Join Tyler Stevens for the third part of a series giving some very interesting details about the upcoming set Israel’s Rebellion!
Redemption Nationals is just days away and Israel’s Rebellion will be released to purchase! The elder team has been working diligently on this set for some time and I wanted to provide some theme insight on what themes are in the set, why they were chosen, and what they generally do. I will provide a small overview of each theme and try to give some details about what my reasoning and logic was for designing cards in the way I did.
Blue – Sons of Jacob
Why are the sons of Jacob in Israel’s Rebellion? How do these Heroes make sense for a set that deals with the timeframe of The Forty Years in the wilderness? As with all questions in life, we simply need to look to the Bible for answers!
Creating the sons of Jacob was challenging, rewarding, and extremely fun. Originally, son of Jacob were going to continue with meek abilities and my logic was Judah (a current son of Jacob in rotation), Jacob, and Patriarchs from Lineage of Christ were all meek Heroes. It would make sense to continue with the meek theme, however, meek has been used for the last three years, and as awesome as it is, we wanted to take a break from meek for the time being. Changing from meek to traditional Heroes meant I had to re-evaluate abilities and how sons of Jacob worked.
When I was originally designing sons of Jacob I wanted to pay homage to the original versions from Faith of our Fathers and Rock of Ages, while still maintaining a theme and being unique. The story of Jacob’s sons starts in Genesis chapter 30, continues about the treacheries of some of the sons in chapter 34, names the sons in chapter 35, then picks up again in chapter 37 when Joseph starts to interpret dreams. Once Joseph starts to interpret dreams and is given the coat his brothers become jealous. They all plot to kill him and throw him into a pit, but Reuben speaks up to save his brother. The original plan was to kill Joseph, but the brothers were convinced to throw him in a pit instead. Genesis 37:20-22 Now then, come and let’s kill him, and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, ‘A vicious animal devoured him.’ Then we will see what will become of his dreams!” 21 But Reuben heard this and rescued him out of their hands by saying, “Let’s not take his life.” 22 Then Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him”—so that later he might rescue him out of their hands, to return him to his father.
In order to represent this story through card design I focused on the brothers having a choice of two evils. For most of the sons of Jacob, you will see the opponent has a choice to get rid of their own evil card. If they do not, you are able to have an ability trigger.
Take Simeon for example. As you can see, the opponent has the decision to underdeck their own evil card from their hand, or they can choose not to. If they don’t, then you get to underdeck an evil card from their territory. Of course, Simeon bands to his brother and the two of them got into some trouble together in their story. I’m sure Levi does something to do with getting rid of evil, who knows.
Sons of Jacob pays a nice homage to their original design by still maintaining hand pressure like the classic versions did, but they are now tied into their story about Joseph. We still have not fully addressed why they are in this set though. If you did not know, there are twelve tribes of Israel, each named after a son of Israel (being Jacob). Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; they came, each one with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. Exodus 1:1-4 Joseph is not listed, because he was already in Egypt and he (along with God of course) is the one that made everything happen to get his family to come to Egypt. God spoke to Jacob telling him to go down to Egypt. Then He said, “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there.” Genesis 46:3 We know that the Egyptians became scared of the number of Israelites in Egypt and that is ultimately what led to their enslavement. We also know about the Exodus where God led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness. By bringing in the sons of Jacob, I felt like I was able to tie in the beginning story of how the Israelites went to Egypt prior to the time spent in the wilderness and show the lineage and reasoning of the tribes of Israel.
Clay – Tabernacle Priests
When I was designing clay I always wanted to bring in the original 5 offerings. This is the law of the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering and the guilt offering, and the ordination offering and the sacrifice of peace offerings Leviticus 7:37 I originally wanted to represent getting rid of evil somehow, especially in some way “sacrificing” their own offerings to discard or negate evil. I am still very new to card design, but when brainstorming clay I was very inexperienced. Sacrificing was shown as discarding, and that just was not good to discard your own good cards for a cost. The benefit for the cost would have to be extremely high and even then you would still be losing resources just to pay the cost of the ability. As much as I love to tie in scripture to themes, functionally, at least what I had designed, just was not working. I ended up switching the discarding of their own cards to reserving their own cards; which allowed more Reserve interaction, which I really like. Let’s take a look at an old school card that got a reprint. Phinehas gets his spear back. Scripturally, Phinehas grabbed his spear and killed a lot of people with it, so it would make sense if this spear could be reserved to discard an evil card, but that was showing to be very strong, especially on Phinehas! Since Phinehas did survive the fight, I wanted to bring in the overall protection from evil and show the benefit of clay reserving their own cards.
Once I had a strong function within the theme I wanted to give priests a “priestly” feel that was strong. I opted to give priests a bit of what they have done in the past and gave different Heroes different protection.
