Baboony's Brain Dump: Nationals 2025 Edition

I've been thinking about Redemption a lot lately. I just need somewhere where I can turn my thoughts into words and share with you all a random semi-coherent bundle of ideas to consider going into Nationals 2025, happening in one week!

A Living Puzzle

I love Redemption for many reasons, and one of them is the unexplored depth that is available in the current set of Rotation cards. Part of man's calling is exploring the unknown and naming, ordering, and bringing structure out of chaos. Sometimes, Redemption feels a bit like that to me. It's a large card pool of cards (ie raw material) that has endless complexities and each card can interact with each other. I strive to uncover the "best" combination of them all in each constructed format. Just like how musicians take the raw material of nine musical notes and create countless melodies with it. But unlike notes, which are set in stone, Redemption changes over time, moving, breathing, evolving with each shift in the metagame and each new promo/set release. It doesn't get old for me. Like a Rubik's cube that's always changing. Nothing ever feels "solved." And I like taking the paradigms that people feel like are solved and turning them inside out.

Let's talk about a paradigm that has begun to be challenged this year:

"100 card decks are strictly worse than 50 card decks"

Last year, if you took a 100 card deck to a Type 1 tournament, you'd get a bunch of raised eyebrows and would be expected to time out every round b/c of how long people thought it would take to finish a game.

Common wisdom and a basic understanding of statistics tells us that its a bad idea to decrease the chance you'll draw your best cards (Son of God and Second Coming, namely) by adding cards to your deck size.

I assumed so too, until last year I played a "for fun" game against my dear friend Agur the Wise who was trying out a new idea: a 100 card deck in Type One. He brewed up a brown deck that took advantage of the fact you could play 2 Wandering Israelites in the same deck and exchange them with each other 4 times and draw 4 cards per block (in theory). Oh, and it was also trying to lock you out of the game via Shimei Taunts.

I had no idea what I was walking into. I sleeved up my Nativity/Herods deck that I used to win Nationals last year and thought it was going to be a walk in the park. But as soon as the first turn started and I walked into his wandering Israelite trap, it felt like we were playing different games altogether. What's the phrase, "he was playing chess, while I was playing checkers?"

Before I start talking about the nuances of 100 card decks, I'd like to shout out my love for AgurTheWise's approach to deck-building, and have been inspired greatly by it. Often times, the deck-building process starts with the question: "What if..." or a specific card stands out to you.

For this deck both happened, Agur found Shimei and then asked a what if question: "What if I could lock my opponent out of the game with Shimei?" And then he leaned fully into the extreme and came up with a list like nobody had ever seen. He played the game against me (handily crushing me), and had a bunch of tweaks he wanted to add to the next version of the deck. As more and more games are played with the list, more and more and refined his lists become. In each game, he's evaluating the purpose of each card, and cutting it if the data gained from practice indicates he should do so.

He also spends a lot of time researching cards related to his central theme. For example, this deck was brown-based, and you can imagine he spent time going through each brown evil character in the rotation card pool and individually evaluating each one. Yes, this is an obscene amount of legwork to do. But its something you can continually do over time, becoming more and more familiar with the card pool until the connections between cards start coming naturally to you and in theory you could start building lists in your head based upon that knowledge.

If you are looking for a tool that could help you in your deck-building research, I built an easy to use card search tool that let's you get very specific with what kind of filters you can apply when you perform a search for Redemption cards: (for example, filter by brown evil characters in this screenshot). Check out the tool here: https://redemption-tournament-tracker.vercel.app/decklist/card-search

Coming back to the topics of 100 card decks, let's think about the question: "Are 100 card decks better than 50 card decks?" And I think the answer to that (like most answers in life) is "it depends."

