Cactus Game Design Message Boards
Redemption® Collectible Trading Card Game HQ => Deck Building & Design => Type 1 Deck Advice => Topic started by: Josh on April 01, 2016, 12:10:26 PM
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*Insert a grandfather's lecturing voice* "Back in my day, all you needed for defense was Am Slave, Gomer, Uzzah, Sabbath Breaker, KoT, Haman's Plot, Unholy Writ, and Dominants!"
*Fast forward 5 years*
Now that we have the Dom cap, and defenses have gotten a boost with TEC and PC... Will there ever be a "Meta defense", or even a "Small defense", that is viable in T1? Thoughts/opinions?
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Just for fun, I tried to put one together below. It's definitely bigger than the one listed above, but it's still somewhat small compared to the T1 balanced decks running around these days. Focus is on sure blocks, reliable stand-alone ECs (there really aren't any anymore) and drawing.
Liner LS
Burial/CM/FA
Unholy Writ
Sabbath Breaker
Emp Vitellius
Emp Claudius
KoT (Orange)
Messenger of Satan
Damsel
Am Slave
Uzzah
FW
Plot
Scattered
Balaam's Disobedience
SSS
Thoughts? I'm thinking this defense could stall for quite a while, and it definitely has drawing power. It leaves room for 7 LS (including Hopper), 21 offensive cards, and 4 good Doms to make a 50-card deck w/ 8 LS.
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Coupled with a fast enough offense and enough Lost Soul generation it could work.
The biggest downside I see is that your EE's, while CBN, are not completely reliable.
- Balaam's Disobedience is vulnerable to angels, AotL and Grapes (which will likely give another rescue if your deck is working).
- Haman's Plot is a one use card that has lost some power due to reliable counters against it.
- Scattered is circumstantially amazing, but against a lone Hero is just average.
- SSS faces a number of different ways to counter it.
End the battle and add to battle abilities seem to offer the most reliable ways to get an unstoppable block. Herods are slow, but offer some pretty nice auto blocks with Herod's Dungeon and Treachery. If the new promo Lost Soul starts seeing a lot of play Herod's Sword will become really good. I'm not sure they are the right direction to go for a small defense though.
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A small site theme could work. It suffers from LS generation cards but shipwreck is pretty sweet so as long as you can stall out the offense that can get through or generate LS it could work. Also while it might not be popular nebby is probably my favorite character for lite defense. Most of the time he will work and he can find situational needed cards. But like I said not exactly popular or "meta".
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let me tell you what the biggest downside of this defense is.. it's just a splash stall defense. that's it. anyone who knows what you are playing is already going to have all of the counters necessary to use against it.
thad walks over it, you have 0 interrupts, angels walk over it, pigs lost souls kills the entire option of drawing with any of these ecs besides messenger who might get you a d2 against anything but armor or paul, and honestly it's just not a solid defense.
it's a great defense to play against new players who don't know of this kind of defense!! do not get me wrong. but against skilled redemption players and for example going to nationals, i think you are way better off with a more dedicated solid brigade defense or a defense that does something else other than solely chump block. i know it is nice to think about these kinds of blocks because they can be easy, but i am actually happy that Redemption has evolved enough to work outside of 1 card or 2 card battles. battles are becoming more and more epic and with that there is much more thought that must go into strong defenses. you can build fast dedicated defenses with searching, drawing, and recursion outside of splashy chump blocks.
all that being said i am a big fan of this defense when it works having high draw and high soul gen. i just don't find it reliable or versatile enough to take to nats for example.
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here is a very small but surprisingly effective defense i came up with that may work for what you are looking for
17 cards
1 Gamaliel's Speech
1 The Sanhedrin
1 Proud Pharisee
1 Emperor Vitellius
1 Sabbath Breaker
1 Emperor Tiberius (J)
1 Naaman
1 Foreign Wives
1 Scattered
1 Namaan's Chariot and Horses
1 Balaam's Disobedience
1 Arrest in Jerusalem
1 Night Raid
1 Pretension
1 Christian Martyr (J)
1 Falling Away
1 Damascus (EC)
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It's funny to me that 17 cards is now a "small defense" :o :o :o :o
;)
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battles are becoming more and more epic and with that there is much more thought that must go into strong defenses. you can build fast dedicated defenses with searching, drawing, and recursion outside of splashy chump blocks.