Ahimaaz protects O.T. priests from two separate evil abilities. You’ll also notice that Ahimaaz protects O.T. priests, not clay or teal. You’ll see this same logic applied to all priests, so teal and clay can work together very well during the transition time of teal being absorbed into clay. Clay loves to get their Heroes into battle to gain protection from just about everything! If you are the opponent, it is very difficult to stop these priests once they are all out. You gain benefits from reserving your own cards still, plus you gain protection. I am sure you can think of a card that is already in rotation that would make Tabernacle protection even stronger. I loved seeing different builds during playtesting. There were mono-clay variants, clay-white wilderness variants, clay-white variants, and clay-teal variants, all of which had a different feel.
All of this sounds great, but why is a Hero from II Samuel in a set about the wilderness? It is difficult to have every Hero in a set be from the same time frame. It’s also important to ensure there’s enough Heroes for a theme. Future plans will cover more clay, but we were unsure when we would cover Tabernacle priests, especially as a focal point, so we wanted to bring in all Tabernacle priests. I also thought it was really cool to read about the tribe of Levi and the origins of priestly duties. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 6 “Bring the tribe of Levi forward and present them before Aaron the priest, that they may serve him. 7 They shall perform the duties for him and for the whole congregation in front of the tent of meeting, to do the service of the tabernacle. Numbers 3:5-7 Bringing in all Tabernacle priests made sense both scripturally and allowed for an entire theme with mostly unique Heroes over just generic names.
White – Wilderness
Brown – Wilderness
If you were at Nationals last year you saw the original version, or at least most of it, of this card. I thought it would be fitting to bring in the final version of this card into the last article of Israel’s Rebellion. Brown was very challenging to design. I believe it was the most difficult theme to design, balance, and ensure functionality while maintaining the theme. It was Chris’ idea to have brown interact heavily with Curses. From a Biblical perspective, the very first curse came from this timeframe. The people of the wilderness created false idols rebelled against God, Moses, and did not listen to the laws laid out. For all of these reasons they were cursed and Chris and I really wanted to show that within this theme.
The evil wilderness theme is broken down into two brigades, brown and gray. We wanted each brigade to have a different feel and play differently, while still gaining benefits for being wilderness. I will go more into detail there with gray later in this article. Wilderness brown wants to reserve their Curses, get their Curses from all different locations (Reserve, discard pile, deck), and they want to bounce their active Curse to play the Evil Enhancement side if needed, or use the Curse as a cost for other brown wilderness Characters. Regardless of where the Curse is coming from, wilderness brown Characters want to interact with them somehow. The constant antagonistic approach to consistently activating, grabbing, bouncing, and getting back Curses is so annoying for the opponent to deal with. It just shows how stubborn and persistent these groups of people were who really refused to listen. I always thought it was crazy to see water be split into a wall and then swallow the Egyptian army, see water flow from a rock, and see a pillar of fire and a pillar of a cloud which guides you, yet you still rebel against the Lord! I cannot fathom that.
Looking at Plagued Congregation and we see a massive potential negate ability. You would think I would not want to design a card that punishes drawing, but alas, I try not to be biased. An 8/12 who can negate an entire good brigade is so strong. Also, you can bounce an O.T. Curse, so he’s great against the mirror match or you can bounce your own Curse to have an Evil Enhancement in hand after you got the Curse ability and it’s ongoing. You can also reserve an O.T. Curse if you did not bounce one, which can also mess with the opponent. It seems odd that he would want to Reserve his own Curse, so maybe there are some hidden tricks in the set, who knows.
So what made brown so difficult to design? It was mainly a balancing issue. I do think brown has not been as competitive lately and the last two years really didn’t include brown because of themes, but I also did not want to purposefully design a theme that is too strong. Since brown is wilderness Characters, you have additional benefits you gain through that identifier from other cards, as well as their abilities. They also heavily interact with Curses, which means less space in the set for Evil Enhancements. Assuming there are a few O.T. Curses in the set, we could not create a high amount of brown Evil Enhancements. Curse abilities on the Enhancement side aren’t always too strong due to the nature and flexibility of the card. We had to balance Curse abilities with Evil Enhancement abilities, and then we had to balance how many cards would be allotted to each type. That was an ongoing balancing act while we were trying to ensure the Character abilities were not too strong.
Crimson – “Uncleanliness” Animals
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 23 “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘You shall not eat any fat from an ox, a sheep, or a goat. 24 Also the fat of an animal which dies and the fat of an animal torn by animals may be put to any other use, but you certainly are not to eat it. 25 For whoever eats the fat of the animal from which an offering by fire is offered to the Lord, the person who eats it shall also be cut off from his people. 26 And you are not to eat any blood, either of bird or animal, in any of your dwellings. 27 Any person who eats any blood, that person shall also be cut off from his people.’” Leviticus 7:22-27
I brought in a mini theme into Israel’s Rebellion and I loosely titled it the “unclean” theme. I thought animals could use just a little help. The laws of not eating certain animals, parts of certain animals, and when to eat animals were for sanitation reasons. The people of Israel were given a law from God and it was meant to keep them healthy, which I always thought was awesome. I wanted to represent the “unclean” animals in a small way to help out animals and tell this important aspect of the story of the wilderness where laws were given to the Israelites.
