It is going to be difficult to follow-up John’s amazing graphic article, but I will give it a try! Part 1 in this series introduced the Joshua theme, prophets, David’s Mighty Men, and an additional card that showed a new dual-brigade, Tabernacle priest and Wilderness Hero who was also in the Joshua theme. This article will focus on the evil themes in Israel’s Inheritance.
God chose Joshua as Moses’ successor, and of course, it was an extremely wise choice. God knew the enemies that His people would face and knew that not just a leader, but a strategist and warrior was needed for the battles to come. God’s people were going to meet enemies on all sides while they conquered the land of Canaan. In the first chapter of Joshua in verses 5 and 6 we get to read what God told Joshua, saying, “No one will be able to oppose you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not desert you nor abandon you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.” Naturally, there would be opposition to Joshua for people who already lived on the land. Instead of working with Joshua, or siding with God, the enemies were not willing to work with Joshua, but instead came together to work against him.
Although numerous tribes and nations were mentioned throughout the conquering of Canaan, we designed Israel’s Inheritance to focus on Canaanites, Moabites, and Edomites. All 3 themes have a solid foundation and just need a little more focus in a set to get them to a competitive level.
First up are the Canaanites. Numerous tribes mentioned in the early books of the Old Testament are Canaanites. Canaanites debuted in 2008 in the Rock of Ages set. According to Scott from this article, the original design for Canaanites was inspired by the Canaanites being a corrupting influence on heroes. The original definition is also listed for Canaanites as well. Older Canaanites dealt a lot with sites, so that had to change in the new set. Gabe then brought Canaanites back in Cloud of Witnesses and heavily in Fall of Man.
At first, I designed Canaanites to paralyze Heroes and then gain abilities based on where Heroes attacked from, either hand or territory. After talking with Gabe, there really wasn’t a reason to try and redo a theme that is well defined, so I went back and redid Canaanites prior to rolling out Israel’s Inheritance to keep their abilities more in line with the original direction of Canaanites that gave the opponent a Canaanite for a strong ability and had a slight emphasis on capturing Heroes.
The first couple rounds of playtesting had Canaanites lacking. It wasn’t until around the 3rd round of playtesting that we amped up Canaanites and got them to a point that they can really manipulate Canaanites that the owner controls. With all that being said, allow the design team to reintroduce to you the Canaanites!
There was a lot that I wanted to spoil, but I wanted to show a Canaanite from the book of Joshua which also includes a “give” ability.
The Five Kings have a very strong ability that we have not seen used this way on an Evil Character before. Zebulun has somewhat of a similar ability, and other characters restrict certain cards from being played, Michael, Chief Prince, and High Priest Ananias for examples, but The Five Kings is able to give the opponent your evil Canaanite to restrict all players from playing Enhancements with strength 5 or less.
Gabe helped the direction of this card to tie in the 5 into the special ability and I love the outcome! A deck builder can really leverage this card in their advantage. There’s Crucify! Crucify!, Taunting the Lord, Cut Off, Regrets (still underrated) and Plot to Kill that you can already play off this character while under its restriction, and I would imagine we made at least 1 evil Enhancement in this set too.
Either way, this character can be added to battle, or banded to and make for an extremely strong block! It’s tough to fit all the words for giving the opponent a Canaanite, especially when you add the word “Enhancements” in the ability as well. But have no fear! I was able to sneak in a draw 1 with the remaining space!
From my experience, Moabites were challenging to make balanced. I found it difficult to tie in their foundation of Old Testament Lost Soul interaction and hand manipulation while making them strong. Luckily for me, we have an amazing design team and were able to make some creative and very strong Moabites! We also made a concerted effort to have unique names, or cool tie ins for title throughout the set. You’ll see an example of a cool title tied in with the next two cards. Moabites can block in numerous ways depending on the battle, what the opponent has done that turn, or costs that the owner can pay. The first Moabite spoiled for Israel’s Inheritance is Enemies to the East!
Negating and discarding an Artifact is already a strong ability, but this Evil Character also makes sure the opponent doesn’t band in battle, and if they already did, this Evil Character tends to be an auto-block. So much banding is done offensively in the current meta that this character always seems relevant for battles. I wonder just how much better did we make gray!?
The last evil theme in Israel’s Inheritance is Edomites. I went back to the Cactus Forums and found a post from 2015 where a previous designer was asked by Gabe to do some research on how an Edomite theme would look. I loved seeing that post. If you go looking for it, you must be part of (edited by R.O.S.E.S.) to see it. The post has all the scriptures from Edomites beginning, their lineage, and all verses dealing with Edomites. It was awesome to read!
The cards presented were some of the same titles and verses with early outlines of special abilities used when Edomites were introduced as a theme in Lineage of Christ. Now that I think of it, between Fall of Man and Lineage of Christ, Canaanites, Moabites and Edomites really came together as themes. Israel’s Inheritance simply rounds out all three themes. Edomites were my favorite evil defense to design and playtest. We made tweaks along the way, which really involved making their banish theme not solely reliant on banishing cards from a discard pile. We do not want to “over-theme” which is when every card deals with their respective strategy, so we made Edomites that work well in their theme.
Enemies to the South allow for a strong protection from the next good Enhancement in battle, they are a generic warrior with low initiative, and they have a rare draw X, but with a limit 3. Players will see limit 2 on drawing in this set (see Naharai in the graphics article), where the design team decided the drawing quickly became too easy to stack. Most limit 3’s turned to simpler draw 2’s, but we don’t want every draw card to be the same.
We have seen a draw 1 in this article, a draw 2 with a limit on a Hero and now a draw X with a limit on an Evil Character. The reason this Evil Character has a limit of 3 on the draw is due to the drawing being contingent to the number of cards in the opponent’s banish pile. Even though Enemies to the South does not banish any cards, they gain a benefit from other Edomite cards (or maybe even non-Edomite), that banish cards during gameplay.
Gabe had a great idea to bring in at least one dual-alignment green Enhancement which helped the prophets in the set and shows the tradition of green dual-alignment cards. Maybe there will be more in the set, but here’s one that shows how Edomites can banish cards outside of discard piles.
I love Enhancements that involve music! There have been quite a few green Enhancements that involve music lately, but this is a very strong dual-alignment Enhancement that Music Leader would love to get back! Negating and discarding a good Enhancement is always nice, but negating a banishing a good Enhancement is even better!
This card will help any Edomites who look to gain from cards in a banish pile. Since we had room on the card, and Edomites want to get rid of any discard pile protection, we thought we would be nice and add the additional discard of a Fortress. This card is simple, strong, thematic, and allows for creative deck building choices, it’s really everything we are striving to accomplish in card design.
There you have it! All evil themes revealed from Israel’s Inheritance. Maybe we snuck in some other themes, brigades, or who knows what, we tend to have some fun designing cards.
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