It's a question that doesn't have a straight answer. I'd like to chip away at some of the nuance of the answer by first listing the pros and cons of a 100 card deck vs a 50 card deck in Type 1:

100 Card Pros

• You have access to more resources (namely Dominants) than a 50 card opponent
  • This I believe is ultimately the biggest pro 100 card lists have. If you build your 100 card list in a way where you can get to your Dominants in a somewhat fast manner, it will be hard for a 50 card deck to go blow-for-blow against you in the battle phase. Dominants are the undisputed best card type in the game, and the flexibility they have by being able to be played at almost any moment and are by nature Cannot Be Negated makes them game warping. And the current card pool has a critical mass of battle dominants (dominants that can be used to win a battle) that can be easily leveraged in 100 card lists. Angel of the Lord, Angel of God, Burial, Christian Martyr, Chronicles of the Kings, Doubt, Falling Away, Glory of the Lord, Grapes of Wrath, Led Astray, Murderous Command, Ride on Victoriously, Strife (more on Strife later), The Resurrection, Three Woes, Warrior Overtaken. Good luck trying to mentally track and play around all of these...

Not only do you have access to more dominants, but you have access to more heroes and evil characters and enhancements. If a game goes long, the 50 card player could in theory come to a point where they can't win anymore due to them "running out of gas" if the 100 card list is able to get to that point in the game.

• You can play multiple copies of some cards, namely single brigade, fortress, artifact, and site cards.
  • The deck building rules for Redemption aren't the most straightforward. Basically, for Type 1, you can't play multiple copies of Lost Souls, Dominants, and Multi Brigade cards (cards with more than 1 brigade at face value). Everything else, you can play 1 copy per 50 cards in your deck (hence 100 cards being the number I'm comparing 50 cards to) There are some single brigade cards that are very very powerful in multiples:

This isn't an exhaustive list of cards that work well in multiple copies in a deck, its more of a spring board to give you an idea of what types of things you can do when multiple copies of cards are opened up. Imagine being able to chain 2 attacks of protected disciples and souls in a row... Imagine being able to draw 4 cards with your Wandering Israelites... Imagine being able to block with Prince after he is discarded early on in the game since you play 2 copies. Imagine being able to place 2 Possessing Spirits in your opponent's territory 2 turns in a row and use Simon the Zealous to choose them to block. Imagine you can use Pride of lions to band to 3 copies of Negev Lions (for the 150 deck size enthusiasts. I am a big fan of big decks, but I tap out around 140 cards. Anything larger becomes almost impossible to reasonably shuffle).

100 Card Cons

• 100 Card lists are harder to master. 100 cards is a lot of cards to know inside out and be familiar enough to process the amount of information needed in a timely manner in order to function in a tournament setting. There is no two ways around it. But like with anything in life, practice can help and lead to mastery, given the time and dedication. 100 card lists used to be so unapproachable to me, but now I'm able to navigate Big Clay with muscle memory b/c of how many repetitions I have with the deck.
• With more cards in your deck, you have more options to put in answers that can be leveraged by your tutor cards. Think of it being like you have access to an industrial toolbox of answers while your opponent only has a Swiss Army knife. Consider how many options I can get to if I have a Deceiver in my hand for the Big Clay deck while blocking. I can go to Herod the Great and push out their big banding chain. I can go to Foreign Wives in the reserve, I can go to Woman of Thebez for the Chump block, I can go to Balaam to get any evil dominant (Burial anyone?). The power level and skill cap for cards like Crowd's Choice, The Deceiver, and Angel of the Winds goes through the roof in 100 card decks.
• When playing 100 cards, it can become a lot harder to get to the right cards at the right times. When you put 50 additional cards it your deck, it halves your chances of naturally drawing Son of God. For example, in a 50 card deck with seven lost souls, you have about a 20% chance of drawing Son of God in your opening hand. In a 100 card deck with 14 lost souls, this percentage goes down to about 10%. Ultimately, most people make the decision to play 50 cards for the sake of consistency. In a tournament setting, you want to have a deck that can consistently execute its game plan and also draw Son of God and Second Coming in a timely manner. And on paper, 100 card decks have a lot going against them in this department
  • But if I could play Devil's Advocate for a moment. I think the perspective that 100 card decks are inherently more inconsistent than 50 card decks to be a flawed premise. For example, let's say I build a 50 card disciple deck and design it in a way that I have an 80% chance of getting to a Matthew on turn one

