Hello everyone! When building decks, I like to test them against a gauntlet of different top-tier strategies to help gauge the power level of a new deck or brew I’m working on. Playing my new decks in actual games helps me determine what’s working & what’s not working in the face of pressure (something that’s hard to do when building a deck in isolation).

Here’s the curated list of deck’s I’ll be using to practice against, in no particular order. I believe these represent the most powerful strategies that are out there. If your new brew/strategy can do a decent job against these decks, you might be onto something! Something that sticks out to me is that there are a lot of cool strategies out there and there doesn’t feel to be a clearly defined “best deck” right now.

AgurTheWise’s Joshua/Thieves

Joshua decks are a force to be reckoned with, and I believe AgurTheWise is onto something with his take on pairing Thieves with a Joshua offense. The strategies pair very nicely with each other, and Satan’s Seat helps enable both the offense and the defense.

This deck has draws that feel unbeatable where’s he’s able to steal 4-5 cards and have great blocks. But if it doesn’t draw The Highwayman or Captain of the Host, it can feel a bit slow when fighting other fast decks. Its either feast or famine with this deck!

Jay’s Blue/Moabites

Jay just won a Zoom tournament playing this deck, and I’ve become a real believer in the power of Blue offenses that are built like this. Having a large banding chain that draws 5 cards and tops off the band with Elijah, Malak, or Jeremiah is very strong. The secret sauce in this deck is Jared, the Beholder allowing your Abraham + Melchizideck banding chains to play Ride On/Awesome Things & top off your band with a Jeremiah toss next or an Elijah choose the blocker. But is this deck just a worse version of clay decks? Time will tell…

The defense Jay is using is small but capable of a lot of blocks. It forces the opponent to have a lot of answers to a lot of different angles of attack, and can heavily punish opponents not playing soul protection. I believe this defense is so powerful that decks should start pivoting to using Harvest Lost Soul over Lost Souls because of the N.T. soul tokens can stop a lot of their best blocks. And if you have room, run Distressed Lost Soul too!

Josh’s Clay/Black Gray

Clay decks are the de facto best offenses in Type 1, and Josh has streamlined his clay list into a fast and heavy hitting machine. Thanks to Matthew, clay decks can easily snowball an early lead on resources. Good luck trying to block Simon + Good Seed + You Will Remain + Ride On + Glory of the Lord + Angel of the Lord is all I’m saying…

This is the list Josh used to win the TCJ Memorial tournament in back in early November. The defense seen here can be easily swapped out for the Moabite defense seen in Jay’s deck. I think both are good, but the Moabite defense is probably better against other clay and Nativity decks.

Jeremy’s Impartial Judgement

What happens when you take the explosive clay package and combine it with a K.O. combo? You get Jeremy’s Impartial Judgement deck, designed to play Impartial Judgement via Awesome things on a meek Jotham, the Mighty pre-block to discard all the evil cards out of an opponent’s hand.

This deck is great a drawing a bunch of cards, and as long as you are doing that, then the combo is relatively easy to setup. If I’m playing against this deck, I’m scared by what its capable of and how much it can churn through its deck. I don’t think Thieves are the right defense for this type of deck, but at least The Highwayman draws you a bunch of cards to help setup the combo. Thieves can also leverage Satan’s Seat!

Chad’s Soul Surfer

Chad has been working on Soul Surfer for a while now and he recently won Lackey Grand Prix 18 with an updated list. While I haven’t seen anyone else run the deck, I believe its a top tier deck and particularly fun to goldfish given the amount of decisions you have to make on Turn 0 with this deck.

If you are curious to learn about this deck, read the article I’ve linked or watch this interview.

Baboony’s Nativity

Here’s an updated take on the deck I used to win Nationals! Any gauntlet wouldn’t be complete without including a Nativity deck in it in my opinion 🙂

Highlights of this updated build:

• Overtaken/Glory of the Lord + Husham the Tenamite is backbreaking against the best offenses running around. I believe its worth splashing for.

• Harvest Lost Soul is to address Nativity’s weakness to Moabites & their O.T. soul protection.

• Orphans & Accusers are meant to attack Woman of Thebez and the aforementioned Moabites. Nice that Accusers randomly hoses O.T. human heros too

• Abandoment gets the nod over No Straw! since I can play it on Foreign Wives and Outsiders. (No Straw only gets CBN on mono colored evil characters)

• Herodias and Archelaus are out: Husham meant some evil character had to go, and Archelaus was pulling his weight the least. Less Herod’s mean that Herodias is worse too. I’m not happy with Outsiders in a deck that goes as big as Nativity does, but its probably better than the alternatives.

• Herodias Daughter is important to setup for Husham by reserving their Storehouse. Going to Herod Antipas who can play Contagious Fear under an Orphans is also very cute.

• Zachcheus isn’t as good in this version as the one playing Golgotha + Possessing Spirit in the reserve, but he’s still decent. Sometimes you can cheese a rescue by going Falling Away into banding chain topped by Zaccheus to choose the blocker. And he’s also very nice with Teaching in Parables and Good Seed.

Well thanks for reading! I’m off to go playtest some Redemption! I’ll leave you with a pro tip for playtesting: have a deck in Lackey and one in paper and then play them against each other! Or if you have two computers, play both against each other in lackey so you can quickly iterate on new changes!

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