We've made a concentrated effort with the upcoming cards to push the game more into the battle phase. I expect the number of epic battles that take place to continue to grow.
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battles are becoming more and more epic and with that there is much more thought that must go into strong defenses. you can build fast dedicated defenses with searching, drawing, and recursion outside of splashy chump blocks.
We've made a concentrated effort with the upcoming cards to push the game more into the battle phase. I expect the number of epic battles that take place to continue to grow.
Awesome, just awesome...
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Update on this: I've been trying out different "splash defenses", and they have actually been very effective against CoW offenses. Here is the core of the characters I've been playing:
KoT (Priests)
Messenger of Satan (TEC)
7 Sons of Sceva
Emperor Claudius
Emperor Vitellius
Foreign Wives
The Amalekites' Slave
Why does this work? In my experience, here are some reasons (not in any particular order):
1. KoT, Claudius, and FW are the best ECs right now for winning a battle on their own. I've had opponents not even attack (when I had LS available and they had heroes) when I have these characters in territory.
2. All of these characters, except for 7SoS, are fantastic to have in an opening hand. From the get-go this defense is giving you great value.
3. FW in territory, or Am Slave in territory/FW in deck, plus Mayhem is still usually a block. And Mayhem goes into at least 100% of the decks I make.
4. You can play lighter on EEs with this defense. That frees up room for more offense, better Mayhems, etc.
5. MoS + Vitellius drawing. Offenses these days have a LOT of good brigades. The popularity of Joshua, Moses, You Will Remain, Eternal Covenant, FBTNB, Sword of the Spirit, etc. leads to a lot of good brigades being played. I see no reason not to include these two ECs in all T1 defenses these days.
6. KoT and MoS are so good, 7SoS is a fantastic addition that most players aren't prepared for. One time my opponent used Jephthah sub-optimally when I only had MoS in territory. I blocked with 7SoS from hand, exchanged for MoS, and made a successful block.
For those interested, some of my favorite additional evil cards:
Some combination of Naaman/Naaman's Horsies/Deluge of Rain/Sabbath Breaker/Scattered/Heavy Taxes
Gomer/Uzzah/Haman's Plot
Damsel/SSS
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What's your theory on why Claudius has been successful for you? I would think he would see a decline with the release of CoW.
KoT makes sense with people being more cautious about running so many CBN battle winners with Coliseum out there.
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What's your theory on why Claudius has been successful for you? I would think he would see a decline with the release of CoW.
Claudius is a carryover from my original composition, which I made before CoW was released. I've debated his usefulness with all the OT offenses running around right now, but I've found him worthwhile for a few reasons:
1. It gives me a 3rd character (beyond Vitellius and Naaman) who can hold Naaman's Horses. (My favorite compositions of this defense have additional Gray, including Naaman and his horses)
2. Even against OT offenses, he's a 10/11 with CBP protection from Dominants who can play my Gray EEs. I've had Claudius AotL'd in territory recently, and I had a certain top Redemption player misplay Grapes on Claudius recently ;)
3. NT offenses aren't nonexistent, and I've locked out an NT offense before with this defense simply because of Claudius.
4. It gives me a second character to play Heavy Taxes on, which has gained value as a battlewinner because it isn't stopped by Coliseum.
I can see reasons for dropping him, primarily if I add Orange, Pale Green, or Brown to boost the "core 7 ECs" above. But when I'm adding additional Gray, I want him there.
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Have you started using Rome yet?
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@jmhartz,
Makes a lot of sense. Personally I've always been partial to Emperor Tiberius. A lot of times he accomplishes the same thing (stopping your opponent from using Angel/Grapes) but by different means obviously. 8)
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Have you started using Rome yet?
I've never really viewed Rome as worth the slot in my deck. If I were to add a fortress to help my defense, I'd start with Coliseum, assuming it doesn't interfere with my offense.
The cool thing is, if Coliseum helps the offense too, you can add Table of Demons to tutor it, as ToD is TC and playable on 4 of the ECs.
Personally I've always been partial to Emperor Tiberius. A lot of times he accomplishes the same thing (stopping your opponent from using Angel/Grapes) but by different means obviously. 8)
Tiberius was in one iteration of this defense that also had RDJ and Roman Spearmen.
Speaking of that, Roman Spearmen is an underrated EC, in my opinion. They fit quite well in this "splash" defense that has a lot of nasty ECs.