Buckle up - This is a jumbo article, with a ton of spoilers! End of Times is an incredible set. In my opinion one of the best ever. That said, it would not be the set that it is, nor would it be shipping to you hopefully in mid-November, without the help of an amazing play-test team. Redemption's leadership group - The Elders - is a group of volunteers. All of us have jobs, family, other hobbies, church commitments, and other things in their lives. We all love this game so much, and are happy to give back the gift of our time. That said, we're only 7 people, and we've done A LOT of stuff in the past couple of years - Israel's Inheritance, Times to Come, Fundraiser cards, Roots 2, Times to Come Alt-border, End of Times. We fell behind on End of Times and worked extra hard to get it ready - We recruited one of the biggest and best teams of respected Redemption community members we ever have to help us get it across the finish line. I can confidently say that without the work these gentlemen did End of Times would still be in testing right now. We want to honor them, and thank them, and kick-off the first ever "Play-tester Appreciation Week" with this article. Towards the end of the play-test process I asked the team to send me one card that was their favorite from the set. Below are those cards, and their own words explaining why they picked that card. But first, the incredible team that helped us with End of Times:
Jayden Alstad - Tim Estes - Kurt Hake - Brayden Babij - Micah Rex - Shon Seivers - Mitch Stewart - Luke Marshall - Nic Marshall - Jay Chambers - Jeremy Chambers - Derek Tirado
Not all of them picked a card for this article, but below you'll find some stories from play-testing and an awesome selection of cards from End of Times.
The rest of this week the Elders are taking a break, and you'll get daily spoilers from some of the individuals above. Enjoy!
[WARNING – SPOILERS!!!]
Tim — Wild Dogs
Tim has a personal connection to one of the set's most chaotic cards. He helped shape it from the very beginning. Tim was also instrumental in providing us a much better environment for testing than we've ever had before. Using his Land of Redemption app to play games with testers around the country was huge. We're also utilizing resources he's built for us to innovate and simplify our overall set development process so we can stay on track in the future!
This is my favorite card from the set b/c a long time ago I helped Tyler come up with it! I gave feedback on the original Wild Dogs idea and Tyler came back with this version of Wild Dogs. I feel a personal connection to this card and the shenanigans you can do if you can get lucky with getting the right evil card revealed from your reserve, and I really like the new art of Wild Dogs compared to the initial version.
Kurt — The Man on a Journey
Kurt tested a wide range of the set's new Gospel gold, and while he says it's hard to pick just one, The Man on a Journey stood out.
What's not to love about Van Gogh art on a CBP exchanger Hero who even mills a card to boot? Gospel gold has typically been paired with crimson, but with End of Times's new deck-reserving cards, there are great possibilities for brown (Falsified Claims) and pale green (mill). In one playtest game, I milled Gabe's entire deck in 3 turns.
Luke — The Faithful Followers
Luke found his favorite in a card that did exactly what he wanted it to do, every time he needed it to.
My favorite to test was probably The Faithful Followers because he did everything I wanted. Drew cards and negated evil characters and lost souls. My favorite thing to do was slap Joy on him and get that sweet value. I also love the few times I pulled off the cool combo with him, Joy, and the new dominant for their church that lets you rescue a LS pre-block. Only got it to work once, but it was a wonderful once, lol.
Jay — Paul, Church Planter
Jay found something special in the way this card's ability mirrors its subject's real history.
I find his design to be really thematic with the concept of him being able to play Church of Christ (GoC) from deck — a really beautiful design considering his role in planting churches throughout Asia Minor and into the lower parts of Europe. He's also a super fun card to partner with the various stuff in your GoC deck.
Jayden — Last Curse
Jayden spent his early playtesting on Thessalonians and Animals before shifting to the set's pale green defense, where a favorite came into focus.
