This deck build was inspired by a deck build I built for the old Classic format that sought to abuse Zebulun from Faith of Our Fathers after the rules to Ignore changed.

Ignore on Zebulun I realized could still be powerful as long as I picked off the evil characters my opponent might have in hand since while characters in my opponents territory would be ignored by Zebulun, characters in my opponents hand would not be.

I used The First Sacrifice, False Dreams (with hand knowledge cards), and I Am Holy to seek to achieve this. I also ran Impartial Judgement with plenty of meek characters/Awesome Things/Hidden Treasures to try and keep evil characters out of my opponents hand.

Zebulun with hand control proved to be powerful and frustrating for opponents since they could not block with characters in their territory.

When I first saw John the Forerunner I realized he is basically a Rotation version of Zebulun. I also realized while Impartial Judgement backup would not work with him there are some great new toys in the game to pick off Evil Characters in my opponents hand including Teaching in Parables, Twenty Shekels, and Temple Veil to gain knowledge of what Evil Character to name for False Dreams.

Furthermore the color options of GoC characters means I can fit both The First Sacrifice and Teaching in Parables into the same deck build. Furthermore Mary, Holy Virgin and Zaccheus offer great support to John the Forerunner being able to pick off low number ECs in the opponent’s territory that are annoying for John the Forerunner to deal with.

The deck build is called Cherry Picker because I pick out evil characters from the opponents hand that can get around John the Forerunner with tools such as The First Sacrifice, Teaching in Parables, Twenty Shekels, and False Dreams (paired with Temple Veil for hand Knowledge) and then cruise in to battle with John the Forerunner paralyzing the opponent’s evil characters in their territory.

The offense backs John the Forerunner up with characters who create their own rescue value such as Zaccheus for CtB, Jairus for FBTN, Simon the Cyrene, Gabriel, and Mary who all can generate battle winners to back up their rescues.

The deck is fairly consistent in getting to John the Forerunner with The Annunciation, The Emmaus Road, The Angel of the Winds, Crowd’s Choice, and The New Covenant (to Emmaus Road) all being ways to John the Forerunner.

The deck therefore has 6 ways to John the Forerunner including himself in the main deck. The defense is meant to have many ways to Herdsmen of Gerar to give versatility against Matthew decks since the offense runs quite a few brigades.

Beyond Herdsmen I look for characters that block well in the meta and The Woman of Thebez, Foreign Wives, Herod the Great to Herod’s Temple, and Emperor Claudius definitely fit that bill. Outsiders (B/G) is solid here since this is not the fastest deck in the world and can definitely offer good blocking utility due to that.

Saul of Tarsus to Unsuccessful/False Prophecy is solid as well in the meta. This deck build tries to be resilient against Nazareth having 7 ways main deck around Nazareth (Goliath’s Curse, Betrayal, Lost Child Found, Teaching in Parables, Three Woes, and Crowd’s Choice to Three Woes, and Outsiders B/G). It also tries to be resilient against Honey Pot having multiple ways to deal with Honey Pot including Mary, Holy Virgin, Annunciation to Crowd’s Choice to Mary, Holy Virgin, CotK, New Cov to Annunciation to CC to Mary, and Humble LS.

Maybe board: Golgotha, Shipwreck, Glory of the Lord (CotK is in over Glory due to synergy with Jairus), Goliath, Fall of Man, Ark of the Covenant, The Thankful Leper, The Resurrection, Scattered Sheep, and High Priest Ananias.

Basically, this deck seeks to create a powerful band by using Abishai to band in David and Jehu. Using this band, I can add in my Joshua guys, and then band to my Flood Survivors.

The ENTIRE band activates: Jehu discard 2, Shem discard 1, JoshSword draw 1 and discard 1, Eleazar Sword Discard, Adino’s discard, noah prevent, wife negate, officiators take, captain draw 3 and negate, Japheth look at top 4 and take, and Five Kings Restrict.

The rest of the deck seeks to use false leaders to bounce all of my heroes (and more importantly stone carries, duh.) in order to use my 3 different resets, and make my opponent repeatedly discard off the afflicted.

