factor of official game/set gear). Prayer is essential to the Christian walk, and Bondage is a key attribute to lost souls and evil characters.

1. At the beginning of the game, players each start out with 5 (or more/less?) prayer & bondage counters, placed in separate piles near their territory or draw pile. Would work for two piles of counters or two distinct D20's, etc.
2. At the beginning of the preparation phase, the active player adds 1 Prayer counter + 1 additional counter for each human hero in their territory (maybe include one additional for each lost soul in the land of redemption, too?). They do the same for Bondage counters: add 1 + an additional bondage counter to the pool/dice for each evil character and lost soul in their land of bondage.
3. In order to play a hero, they need to spend the amount of prayer counters equal to the hero's strength (so if they have 7 prayer counters and play a Hero who is a 4/3, they need to spend 4 prayer counters to play that hero, reducing their prayer counters to 3 remaining for the turn). Same for evil characters and bondage counters.

(Banding a hero played from the hand, draw pile, or discard pile would also require to pay the cost for each hero, but banding to a hero already in a territory wouldn't require a cost, since the cost was already paid to play it [all rules flexible to adjustment or refinement ])

You could play around with exact numbers to be added during prep phase and game starting amounts, but it this idea could add a balanced feature to the game without having to add any extra printed details to cards AND could work with old and new sets. The only thing you would have to change would be to add it to the rulebooks, and visually show a place in the territory layout for it in the rules.

Anyways that's one cost idea. Thoughts? God bless you all!

Hey! Welcome to the game! I'm glad you seem to be enjoying it. That's certainly an interesting approach to a cost system, and it might work for the Starter decks which have limited types of abilities and cards, but I think that at higher levels of gameplay this would warp the game too much. For instance, there are Evil Enhancements that are territory class that allow you to bounce (return to owner's hand) any number of Heroes. If you bounce all your opponent's Heroes then suddenly they have to start over in "paying" for them. Those bounce cards would then need to have a high cost assigned to them somehow. There are also Artifacts that let you bounce humans (good or evil) pretty easily, so either those would have to have a high cost to stop you from easily bouncing your opponent's defense when they don't have the bondage counters to replay them, or it would skew everyone toward playing non-human defenses. And those are just a few examples. You'll also notice as you get further into the game that the strength of the Hero doesn't necessarily translate to the usefulness of the Hero. A lot of times it's better to have low-numbered characters to increase your chances of having intiative to play first in battle because there are a lot of strong Enhancements to use.

I'm curious to see how it works out if you do try (or have tried) it out with the Starter decks, but I think I like that Redemption is unique from a lot of other TCGs in this way and frankly, it has survived 27 years without it. The general approach in Redemption is to limit cards during the design phase, not to just make the cards and then slap a higher cost on the ones that are OP as some games more or less do. It has it's flaws and some cards "slip through the cracks", but I think overall the game is in a pretty good spot right now, balance-wise. Hopefully this feedback is helpful and I certainly don't mean to discourage further ideas and brainstorming, but I'd encourage you and your sons to try out new cards and themes and evaluating the balance again. I'll also shamelessly plug my YouTube channel (link in my signature below) which might help you get a better idea of how the game plays out at an experienced level.

Hi TheJaylor, thanks for our reply and feedback. Yeah good thoughts, and good points about the counter idea unbalancing some other components of the game. It would definitely need more rule adjustments or maybe this isn't the best way to go.