Despite doing most of my early playtesting with Thessalonians and Animals, I eventually moved on to testing the pale green defense in the set. One of the main directions that defense can go is hand control, of which I am a big fan, so it seemed a very natural fit to test out. When it comes to hand control Enhancements, it can be difficult to balance them well. Combining a hand control ability with a battle-winning ability can be a lot for one card to do, which is why we have cards like Betrayal, which only does one or the other, or Forbidden Marriage, which has the battle-winning and hand control elements combined into one ability. The problem with combining the two is that your opponent then has Special Initiative before anything gets underdecked. But now with Last Curse, we finally have one that hits the hand first and then has the battle-winning ability, allowing you to remove your opponent's interrupt or negate before putting them in SI. With no modifiers, it is still very interactable, but the simplicity of the ability combined with the flexibility of having the Artifact side to use as well made this one of my favorite cards to playtest.
Mitch — Overflowing Love
Mitch has been involved in testing in various forms over the years, and we always appreciate his perspective on things, he approaches the game from a competitive view, but is also able to see very clearly where we're tripping up in our attempts to keep things simple. He also brings a deep theological passion and love for the Church in how he approaches cards, which reflects in what he picked for this article.
I love the payoff on this card for building the Church of Thessalonica. Paul's prayer for the Church of Thessalonica was that the Lord would cause their love to continually increase and overflow not only toward one another within the church, but toward everyone around them. The card captures that idea beautifully. As the church is built up, its love grows beyond its own walls and overflows to others.
Nic — The Scarlet Beast
Nic frustrated a bunch of opponents by packing one of his decks full of defense. After he went about 5 games without surrendering a soul, we had serious discussion about if we needed to tone down whole swaths of cards to make things balanced. Ultimately the team adapted to what Nic was doing, and souls were rescued once more, but defense is better than ever and players will have to make the same adjustments this season. His card was a major piece of what made his defense hard to fight through.
The Scarlet Beast has been one of my favorite cards because it can attack on many different levels. You can go for NT unity on your lost souls to try to get the cheese block, combining it with some way to get Scarlet Beast off the board so your opponent doesn't get a chance to negate it. And she actually accomplishes this fully on her own by being able to band to the Harlot, who can then tutor up a variety of ways to get Scarlet Beast off the board — or you can go for the classic Outsiders-to-Abom block by activating a curse to discard your opponent's character, forcing them to have a negate neutral in hand. It's a card that is versatile and has so many lines of play to it that will influence your deck-building decisions in addition to how you go about blocking with her. Yet there's also a lot of counterplay to the card. If everyone else is on NT unity, maybe I go to OT unity to get that sweet Blind lost souls and multiple ways to give my opponent OT souls to shut off one of their potential best blocks... maybe negating evil characters pre-block becomes an absolute necessity (it already kind of is). It has the potential to be a meta-shaping card, and that excites me!
Jeremy — The False Prophet
Jeremy had a tough time narrowing down his selection, he gave me a good card and an evil one before I told him he had to pick just 1, he selected The False Prophet - I should also note that at the time, TFP was only Pale Green, the Crimson was added at the 11th hour after suggestions from final reviewers of the set - We felt it was appropriate for an evil character of such notoriety to be dual-brigade, making him even better than Jeremy thought when he wrote this:
False Prophet was my favorite evil character to block with. He can take a wide variety of cards, and his numbers are great for getting initiative.
Micah & Shon — Justice Seekers
Justice Seekers was a card that a bunch of people really enjoyed testing - Micah and Shon both picked it for this article, and then I had to fend off 3 Elders that also wanted to spoil it for you.
Here's what Micah had to say about it:
Personal favorite card is probably Justice Seekers. It just feels like that one piece that brings the martyr offense together, is the most thematic martyr card imo, and is an amazing value-over-time card.
And this is why Shon selected it:
Introduces a new play-style that revolves around bringing cards back from the discard pile. This concept encourages new cards to be made that put things in the discard pile from territory, or more importantly, deck. The more card types that can do that concept, the more plausible a complete 'graveyard' deck is functional.