The deck is a bit slow and relies on breaking the opponent’s board, so it usually goes second, but it’s actually pretty consistent with Moses and VB star.

The deck doesn’t have much for TC other than false leaders so Salty is useable and battle doms hurt so Complacent is a fun add. Nearly every soul is oppressive, and defensively we can pick apart the opponent’s heroes with powerful cbn (due to overtaken) wilderness bands. The deck is VERY silly and allows for some really unique plays.

Bury Them!

This is a unique type of deck that is trying to setup a “lockout” where its impossible for the opponent to rescue for a few turns. The idea is to first play Harvest Time to put everyones lost souls into play, then to play Burial to underdeck all MY lost souls. If the opponent can’t generate any lost souls, they can’t rescue for a few turns and that should give me enough time to win before they do. This is a unique and funny way to approach a game of Redemption and I believe I have a shot at getting votes for both funny and creative!

The primary way opponents generate souls is by searching them out of decks or using “Lost Souls” or “Hopper” to generate them. To shut down people from searching the souls back out of my deck, I play 5 different sources of deck protection. 5 might seem like a lot, but Joshua decks like to pop fortresses, and a single Three Woes played during the upkeep could negate 2 of my protections. I want at least 3 online at all times to hedge against Woes, and I want to draw deck protection early for when I go for the combo.

To beat “Hopper” and “Lost Souls”, thankfully I can just use Harvest Time to put them into play all at once. Hopper doesn’t hop when it does that, and the tokens generated by Lost Souls will be underdecked by Burial. Heroes that generate lost soul tokens are very problematic for this deck (cough cough Angel of the Harvest), but those are not seeing much play at the moment. But watch out for Amalekite’s Slaves and Silly Women!

To try and get to Harvest Time and Burial as quickly as possible, I’m enlisting the help of Resurrection Revealer + Matthew to help me draw a bunch of cards. On turn one, I’m trying to get all the pieces I need to do do the combo, so I’ll be trying to attack with Matthew or Res Revealer + The Resurrection (banded to a bunch of heroes that draw cards). I can use Spirit as a Dove or the New Covenant into Spirit as a Dove to grab Crowd’s Choice to help me find the missing Burial combo piece. I could see a different version of this deck using Nativity Cards + The Annunciation to do the same thing, but Clay seemed like a first starting point.

The First

Another way I can draw a bunch of cards is by using “The First” lost soul plus Herod’s Temple to draw 4 cards each time I attack or block. The idea is if I have meek lost souls + Herod’s Temple in play, I can attack with Bartholomew and play “The First” lost soul from my deck. Its ability will trigger, and I’ll get to draw a card and put the first back on top of my deck. I can then activate Herod’s Temple, (instead of reserving “The First”, it gets put back into play b/c its a lost soul) and I can do it 3 more times to draw 4 cards. I can only do this 4 times thanks to the “4-activations” limit. I can also use Harvest Time to play “The First” out of my deck and set up this up before I attack. The idea is that I first play Harvest Time to setup this draw engine and then I’ll draw into Burial within a turn after I do this. Ends of the Earth also helps try to dig me into “The First”

When blocking (I don’t have to have an evil character in battle to use Herod’s Temple), I’ll have “The First” still on top of my deck and I can activate Herod’s Temple 4 more times to draw 4 more cards. Hopefully I’ll have drawn into my Burial by then and I can slam it. I know Burial doesn’t bury “The First” unless the opponent has played a good dominant, but I think this deck can afford to give the opponent a lost soul. I think the potential speed that “The First” adds to the deck outweighs its potential downside on being unbury-able. Who cares if they can rescue that soul if the other 6 are at the bottom of my deck?

Oops No Defense?

This deck doesn’t have a defense, hence the deck name. Instead, on turn 1 its hoping to block with Annas to underdeck any lost souls I may have drawn on t1. And aside from that it has Denarius + Claudius + Herod’s Temple as a decent block against N.T. decks. But we aren’t expecting to get any defensive blocks aside from that. The idea is stall-stall-stall until the Burial combo is out, then we don’t have to block for the rest of the game.

