Today we continue Zac C.’s overview of all the brigades in Redemption (pre-PoC), with the remaining 5 good brigades.
White is brigade of misfit themes. Don’t know what brigade to put a theme it? Put it in White. We will start with the most-used theme, that being Martyrs and Musicians. These can be run separately, but they work so well together I’m combining them. For the Martyr portion, we have Justin Martyr as our main hero, giving us searching and recursion of Word of Their Testimony and Blood of the Lamb, which is a good kill card and an awesome negate and draw. We also have Polycarp to stop negates and he searches out John the Revelator from Reserve. Angel of the Sun, Patmos, and Priests of Christ help us to search out the heroes we need, and Peter can heal the Clay ones, along with making Gamaliel’s Speech cannot be negated. Fifth Seal/Justice Seekers should also be in here, but it’s usually used as an enhancement. Antipas and Faithful Witness are viable options too, if you can find the room.
For the Musicians side, Chenaniah, Music Leader, and The Twenty-Four Elders are your main options. Music Leader lets you get out all your music cards 2 at a time, which includes You Will Remain, “Today”, Warning Against Rebellion, Hate Wickedness, Love Righteousness, and Word of Christ. Fearless Traveler, Cymbals of the Levites, and The Lord Goes Before You could also take a spot if room allows. Other essential cards include The Woman with Child with A Child is Born in Reserve, Consider the Lilies, Life Through Christ, and Overcome!, but these will go in most any White deck. You can also throw in Heavenly Temple and some of the Temple artifacts, as it makes The Twenty-Four Elders cannot be negated and most of the Martyrs can take advantage of the artifacts. This deck works very well with Brown, as they share many of their enhancements, including Kinsmen’s Agreement, Daughter’s Grief, and Cast into Lion’s Den, along with some others already mentioned above. If you see someone using White, it’s most likely some version of this deck.
For some lesser-used themes, we have Garden Girls, Ruth, Daniel, and Exodus. Hopefully Ruth, Daniel, and Exodus will see some more play once Prophecies of Christ comes out, but as of right now they are under-used, and I’ll just give you a cliff notes. Garden Girls focuses round the 4 NT females that can use Garden Tomb, along with Susanna and The Woman with Child, and a few powerful enhancements that center around NT females. It can pair well with NT Gold and Disciples and can go well with a defense that can kill off your opponent’s defense, but hasn’t seen play since they changed how ignore works.
Ruth is based around using Elders of the City, Naomi, Boaz, and Ruth for the I/J deck, along with the enhancements from that deck and Boaz’ Sandal. They have lots of searching and banding, but not a ton of outright power. They recently got some dual alignment cards that help them pair well with Moabites. To make Ruth work, you really have to combine it with another offense, such as Judges or any other White, preferably OT, offense, since it only has 4 heroes.
Daniel is the next offense and revolves around the Daniel banding chain of Daniel, Abednego (Azariah), Meshach (Mishael), and Shadrach (Hananiah), then ending the chain with the Daniel reference version of Michael or Gabriel. You also have The Foretelling Angel to make your Daniel cards cannot be negated. These are all good heroes, but there aren’t many Daniel enhancements to use with them, so you need to use good non-theme specific White enhancements. However, since you will never get initiative, you will only be using negates.
Finally, we have Exodus. As it stands right now, Exodus is all about getting out and abusing Moses. All the cards are for either protecting him or searching him out of deck. This deck will also use Angel under the Oak, as Moses is judge. There is a lot of support for Moses coming in the next set, including a Green Moses, so I would expect to see this deck around more and in different forms. A few non-theme specific cards that haven’t been mentioned include Naaman’s Servant Girl, Lamb’s Righteousness, Transfiguration, Blessings, Words of Encouragement, and Moses and Elders.
Purple is the brigade of Disciples and Royalty. Disciples haven’t seen support in a few years, but they are still viable if you really want them to be. With Disciples you will most likely be running 10-11 disciples, the main ones being Thaddeus, Peter, John, and Matthew, along with Polycarp and Reassuring Angels. Since the changes to how ignore works making The Garden Tomb a lot less powerful, your best bet is getting out Thaddeus with as many other disciples as possible and running Crown of Thorns or Covenant with Adam to lower your opponent’s defensive numbers and be cannot be interrupted protected from everything. If you lose Thaddeus, you can always try The Garden Tomb with Peter and John, banding with Phillip and Bartholomew, and drawing/cannot be negated enhancements with Matthew and Thomas. Good enhancements include My Lord and My God, Authority of Christ, Faith as a Mustard Seed, and Passover Hymn. Fishing boat is also great for drawing and site access, but at the cost of taking your Disciples out of play. Disciples also have lots of drawing and not a lot of searching, making them perfect to run Nazareth. You can run most any defense with this, but ones with territory protection helps protect against your own Authority of Christ, and ones with less searching and more drawing make Nazareth more valuable.