As for the special abilities of this theme, I wanted them all to be annoying for the opponent. Banding is all over the place right now. If you are able to paralyze a key Hero in a territory and win the battle, you are definitely setting yourself up for a much easier block next turn. I also wanted to show a way that represented what happens when you eat something unclean. Paralyzing a Hero for 2 turns represented that aspect in a unique way that made sense to the scripture. It’s a small theme in Israel’s Rebellion, but I do think it will help out animals overall and while still telling a piece of the wilderness story.
Pale Green – Egyptians
I keep saying how challenging themes were to design, but I think a lot of that comes down to being new at card design, so I don’t put too much pressure on myself. Designing pale green started as a capture and release theme with some deck discard. The capture and release was fun, but it took a lot of setup, so functionally it was difficult to get going and was inherently weaker due to needing to capture the Hero(es), then have the cards to release them for benefits. I also realized I was tying in the capture and release theme because of the Egyptians from Exodus and that story, not the Egyptians from Genesis. Gabe helped a lot with this theme as he pointed out I was trying to tie in a lot of functions and themes and Egyptians really did not have a feel for what they were doing.
I went back to the design board and brought in more deck discard, and here is where it gets challenging. If you have too much deck discard it’s not good for the meta. As fun as it is to discard the opponent’s entire deck as quickly as possible, that’s not something we want to run rampant in Redemption. We had to make sure deck discard was a strong theme, but nothing overly powerful.
As fun as it was to give cards deck discard abilities, not everything needed a deck discard ability as we still wanted generally strong abilities to help Egyptians overall. With that being said we brought in a classic strong ability.
The Dreaming Pharaoh is protected from O.T. Heroes and although he is not protected from opponent’s Dominants, I opted to give him an option to play a Genesis Fortress from deck or Reserve. The ability to play a Genesis Fortress from one of two areas is extremely strong. I imagine there’s new Genesis Fortresses, or maybe just 1 Fortress, who knows, in Israel’s Rebellion that you will want to get out sooner than later. The Dreaming Pharaoh allows Egyptians to set up both the offense or defense to show the tie into the relationship that this Pharaoh and Joseph had, while still having a very strong ability for the opponent to overcome. If the opponent is not using O.T. Heroes you still get to play a Genesis Fortress, so there’s always value to this card. Personally, I love Characters who play Fortresses, especially Characters who play Fortresses from deck or Reserve. Sometimes it can be difficult to get Fortresses from Reserve, and sometimes you do not want certain Fortresses main deck, so this card definitely helps with that.
You’ll see plenty of very strong deck discard abilities, but I wanted to show a Character that packs an extra punch for Genesis decks, or Egyptians in general. If you like to discard the opponent’s deck while still being able to feel like you can block, I think you will love the new look of Egyptians.
Gray – Sabbath Breakers/Evil Priests
As I kept saying how difficult it was to design a lot of these themes, I think gray kept the original design concepts the most. Sabbath Breakers are wilderness Characters that are all gray dual brigade. There’s 1 Sabbath Breaker for each current evil brigade, so 5 new Sabbath Breakers. I thought 5 new Sabbath Breakers, plus the Legacy Rare version to have 6 is extremely thematic. 6 Sabbath Breakers when the title of the card has to deal with breaking the Sabbath felt good to me.
Although the scripture talks about one Sabbath Breaker, I thought it was a fun design concept to show one from each brigade and have each Character be generic and different art (thank you Gabe, to create a small wilderness theme in gray. This allows Sabbath Breakers to have access to any wilderness support cards. The main change in Sabbath Breakers was changing their wording in their ability from saying “Sabbath Breaker” to “wilderness humans.” For example, a previous version of a Sabbath Breaker was protecting all versions of Sabbath Breaker and the wording was confusing and was new to Redemption. Instead, we changed the wording to just say wilderness humans (which gave Sabbath Breakers a buff) and allowed for less confusion on the wording. I won’t get too much into Sabbath Breakers as they have been spoiled a bit throughout the last few months.
Evil priests rounded out the rest of the gray brigade in Israel’s Rebellion. One of the priests was way too strong and was just asking to be broken by players, so I changed both evil priests’ (Phinehas and Hophni) abilities to work with one another. Both of their abilities were spoiled in my YouTube channel. That left Nadab and Abihu in the set.
Evil Priests don’t have a specific theme in the set, since it is such a small focus, but I did want to give them each generally good abilities. Nadab has great initiative, messes with the opponent’s options, can band or can reserve the bottom card of a deck. We saw Hophni and Phinehas as the other evil priests and depending on which one you band in, you can either negate Heroes or prevent Enhancements, or both if conditions are met. We are still not sure what Abihu does, but I assume it is something good, especially when paired with this Character. Evil priests definitely want to mess with the opponent and generally be a nuisance based on the 3 we have seen. I wanted to bring in evil priests as I mentioned earlier to round out gray, but also to show that some priests were evil even though their father’s might not have been. The evil priests play into the story of the priests lineage throughout the forty years in the wilderness and I thought they gave gray a boost to a smaller theme with some strength.
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