If you do get the Burial combo out and the opponent tries to attack you for value, you can use The Deceiver to exchange to your Queen Tahpenes in the reserve. She’s really good at milling tons of cards from the opponent’s deck, and hopefully one of them will be Son of God or The Second Coming. She’s a hail-mary that could buy you a turn if your Burial plan get’s disrupted.

This deck likes to play its Good Dominants early, so if we can start restricting dominants on Turn 2, it will usually hurt our opponent more than it will hurt us. Peter’s Curse + The Cross can strand dominants in the opponent’s hand and limit their options to try and disrupt our deck once we’ve buried everything.

Another piece of disruption you have access to is Nazareth in the reserve. You can use The New Covenant to get “No Need for Spices” from the reserve which will allow you to get Nazareth out of your reserve. Or you can use Spirit as a Dove or Crowd’s Choice as well. The idea is that on Turn 2 if you are ahead, you can slam a Nazareth down and make it even harder for the opponent to search out lost souls and enact their game plan.

As far as the offense goes, its your standard clay offense with lots of tools for breaking through the opponent’s defense. Yes, it does have the potential to stall out, but it also can pull off some of the best attacks in the game. Simon + Ride On + Authority of Christ is still very good. Also you can use Golgotha to get Possessing Spirit out of your reserve to place on their good card. You can then use Zacchaeus or Simon to choose it as a blocker and get a free rescue that way.

The offense is mostly Gospel Unity so I can play Mary, Holy Virgin, except for the Four Living Creatures. This card is unique b/c I can bounce it before I can attack so I don’t disrupt Mary’s Unity requirements. Then after battle I can play it back down again.

Well, that’s my deck! Thanks for reading about it and I hope it gets your vote for most unique or funniest deck!

This deck only contains cards referencing a number. While it is not competitive at all, it is funny. Is The Second Coming dominant in there? It sure is! Is Son of God? Nope. Try it out, and see how silly it is!

This deck* is hyper focused on frustrating your opponent with foolishness. It doesn’t matter which fool you choose, I might choose a different one! If one fool isn’t the right one, let the Mayhem begin!

Fools stuck in your hand? Wash them away in The Bronze Laver. Use Solomon’s wisdom to pick the right fool and nearly every enhancement matches multiple heroes. Watch your opponent be bogged down in your choices as they are overwhelmed with foolishness.

Defending against this not enough? We threw in the compact but powerful Herods to frustrate even more!

*Editor’s Note: This deck was received with 48 cards so I added Futile Inquisition and Contagious Fear

Magicians and Musicians.

First of all, the name just flows off the tongue like gold. Am I right? You can’t deny that.

Convert David, HAG to meek, play Ride On/Awesome Things, and then Solomon’s Dream to grab your SoG or TSC.

Use The Woman with Child to get the same. Two easy souls.

Confusion gets rid of your opponent’s SoG or TSC, making them have to really EARN those souls. When the opponent has a lot of defense in territory, use the Great Image and Scattered combo to get rid of most of their defense in territory and underdeck the ones in battle.

Burial, Death of Unrighteous, and Suicidal Swine Stampede are great ways to hide multiple souls from the opponent. Sheol and Manasseh hide one at a time also. The musicians have a few ways to bring cards back from discard. The Woman of Thebez, even though not a magician, does work her magic in a freebie chump block. Have 3 of the 4 Artifacts active at a time.

This deck is Creative; you know you want to vote for it. If it’s between this on and another one; pick this one. You have not because you ask not, am I right? Thanks for your consideration.

This absolute pile of cards is trying to execute three combos in one that ultimate lead to winning the game with the alt wincon of The Cross!

On the first turn you find Hannah plus Song of Moses to get initiative and search out Fifth Seal and four card draw Heroes, use Fifth Seal to find The Child is Born and band them all in, drawing the many cards needed to set up the other two combos.

On the second turn, you make a side battle with The Lord Goes Before You played pre-block on David to get initiative with Conjurors and replay a couple mill EEs by copying a Grain Offering held in Widows Tables.