Based upon this selection of cards, it would also be easy to build a 100 card version of the deck that also had the same average chance of getting to Matthew on turn 1 by doubling up on the cards that search for him and adding additional tutors. (IE 2 New Covenants, 2 Spirit as Dove, 2 Angel from Sun, 2 Reassuring Angels, 2 Angel of the Winds, 2 Angelic Guidance)

Granted, this was a cherry picked example. There are 11 billion ways to get to an early Matthew, and they can all be doubled up on for the most part. But you can't double up on ways to get to Son of God, right? Well, that's where the deck building element comes into play. There exist in Redemption, a few ways to search Son of God out of your deck, and if you include multiple copies of these cards in your deck, you can actually have a better chance of getting to Son of God than other 50 card decks, ironically

So I'd say that depending on how you build your 100 card deck, it actually isn't harder to get to the right card at the right time, you just become a lot more dependent upon search effects to get to those cards. So cards that punish searching will generally speaking be a lot more effective against 100 card decks

The Tradeoffs of 100 Card Decks

Nothing in life is ever a free lunch. And everything has a tradeoff. Being more vulnerable to Nazareth is one of the tradeoffs you accept when picking up a 100 card list. But again, if I may play devil's advocate again. Nazareth isn't being played in any capacity except by CtheTree to moderate success that I've seen this tournament season (and I've held my finger very close to the tournament pulse of 2025, being at the hub of Land of Redemption and closely monitoring Discord for incoming decklists), If you build your 100 card deck with enough answers to disruption (Prince of the Air, Lost Child Found) or card draw, statistically speaking Nazareth and these other types of punishing effects shouldn't be an issue.

I believe well constructed 100 card decks will beat out most 50 card decks in head to head matchups, even 50 card decks that get off to blazingly fast starts. I believe the recent online Lackey Grand Prix results are starting to show this:

• LGP 21 Results
  • 1st Place Card Game Fanatic's 100 card Silver / Orange:

• 2nd Place Baboony Tim's Big Clay:

LGP 21 had a finals showdown of two 100 card decks. LGP 22 was also won by a 100 card list. I believe 100 card decks aren't a meme anymore, and people who dismiss them do so at their own risk. Going into Nationals, I'm excited to represent the "Beeg" decks and I am curious to see how well 100 cards lists do over the course of a long day. Decision fatigue is a real thing. And hubris is a real threat to me. Hubris is defined as "excessive pride or self-confidence, often leading to a character's downfall." Despite my recent success with Big Clay, I'm not trying to go into Nationals expecting to win. Tyler has been gunning for me (his tuned prophet/thief deck I think he's going to bring can really put the hurt on clay decks), and I believe CtheTree has been developing some tech to swing the 100 card matchup in their favor. Each time I face Jayden, I know he's getting more understanding about how to beat the Big Clay matchup. And not to mention Brian Jones will be piloting a 100 card list very similar to mine. I'll have to be at the top of my game, and have to have a strong mental fortitude to defend the Type 1 title. I need to take each match one turn and one game at a time.

I'm really excited at what kind of possibilities there are for 100 card lists in Type 1, and when the new set comes out, I can't wait to see what directions I can further take the archetype.

Prince of the Air

Let's talk about Prince of the Air. I've been constantly impressed with this card, and I think it's going to have the most influence on Nationals 2025. Based upon my experience of playing with and against this card, players will need to adapt to this card or get absolutely wrecked by it.