Royalty runs in 2 main forms: Kings of Judah/Solomon’s Temple and Throne. Throne decks usually revolve around Angel under the Oak and Samuel getting out King Saul and David the Shepherd, who then pulls out The Throne of David and your Red OT heroes. You then proceed to band in Ahimelek the Hittite and play kill cards using The Throne of David, all the while drawing off Throne, Samuel, King Saul, Abigail, and so forth. You also have King Amaziah and Ashael for choose the blocker abilities and King Jehu to exchange with your Red heroes to discard their Royalty. It’s an extremely fast deck that has been one of the top offenses for years and it pairs with just about any defense out there.
On the complete other side of things, you have Kings of Judah/Solomon’s Temple. Instead of going fast, Kings of Judah/Solomon’s Temple can keep a character in battle for a very long time with Solomon’s Temple’s ability. Solomon’s Temple also lets you have up Golden Cherubim, and Seventh Seal can help you always have a teal enhancement to make Solomon’s Temple work. Melchizedek is also a great addition to this deck, along with Every Tribe. Because its ability also works with Evil Characters, this deck will almost always be paired with a Kings of Judah Brown defense. This deck will use many of the same Purple cards as a Throne deck, as well as The Throne of David, but this deck plays the long game. Since slower decks are less consistent, you don’t see Kings of Judah/Solomon’s Temple as much, but it’s still definitely a contender. Enhancements used in both Royally offenses include: Unified Kingdom, Peace Treaty, Royal Parade, Counsel of Abigail, Valley of Salt, Faith of David, Pentecost, and David’s Census.
Silver reminds me a lot of Green brigade: You won’t see it mono very often, but you will see it a lot. Silver does have more viable mono options than Green however, along with being harder to target since they are all Angels. You will see Silver heroes in many other decks, but I will mention them with their respective themes. The main offense you will see with mono-Silver is Revelation Angels. This deck doesn’t have a set theme really, other than just playing kill cards and going in with large numbers and negates. It does have a lot of searching however, with Angels of Wrath getting out all 7 Bowls of Wrath and Grapes of Wrath, Michael, Priests of Christ, and Patmos searching out Revelations angels, Angel from the Altar and Fifth Seal/Justice Seekers getting cards from reserve, Servant Angel drawing or searching for The Heavenly Temple or a Heavenly Temple artifact, One of Seven getting out New Jerusalem, Seven Trumpet Sounders and Seventh Seal getting out Trumpet cards, Angel of Revelation for lost soul generation and getting a good card from the top of deck, and Angelic Guidance getting out any Silver card. You can also use Polycarp to search out John, the Apocalyptist, who can play Revelation enhancements regardless of brigade. Heavenly Temple can help “instead” away some of your opponent’s defense and hold some helpful artifacts, such as Ark of the Covenant, The Golden Altar, Golden Censer, The Great White Throne, and The Seven Trumpets. The main decision you need to make with this deck is if you will run the Revelation of John Michael for the search and band, or the Angel Wars Michael with Angel’s Sword for cannot be negated enhancements and play ability, as well as either the Kings The Strong Angel for fight by the numbers that Revelation of John Michael can band to or the Revelation of John The Strong Angel for initiative and tossing “Negated” enhancements. Other cards that work in this deck include Captain of the Host, Three Angels, Gabriel, Chamber of Angels, Spiritual Warfare, Protection of Angels, Striking Herod, War in Heaven, Vengeance of Eternal Fire, Day of Fury, Everlasting Beings, The Second Seal, and Flaming Sword.
Silver has lots of options as you can see, but its lack of speed has kept it from being a top tier deck – that is, until the Angel Party Deck came out. Angel Party uses the powerful banding enhancements in Silver to band in all your big heroes and either play an enhancement off The Strong Angel or just overwhelm your opponent. By adding in Captain of the Host for fight by the numbers banding, Angel under the Oak for his draw 2 and numbers, Wheel within a Wheel for more searching, and adding Justin Martyr and Angel from the Sun for more drawing and kill cards, this deck can get out surprisingly fast. These decks can run with most any defense, except maybe defenses using Red Dragon, as his ability becomes less useful with Michael out.