This plus a Plague of Hail should pretty much delete the opponent’s deck. On the third and final turn, you pop Concealed Riches to pull the whole Cross package out of reserve and walk in for game!

This deck is a different take on the usual Disciples deck utilizing a new defense. The offensive strategy of this deck is to attack turn one with Matthew (which can be searched for with Angel from the Sun, Reassuring Angels, The Angel of the Winds, and Patmos) to draw a lot of cards and win a Lost Soul via Authority of Christ (AOC), Untouchable, Love One Another, or with one of the other attacks described below.

On turn two, walk into battle with a Hero, play The Resurrection to take Herod’s Temple and an Empty Tomb Hero (Peter or John) from deck and band in three Heroes (John, Matthias, and Mary or Lazarus) to negate (and possibly reserve) evil cards, draw two, toss the next, and then bounce the evil character in battle! If any evil characters still remain in battle, then Awesome Things can be played to allow the Heroes to use either AOC, Untouchable, or Love One Another to defeat them.

There are two options for turn three. One option consists of attacking with a Hero to play The Ascension to band in several Heroes, add Simon from reserve to choose the blocker, and play one of the battle winners in deck or reserve (AOC, Untouchable, Love One Another, Eternal Inheritance, or The Great Commission).

A second option is to walk into battle with a Hero, play Awesome Things to play a battle winner to win the battle. A great card to use turn three if the conditions are met on it is Eternal Inheritance. The defense for this deck, which I created recently, consists of four chump blocks and four other blocks that need only one or two enhancements to win the battle, all designed to prevent the opponent from rescuing Lost Souls.

Moths, Trembling Demon, The Woman of Thebez, and Fire Foxes all protect Lost Souls from rescue. Judean Mediums to Spirit of Fear withdraws all Heroes CBN if the opponent’s hand is protected.

Spirit of Fear or Trembling Demon to Fearfulness will withdraw and paralyze Heroes. Saul can take Unsuccessful, Arrest in Philippi, and Scattered from reserve to defeat the opponent, or play Scattered Sheep from deck to shuffle Heroes.

Lot’s Wife can use the Gibeonite Trickery taken by The Woman of Thebez from reserve to end the battle as a stalemate or Scattered Sheep in deck to shuffle Heroes. Lastly, Emperor Claudius can use Duplicity to take any of the gray enhancements from reserve and use them to devastate the opponent!

I’ve never built a deck before and don’t know much about the game, so I put this together using cards from my collection.

This deck is inspired by FloodedRed’s Green/Black Soul Hide list, but has a few interesting additions.

The idea is to try and hide lost souls from the opponent by topdecking cards each turn so that when you go to draw 3 cards for your turn, you’ll end up just drawing the cards you’ve topdecked last turn, thus preventing you from drawing any lost souls for the rest of the game. You can use the easy reserve access Green has to keep the gas coming once you’ve effectively stopped drawing new cards. Green also has a cadre of cards that are good in low-resource situations which this deck is intentionally trying to place itself in (like “Vow for Samuel” + “Book of the Covenant” to get back Vow each turn and “Jeremiah, Hope Bringer” for solid attacks without having to commit a lot of cards).

Here are some of the ways I’ve found to topdeck a card each turn consistently:

First we have “Eyes to See” which lets us topdeck it each turn if we use it on an O.T. prophet. Its in the reserve (because its not a card we want to see Turn 1) and can be fetched out with “Storehouse” or “Deborah, the Victorious” when we have our initial footing.

Then we have “Manna” which let’s us topdeck it as our artifact activation (the key there is to not draw a card since its a may ability on the draw 1).

Third, we have “Jairus” who can attack and band to “Jairus’ Daughter” from reserve (which can topdeck herself). This is great because in theory we can do this each turn!

Another way to topdeck a card is by targeting “Guardian of Your Souls” each turn with your own ability to place it on top of your deck. I know it’s weird to see “Guardian of Your Souls” in a soul hide deck, but the idea is that its a combo piece that you don’t want to place down until you can topdeck it each turn. You can use “Three Woes” to negate “Guardian of Your Souls” each upkeep and then re-draw it. Crucially, you can then play down “Guardian of Your Souls” again after you draw but before your “Three Woes” trigger. Then use your “Three Woes” trigger to target Guardian of Your Souls again so you’ll be able to topdeck it each turn.