Oh yeah, and if you are running Prince and Mediums, Strife is actually a solid Dominant to play in your deck (if you are playing 100 cards and need extra Dominants)

Here are a couple ways players can adapt, ranked by effectiveness:

• Play mono-brigade offenses (Joshua, Prophets, Purple Warriors, etc.) Prince doesn't do a whole lot when X=1.
• Play forms of protection that are hard for prince to get around of (I Am He, Root of Jesse, Obadiah's Hidden 100, etc)
• Try to attack Prince in hand or in territory (Twenty Shekels, Promised Land, Expatriator, Redemption)
• Cut Good Seed (and good cards with outrageous amounts of good brigades) from your deck. Disciples players showing up to Nationals, please do this. You'll be thankful you did...
• Adapt your play style in game. Try to only play out meek clay heroes while piloting a Disciples deck, for example. Or don't get stuck drawing and searching each turn instinctively. Ask yourself before you reach for your Reserve to grab an enhancement out of it during your prep phase with Storehouse, "Will this search cause Judean Mediums + Prince to be a big avoidable problem for me this turn?" CBN Mediums + Prince will mess your day up. Extreme forms of adapting to Prince can be even not attacking into them if you know a Prince block would shift the momentum of the game by him being able to underdeck several key cards.

Hot Takes (2025)

Most Underrated Card: Concealed Riches

Concealed riches is a combo enabler. And I believe its potential is only just being discovered. Being able to grab a package of powerful cards from your reserve can lead to some really hard to stop rescues. For example, in a disciples deck, it can grab Simon the Zealous, Golgotha (when played, getting Possessing Spirit), and the Cross to lead for a really hard to block Choose the Blocker rescue.

I believe Riches is best when leveraged "offensively" by your Heroes and are immediately able to cache on the investment you made. Expect this card to show up often in my deck builds from now on, and expect spicy packages to come out of nowhere.

Best Hero: Resurrection Revealer

Imagine for a second you could play a hero in your deck that said this:

• Negate Opponent's Neutral cards
• When you attack, search your deck for a Gospel Fortress and put it into play.
• May band to 3 N.T. humans
• Draw 2 cards

Well, a majority of the time, that's exactly what this card does on turn 1, thanks to the Resurrection:

This card does so much for so little, and to top it all off, there are a million ways to get out Resurrection Revealer early.

And it's easy enough to get another gospel angel in play to satisfy the negate neutral effect. Resurrection Revealer can easily turn off 3-6 cards from the opponent's deck for little investment, not to mention ignore annoying Lost Souls such as Subdued.

Honorable mentions: Simon the Zealous, Matthew the Publican

Best Evil Character: Judean Mediums

This card has quietly become the best evil character in Redemption in my opinion, with the printing of Prince of the Air and Balaam, Son of Beor this last year. There is now a critical mass of great Demons and Magicians to band to that are really scary to face down. Any searching and drawing are such common occurrences before blocks are declared that most of the time Mediums is Cannot be Negated.

The threat of CBN Mediums + Prince is enough to make me pass the turn in some matchups to give me the time I need to dig to my answers to it. Without The Judean Mediums around Prince of the Air becomes 10x less scary. Thief players wanting to splash Prince of the Air (or any other defense for that matter), at least put Judean Mediums into your reserve and Deceiver in your main deck. You'll probably be glad you did. She (or he? I don't know with this card considering the older Judean mediums depicts a male) is also great for randomly banding to your opponent's Prince of the Air, which can be backbreaking if they thought they already dealt with your copy of Prince.

Honorable Mentions: Prince of the Air, Possessing Spirit

Best Artifact: The New Covenant (I/J+)

This card supercharges the consistency of any gospel deck. The amount of great Gospel enhancements that this can get is quite stunning. My favorite targets? Angelic Guidance and Spirit as a Dove. Having an artifact that basically says "Grab any good card from your deck each turn" is such a powerful effect. Being able to pivot between grabbing battle winners, disruption (Lost Child Found), protection (I am He), and tutors make this card the "Deceiver" and "Angel of the Winds" of Artifacts and the best one you could be playing at the moment, provided you are in gospel. Heck, even some Joshua decks run it b/c of how easy it makes it to get to Amazing Faith, Lost Child Found, and Teaching in Parables.

In the card search tool, did you know you can filter by Gospel cards??

Honorable mentions: Book of the Covenant, Denarius

Best Site: Golgotha

This card is sneaky good. The ability to take a Possessing Spirit out of your deck or reserve is great. You can bounce this card with Lost Child Found and get to take another character. Also, some offenses out there really can't deal with the first evil enhancement you play each battle being "Cannot Be Prevented." Recently, I've been liking to grab this card out of my deck with Angelic Guidance and then using Golgotha to setup a Possessing Spirit choose the blocker.