Teal as a brigade hasn’t see a lot of love in the last few sets, but it still has some fun things to offer. Teal is all about OT Priests, and there are 3 fortresses they center around. First there is The Tabernacle, which has powerful reserve access and recursion. Your main heroes are going to be Dutiful Priest using Gifts and Offerings and Phinehas, son of Eleazar using Zeal for the Lord over and over. This offense can also pair well with Judges, as you have Eli the Priest and Eli’s Sound Advice to use, musicians as The Tabernacle works for them as well and Aaron to Moses is a thing, and Red, with Phinehas, son of Eleazar, Ahimaaz, and Trumpet and Sword. Other good cards specific to this theme would be Eleazar, Son of Aaron and Aaron’s Staff for some powerful searching.
The next fortress is Zerubbabel’s Temple, or Z-Temple for short. Z-Temple offers protection from capture, banish, and conversation, and with Covenant with Phinehas/Altar of Incense, you can have protection from discard too. You try to run all the priests that are Z-Temple and from the House of Eleazar and band them all together using cards like Fellowship Offering and Jehoiada’s Strength to get giant numbers protected from most kill cards. You have Zerubbabel, Haggai, and Filling Zerubbabel’s Temple to get out Z-Temple and speed with Joiada, Son of Eliashib, who can recur and play any gift or offering enhancement, including Pentecost and First Fruits. This can go well with any defense, but ones using Coliseum or Babel would help stop chump blocks, which your big protected numbers can’t do anything about.
The final main fortress for teal is Solomon’s Temple. This offense offers a good “instead” ability to protect your Priests and Kings of Judah, which is why it’s usually paired with that offense. Actually, this offense is usually mostly Purple, just with teal enhancements thrown in to make Solomon’s Temple’s ability work. All of these temples can also hold many powerful artifacts, such as Altar of Incense, The Bronze Laver, The Silver Trumpets, Golden Cherubim (Except The Tabernacle), Ark of the Covenant, Book of the Covenant, Lampstand of the Sanctuary, and Tables of the Law, and can be protected by Glory of the Lord (except Z-Temple). Other useful cards across all of Teal include Urim and Thummim, Scapegoat, Trumpet Blast, Melchizedek, Seventh Seal, and Every Tribe.
Clay has gotten the most support in recent years, but it’s also the newest brigade so that’s to be expected. You won’t see straight clay run a whole lot, as usually it’s mixed with White or Green (especially Musicians/Martyrs), but there are viable themes for straight Clay. Jerusalem has a few powerful heroes, with Rhoda, Stephen, Nicanor, Nicolas of Antioch, and Jude. Many of these are also Deacons and mix well with Widow’s Tables as well. Philippians also have a powerful hero in the fight by the numbers Clement and the other Philippian cards that help power him up. There are many other Clay themes, but none are used all that much anymore, such as Colossae, Thessalonians, Missionaries, and Corinthians.
Two major themes that have gone by the wayside have been Fruits of the Spirit and Armor of God offenses, and their ultimate culmination in the Children of Light deck, better known as Coney. Since Children of Light was errata’d to remove its draw ability, this deck hasn’t seen play, but basically both themes boil down to placing enhancements on a hero to make them super powerful. Another extinct theme (that could be making a comeback with Prophecies of Christ) is the Cloud theme. All the Cloud enhancements are part Clay, so you could run them with come Cloud heroes, mostly the White and Green ones, maybe even some Blue, to make a deck. These seldom used themes have a few powerful cards/combos in them, but don’t see play due to lack of depth, speed, consistency, etc.
With all that being said, Clay is one of the strongest brigades out there because of all the cards I haven’t mentioned yet, such as: Peter, Gamaliel’s Speech, Preaching in the Synagogue, Elymas Struck Blind, Snake into the Fire, The Lord Rebuke You!, Faith of Samuel, Faith of Moses’ Parents, The Watchful Leaders, Eternal Inheritance, Eternal Covenant, You Will Remain, Paul, Hope, Overcome!, and Claudia. Also see the White brigade section for all the amazing clay cards that are part White and more specific to Musicians/Martyrs. Basically, if you are running any NT theme, you can make it better by adding in some Clay.
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