Another way to consistently place “Guardian of Your Souls” on top of your deck is by using “Teaching in Parables” to negate it (triggering the topdeck) and then attacking with “Bartimaeus” to get back “Teaching in Parables” to do it all over again next turn!

Lastly, you can attack with “Noah, the Righteous” to target “Guardian of Your Souls” with his shuffle ability and you can instead it and topdeck it each turn. Not the most amazing thing in the world, but in theory you can do it every turn if you use “20 Shekels” to bounce “Noah, the Righteous.”

As a small bonus to the topdecking theme, “Jeremiah, Hope Bringer” can also keep attacking and topdecking himself if he get’s discarded.

“Moses” doesn’t play very well with our “Eyes to See” and “Teaching in Parables” plan, but he’s here to negate “Hopper” and “Lost Souls” effects that opponents will use to try and get around soul drought! But if you happen to get “20 Shekels”, you can use “20 Shekels” to bounce “Moses” and play your territory class cards and then play “Moses” back down again. “Moses” can be turbo’ed out via “Egypt” -> “Wilderness of Sinai”.

Another way to create soul drought is by using “Samuel, Born of Prayer” to manipulate the top cards of our deck. If we don’t have 3 ways of topdecking a card each turn, “Samuel, Born of Prayer” can step in and help make sure we aren’t drawing lost souls. He’s so important that we use “David’s Tent” to go get him out early.

In the reserve, we’ve packed it full of Green battle-winners that “Deborah” or “Storehouse” will be able to grab each turn to make sure we have the firepower to break through the opponent’s defense. The defense could use a little bit more muscle in the reserve (think Brood of Vipers, Supercilious Scribes) but I wanted to make sure the offense had the gas it needed. Tradeoffs tradeoffs tradeoffs!

Storehouse is an amazing card in this deck because it prevents the opponent from shuffling your deck and searching out lost souls + it provides some ways you can get good enhancements later in the game once you’ve setup your draw lock.

Who knew that not trying to draw cards could be a strategy you could use to win a game of Redemption?? Sleeve this deck up if you want to confuse or frustrate your opponents or if you want a challenge to try and setup the lock.

This is my Daniel Persians deck! This deck includes Daniel Heroes alongside Captain of the Hosts and the Lord’s Army and all the Daniel and Esther Persians alongside Gomer and Uzzah.

One of the objectives of this deck is to get out The Foretelling Angel as soon as possible via The Great White Throne, Wheel Within a Wheel, and Daniel’s Prayer; this character makes Daniel characters CBN if the top card of deck is a Daniel card and will allow me to take any Daniel cards on the top of deck.

Another objective is to assemble the big band chains on both the offense and defense to overwhelm the opponent. The offensive banding chain is Abed-nego to Meshach to Shadrach to Daniel to Servants by the River to Michael to Captain of the Host to the Lord’s Army, and the defensive one is The Bear to King Darius to King Xerxes to Queen Vashti to Zeresh to Haman.

The offensive band chain allows me to topdeck a good Daniel card from reserve if the top card of deck is underdecked and protect Lost Souls from evil cards with Abed-nego; to prevent the next non-Daniel enhancement and draw one with Meshach; to protect Daniel humans from discard and to make band abilities on Daniel cards CBI with Shadrach; to negate Fortresses, Evil Characters, and N.T. enhancements with Daniel; to protect Lost Souls and Daniel human Heroes from lone Evil Characters with Servants by the River; to toss all multi-brigade evil enhancements if I control no non-Daniel human Heroes with Michael, to draw two cards and negate an evil card with Captain of the Host; and protect Lost Souls from evil cards and restrict evil dominants with The Lord’s Army.