Honorable mentions: Damascus, Jerusalem

Best Fortress: Herod's Temple

Imagine if you could play a deck where each hero and evil character in your deck had the choice each battle to start tossing all enhancements. Wouldn't that be insane? Well, that's actually what Herod's Temple does do. And you can get it out very early between The Resurrection and Simon Peter. Do I also need to point out it gives your Gospel humans (good AND evil) protection from harm? Oh, and it can also hold Herod's Temple artifact.

This card does so much for one slot. Is John Hendrix justified for this being one of his most disliked cards? Yes, he absolutely is. The last nuance I'll point out for this card is that is aligned good, so it's generally very hard to deal with this card when attacking the opponent. As far as I'm aware, only Daniel and Joshua's Sword deal with it effectively in battle on offense. This card single handedly makes Herods an S-tier defense and helps contributes to the dominance of Disciples. Joshua's Sword and Prince of the Air are the best 2 answers to this card, and I expect many Temples to crumble against such targeted removal.

Honorable mentions: Bethlehem Stable, Coliseum

Best Good Enhancement: The Ascension

You'll notice a theme with how I'm starting to pitch these "best" cards. Imagine a good enhancement that said "interrupt the battle, draw 4 cards. Protect N.T. Lost Souls from evil cards. Search your deck for any card. Toss the next evil enhancement played. Bounce an evil character in battle. Cannot Be Negated" Wouldn't you want to play that? Well often enough, The Ascension does exactly this. One little enhancement can swing the momentum of the a game in a way that the opponent can't interact or deal with. And the only thing it requires from you? Play great heroes. Done.

Honorable Mentions: Spirit as a Dove, I Am He, Authority of Christ

Best Evil Enhancement: N/A

This section has been left intentionally blank. I believe Evil Enhancements are the worst card type in Redemption currently. With the amount of powerful battle winning dominants running around, in combination with choose the blocker and Herod's Temple tossing, good luck getting initiative and playing your evil enhancements these days. You want to try to win battles with your Evil Characters and Evil Dominants, rather than trying to play enhancement negate wars in my opinion.

But if I really had to choose to the best evil enhancement, it would probably be Futile Inquisition. If you are deciding to play EEs, you need to play ones that just win the battle outright with any response. I love stalemate cards b/c they cannot be interrupted implicitly. Play Golgotha and *chefs kiss you are bound to get a block with this. I also love "Scatted" cards like No Straw, Scattered, Reap the Whirlwind, and Scattered Sheep. Oh, and also cards like Contagious Fear and Swine Stampede that protect/remove souls. These also don't give initiative. Cards I don't like? Please stop putting Blasphemies in your demon decks. That card doesn't do anything against 99% of well built offenses.

Honorable Mentions: Unsuccessful, Suicidal Swine Stampede

Best Lost Soul: The First

I love this card. In a meek soul deck, it can become a sneaky draw engine. Play Harvest time while you have High Places out and you get to draw 8 cards.

I don't get the infatuation people seem to have with Shepherds and Grumbled. Draw 1 to underdeck 1? That has a very minimal effect on the game. Here's a soul that really gets you ahead in life.

Pair it with Herod's Temple and draw 4 cards every time you attack and block. Turn you Ascension and Lost Child found star abilities into "Draw a card."

Going second and you put a first and a meek into play T1? You'll start your first turn with 4 cards instead of 3. And each draw ability you use that turn becomes that draw ability + 1. John attack draw 2? Oh, actually, I'll draw 3. Prince of the World block, draw 2? Oh actually I'll draw 3.

I believe between Burial, Led Astray, and The First, the reason to play meek lost souls is very strong right now.