The defensive band chain allows me to topdeck a Babylonian or Egyptian with The Bear, to either take and play a city after battle or convert an evil warrior to brown and make it a Persian after battle with King Darius, to set aside x cards from opponent’s territory for x turns if opponent has play advantage with King Xerxes, to ignore male royalty and either negate a card or draw three cards with Queen Vashti, to take an evil card from the top six cards of deck with Zeresh, and to negate non-Persians and to either draw one or take an evil Esther card from deck (or reserve is Zeresh is in play).

The offense can assemble its band chain with the Great White Throne, Wheel Within a Wheel, and Daniel’s Prayer and protect itself from the opponent with Glory of the Lord, Faith Unbowed, Faith of Daniel, Daniel, Servants by the River, Meshach, Shadrach, Michael, and the Lord’s Army. The defense can amass its band chain via The Deceiver, The Bear, and Haman; protect itself with Queen Vasthi and Haman; and get initiative with Mask of Arrogance and Haman’s Boasting. The defense can also draw a bunch of cards to get to the brown battle winners (Reap the Whirlwind, Cut Off, and Haman’s Plot) or cards that help take brown battle winners (Cast into Lion’s Den, Irrational Rage, Scattered, and Honor Thy Enemy) from reserve. The defense even has Uzzah as a chump block to discard The Great White Throne to protect OT Lost Souls from rescue and Gomer to band to opponent’s evil characters to use them in battle.

The offense can assemble its band chain with the Great White Throne, Wheel Within a Wheel, and Daniel’s Prayer and protect itself from the opponent with Glory of the Lord, Faith Unbowed, Faith of Daniel, Daniel, Servants by the River, Meshach, Shadrach, Michael, and the Lord’s Army. The defense can amass its band chain via The Deceiver, The Bear, and Haman; protect itself with Queen Vasthi and Haman; and get initiative with Mask of Arrogance and Haman’s Boasting. The defense can also draw a bunch of cards to get to the brown battle winners (Reap the Whirlwind, Cut Off, and Haman’s Plot) or cards that help take brown battle winners (Cast into Lion’s Den, Irrational Rage, Scattered, and Honor Thy Enemy) from reserve. The defense even has Uzzah as a chump block to discard The Great White Throne to protect OT Lost Souls from rescue and Gomer to band to opponent’s evil characters to use them in battle.

Welcome to my Green Syrians Capture deck! This deck’s defense captures characters so that the offense can band them in against the opponent.

This strategy is accomplished by using King Rezin to band to The Strong Force to grab a capture enhancement (Night Raid, Slaves to Eglon, Arrest in Philippi, or Arrest in Jerusalem) from deck to capture Heroes CBN. Mask of Pride and Naaman’s Horses are included in the deck to ensure that these characters get initiative to play capture enhancements.

Also, The Amalekite’s Slave (which can be searched for with the Lost Soul “Dread”), The Deceiver, and Syrian Mercenaries are in the deck to help search out King Rezin or the Strong Force, and King Rezin can even play Damascus from reserve to get out The Strong Force. The reason for capturing Heroes with the defense is to allow the offense to band these captured characters into battle with the Rebuking Emissary or Valley of Dry Bones.

The offense also has a big band chain to use while waiting for the defense to capture Heroes: The Watchman to exchange to Ezekiel to band to two different Cherubin to Deborah to Obadiah’s Hidden 100 to Samuel to end with Jehu (or The Rebuking Emissary if desired). This band chain allows you to negate evil searches and shuffles and draw two with The Watchman, to make Ezekiel characters CBN with Ezekiel, to look at opponent’s hand and topdeck evil dominants and to topdeck either Drawn Sword or Wheel Within a Wheel from reserve with the two Cherubims, to take a good enhancement from reserve with Deborah, to protect the hero Obadiah’s Hidden 100 bands to from harm (if Satan’s Seat is not in play), to look at the top three cards of deck and underdeck up to three cards with Samuel, and to shuffle an opponent’s evil or neutral card that is not a character and to negate non-good prophets and N. T. enhancements with Jehu.

To help assemble this band chain, this deck uses House of Samuel (which can be searched for with Covenant of David), The Prophetess, The Watchmen and The Victorious Being in deck and Wheel Within a Wheel in reserve. To protect the characters in the band chain, this deck utilizes Called to Prophecy (if the two Cherubim are excluded from the band chain) and Glory of the Lord in deck and Vow for Samuel in reserve. Additionally, the defense also has some cards in deck and reserve that allow for other blocks: Naaman to make evil enhancements CBN; King Hazael to mess with an opponent’s sites, fortresses, and evil humans and to band to another Syrian; and The Syrian Reinforcements who can be added to the battle if the opponent removes all the evil characters in battle.

The Age of Angels is upon us!

This build is designed to take advantage of the power of both the OT Angels with Daniel, and mix with the insane power that the Gospel Angels have! Bringing down massive banding chains that will make an Opponent desperate to find some answer to your attacks – and with Daniel, Michael, Captain, Gabriel and even some help from John the Fishermen, we’ll make sure no one is escaping!

Meanwhile the defense is built to do 1 of 2 options – Chump block or playing the first Enhancement. With an Opponent having to handle Moths, Fire Foxes or even the battle being discarded by Husham or lone Heroes getting knocked away by Basemath or Esau or the Charioteers going towards Evil getting its chance to play, the goal is to put the Heroes on the back burner while we continue to push towards a victory!

To make things even better – With a few of Silver’s cards, they can add to the Banished Pile or trigger Esau’s Land so we are gaining advantage during our turn just by using our good cards! Its time to tear apart the Opponent’s battle strategy as well as their Reserve as the Angels march towards victory!

This deck build hearkens back to a more distant era of Redemption when raw power was sought to rule the day on offense and defense. I built a deck similar to this years ago for the classic format that was a unity Judges build which sought to turbo to Shamgar on the offense and have a chumpy type defense.

The name of the deck build comes from the gavel in the background of the artwork of Shamgar and the unity Judges offense. The offense seeks to go to Shamgar early for a strong FBTN rescue backed by Judges enhancements and other CBN or CBP enhancements which work with Shamgar.

The deck seeks to get Shamgar via Angel of the Winds, The Angel Under the Oak, Crowd’s Choice, and The Victorious Being. Outside of Shamgar the deck build seeks to use low number characters in Othniel and Gideon to get initiative in many scenarios.

Gideon creates his own rescue potential via Faith of Gideon. Faith of Gideon/Grapes of Wrath is a classic combo seeking to create a side battle and then discard the ECs in that side battle via Grapes leaving the rescuing hero alone in battle to rescue a soul.

Deborah is a nice option to deal with chump block defenses. Jephthah’s Daughter to Jephthah is a strong CtB option as well.

The defense seeks to play the very best evil battle winners in the game and is able to do this by running multi brigade evil characters and two characters who can play enhancements of a chosen brigade in User of Curious Arts and Deceiving Spirit.

This is a rather unique defense and I believe aside from the obvious downside of being weak to Matthew it can block most of the meta quite well.

Wicked LS offers support for the battle winners. This is by no means a top tier deck in the meta but it is creative and unique.

Perhaps down the road the unity Judges offense will get a bit more support providing more power for the build. At the very least this build seeks to bring to the light some powerful cards that don’t see much attention like Shamgar and sure is a fun deck to play.

This deck is designed to effectively play the old school Arrogance the way it was intended. All you OGs know what I mean, but for the new folks, Arrogance is an Evil Enhancement from Patriarchs that is supposed to give you infinite initiative during your block.

Unfortunately under the current rules it doesn’t quite work that way and even if it did, it’s obviously not Rotation-legal. So what if I told you there was a way to set up effectively infinite initiative in the Rotation card pool?

Behold, “Rabshakeh’s Arrogance”. Getting “infinite initiative” actually happens quite often in the game currently. Usually it’s on offense when your opponent blocks with a protected Foreign Wives or Herod Agrippa I and you’re not ready to take advantage of the opportunity. Expecting your opponent to have a protected Hero is asking a bit much, so the first step is gifting them one like the generous human you are.

Abram the Blameless, Esther the Courageous, and yes, even Joshua the High Priest all work for this purpose and they’re all pretty easy to give your opponent with either Tribute or good ole Stalks of Flax.