Honorable Mentions: Subdued, Prosperity, Hopper

Best Good Dominant: Glory of the Lord*

Glory is one of the best battle dominants ever printed, on par with Christian Martyr and Angel of the Lord, and in some cases, even better. It can be used on offense or defense. Pair it up with Prince of the World or Husham the Temanite and you've got yourself a solid block. Push a large banding chain of heroes into battle, slam a Glory down while they try to play evil enhancements in 2025.

When playing Redemption in 2025, this is probably the card I'm most afraid of the opponent having on a given turn. I believe all decks should be running this card

Honorable mentions: Three Woes, Ride On Victoriously

*Besides Son of God and Second Coming, of course

Best Evil Dominant: Burial

This card is pretty much an auto block against most attacks. And it threatens to make multiple blocks in a row if you soul drought your opponent. My favorite thing to do with Burial? Play Harvest time, put all my Meeks into play, then Bury them all to the bottom of my deck (while having deck protection out). It's hilarious! You should try it some time.

When facing a deck playing meek lost souls, this is the card I'm scared of the most.

Honorable Mentions: Three Woes, Crowd's Choice

Favorite Card Right Now: Temple Guard

This card can do so many cool things. Being able to play any black evil enhancement with a band or capture ability is very strong. Pair this with Tenants Kill the Son & Goliath and you've got a very strong block:

For those unfamiliar, here's why this block is especially potent:

1. Tenants will band to Goliath
2. Goliath will trigger, negating the band of Tenants and the play of Temple Guard, placing Tenants back into your hand
3. Then Goliath will kick all non-giants layers out of battle, forcing opponent to present a presumably lone hero into battle
4. Then you can complete the discard ability of Tenants Kill the son, choosing to discard their lone hero
5. Opponent can't play a targeted negate to stop this, since they cannot target Tenants which is now in your hand. They would have to play a series of cards that gets Tenants out of your hand to stop the discard. For example, Reach of Desperation to Interrupt the Battle and then Play Testing Solomon to underdeck the Tenants from hand. A "negate last evil enhancement played in battle" would also work.

Oh, and recently I've been enjoying what happens when you convert Temple Guard to a hero and start using him to band to all of your heroes at whim... such endless (and possibly broken) possibilities

100 Card Tips

This is a little late advice, but if you are planning to bring a 100 card deck to Nationals this year, here are a few bits of wisdom I've picked up.

• Use the right sleeves. Usually I like dragon shield Matte sleeves, but found them unwieldy when trying to mash 2 piles of 50 cards together. The edges kept getting bent. I found Heavy Play's Curv Sleeves to be the absolute best (but expensive) sleeves for 100 card decks. The shuffle experience with these makes shuffling night/day better, easier, and faster. Don't show up to Nationals with a pack of fresh new sleeves. Your deck will fall over faster than a stack of potato chips.
• Know your deck. Not to repeat Tyler, but knowing ALL 100 cards in your deck is critical to playing efficiently in a tournament setting. Try to know what you are searching for before starting to search your deck, as opposed to riffling through during a search trying to decide and familiarize yourself with your options. This is an area where I'm trying to improve myself. At night, each night, I try to remember all my Deceiver targets, for example. Practice practice practice.
• Practice shuffling 100 cards. If you've never shuffled 100 card decks before, take some time ahead of time getting a feel for what it's like to handle that many cards. Find a shuffling system that is fast and efficient (I just like mashing 2 halves of 100 card deck together. Made easier by the Curv sleeves...) and do it over and over again until you can do it without dropping cards on the table. You'll be shuffling a lot if you've designed your deck to be anything like the 100 card lists I've been working on.

Conclusion

Those are my random thoughts leading into Nate 2025. I wish I could share more about the decks I've decided to bring to the tournament, but this Nationals I want to preserve some element of surprise. Be sure I'll be writing a tournament report article or doing a tournament recap video and sharing the lists I chose and all the decisions that went into those decklists.

I'll also be trying to publish all T1 and T2 lists from Nationals this year on Land of Redemption. That will take some time, considering I have to manually put each list into Lackey one at a time.

I hope to see you at Nationals this year! Come say hi if you see me! You can probably find me because I'm playing with a deck that is absurdly beeg.