Malakh the Nameless unfortunately won’t work for us on account of being an angel and all, but we could also use a converted Foreign Wives in a pinch if we’ve drawn enough cards.

Alright, so our opponent has a protected Hero now. How do we convince them to attack with it? You could ask nicely, but considering it’s best not to punish someone for doing you a favor, you’re probably better off not giving them a choice. This seems like a great opportunity for a “choose the attacker” ability. But what if you’re opponent doesn’t let you choose the attacker? Like if they just choose the blocker before you even get a chance or attack with mean old Strong Angel so your abilities don’t work?

Well, that’s why we’re going to be choosing the attacker on my turn, not yours. That’s right. Who’s ready to do some taunting? The Rabshakeh is an Evil Character with a Taunt ability, which essentially means I can start a battle with an Evil Character and my opponent needs to “block” with a Hero in order to accept. Usually they have the option to decline and just lose the taunt battle, but in this case we can take away that choice.

The Rabshakeh lets you equip a weapon from Reserve directly to himself, so if we equip, say, Snatched Spear, then we can use that to choose a Hero to oppose The Rabshakeh.

If we choose Abram, Esther, or Joshua (with a silver Hero in play), then, provided my opponent doesn’t have any Enhancements of matching brigade, Dominants, or manually triggered abilities to interfere, I can unleash as many Evil Enhancements as I can get my hands on, and this deck is chalk full of ’em. Most of the Evil Enhancements I want to play will draw cards to get more of them, and the rest will all be focused on disrupting my opponent through mill effects, hand control, and territory manipulation.

The deck is designed to be able to pull off the combo as early as turn two, and the sooner the better because at that point it’s less likely for the opponent to have interaction and more likely that you can snipe important cards before your opponent can use them.

Okay, so now you’re probably thinking that all sounds good in theory, but does it actually work in practice? I had the same thoughts while building the deck and doing test draws. I found it too be surprisingly consistent–acquiring the combo pieces by turn two at least half the time–but in practice you never know what barriers your opponent might set up that you will have to deal with, so I guess you’ll just have to wait and see…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Sit down at The Master’s Table with your Relatives. This deck is all about Thanksgiving.

Each card is about food, family, or emotions that can happen during Thanksgiving.

First we will start with the Lost Souls. Open Hand, Hopper, Hunter, Wanderer, Salty, Relatives, Fat and Prosperity.

You’ll need an open hand to bring your plate up to get food as you and your loved ones Wander or Hop on over to your Relatives house to eat food that was Hunted, could be Salty and leave you nice and Fat while talking about what you are thankful for and hope for Prosperity.

The Dominants help decide the best food of the year. Mayhem ensues for best food as the Crowd’s Choice will show who wins based on how many The Second helping’s happened.

No Thanksgiving is complete without thanks to God and original Thanksgiving had meats, fruits, and I am sure some Grapes.

Don’t eat any meat before it has been cleaned and prepared, as the defense is sure to remind you. There’s Unclean Animals and the rest of the animals seem to be Devouring or Hungry.

Don’t let Doug fool you, take away a couple letters from his title shows Laughter at the table. Of course the evil is all about having Hunger, Hurling Insults at lesser seen cousins, and potentially throwing Scraps Under the Table to dogs underneath, or Thrown to the Beasts as some might say.

Not all evil cards are bad and sometimes when Brothers Reunite and family members come together from different generations there can be Confused Languages.

Make sure none of that language involves politics, as a friendly Thanksgiving can quickly turn into Divide and Unify. The Heroes in the deck are family members, generous or thankful. Whether you like them or not, in-laws can show up at your house, but make sure to still be hospitable and generous as the bread winner usually turns into the Bread Giver.

Some of the good Enhancements remind us how to behave at the table with Peace, Joy and Love. Our Generous Giving should show our Family Bond and even if your sister is annoying, make sure to Love One Another during your Shared Meal. Food fit for Priests has No Need for Spices, but you will find some help in the Reserve if you run out of food.

I hope you and your family has a great Thanksgiving and I am thankful for this community and the chance to express our creativity through deck building. I can’t wait to see the other decks!