We are pleased to present a revision of an LoR classic: the Brigade Basics series by Zac Cornell! This series now includes cards from Prophecies of Christ and Lineage of Christ. We are starting with the good brigades. This week white and purple will be covered.
Editor’s Note: We encourage you to use the Redemption Card Viewer as you read this article: https://thejambi.github.io/RedemptionCCGViewer/. Enter N: followed by the card name into the search to view the cards Zac is talking about.
Introduction:
These articles are meant for beginner players looking for a good place to start deck building or intermediate players looking to broaden their Redemption knowledge. This series of articles is a jumping off point to give less experienced players a manageable list of cards for each brigade and theme out there so they can have a place to start in their own research and experimentation.
There are many powerful cards in Redemption that are staples in most every deck that you won’t see mentioned here. They weren’t forgotten, but are only mentioned in decks that have specific synergy with them, otherwise every article would need to include most every dominant and useful site, artifact, and fortress in the game.
If I missed something, please let me know in the comments below! This article will be updated with each new set, so your comments could very well make it into the next update.
White:
White has a lot of different themes in it, but we will just be focusing on the top 3, the first of which will be Musicians and Martyrs. 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 searing 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, Hannah, David, Heart After God, Asaph, and The Twenty-Four Elders are your main uses. Mordecai (PoC) and Esther (PoC) also fit well in this build with Mordecai making the O.T. white enhancements CBN and Esther being a battle winner many times in and of herself. Music Leader lets you get out all of your music cards 2 at a time, which includes You Will Remain, “Today”, Warning Against Rebellion, Hate Wickedness, Love Righteousness, Royal Parade, and Word of Christ. Fearless Traveler, Cymbals of the Levites, and The Lord Goes Before You could also take a spot if room allows. If you run other Meek heroes, you can also use Ride on Victoriously/Awesome Things, and if you run Teal you can use The Tabernacle (but we will touch on that more in the Teal article). Other essential cards include The Women with Child with A Child is Born in reserve, Consider the Lilies, Life through Christ, Words of Encouragement, Faith Unbowed, 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, Daughters Grief, and Cast into Lion’s Den, along with some others already mentioned above.
The next theme we will be exploring is my personal favorite: Daniel. I think Daniel is a lot more powerful than a lot of people give it credit for, although it is a lottery because of The Foretelling Angel. The Foretelling Angel lets you play with the top card of your deck face up. If it has a Daniel reference, you can add it to your hand at any time. If you leave a Daniel card face up though, all your Daniel characters become cannot be negated. The strategy becomes get out The Foretelling Angel as fast as you can, draw as many Daniel cards off the top of your deck as you can by shuffling your deck whenever the top card isn’t Daniel, then leave the top card as a Daniel card to make your Daniel banding chain cannot be negated. I like to run this with Covenant with Death to take advantage of all my characters being cannot be negated. If constructed and played correctly, it can be pretty consistent and super powerful. Many of you are thinking “But I don’t have the special Daniel Meek Lost Souls, so I can’t use Daniel!” Not true! This deck can run close to as effectively with normal Lost Souls, you just have to build in ways to get them out of your deck, like using Ends of the Earth. I have run it with and without the Daniel Meek souls (just pretending the Meek souls were Daniel, I don’t think anyone has a full set of the Meek souls) and both are viable. You major heroes in the deck are going to be Daniel, the Apocalyptist, Abed-nego (Azariah), Meshach (Mishael), Shadrach (Hananiah), Gabriel, Michael, Servant by the River, Daniel’s Guardian, and The Foretelling Angel. Enhancements include: The Coming Prince, Faith Unbowed, Daniel’s Prayer, Eternal Judgement, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, and Stone Cut Without Hands. The best defense to pair with this is a Babylonian one, as they have tons of powerful Daniel cards to go with the theme, like the new Nebuchadnezzar. Seriously, give Daniel a try, you’ll be glad you did!
The final prominent theme for white is the Ruth Meek theme. It has a good amount of speed and some pretty powerful hero abilities. Top heroes include (but aren’t limited to): Amminadab, the Generous, Boaz, the Redeemer, Boaz’ Foreman, David, Heart After God, Elimelech, Jesse, the Ephrathite, Obed, the Servant, Ruth, the Redeemed, Salmon, the Cloaked, Kinsman Redeemer, and Elders of the City. Enhancements include: Your God Will Be My God, Ruth Meets Boaz, Kinsman Agreement, Death in the Family, Solomon’s Dream, Orpah Departs, Shared Meal, Preparing to Return, Harvest Season, Your God will be my God, Naomi’s Blessing/Heartbroken, and Boaz’s Offspring. Support cards include: Threshing Floor, Land of Moab, Boaz’ Sandal, and Marriage Covenant. This deck pairs well with Moabites, as many of the enhancements are part grey and target Ruth and Moabite characters. Given Moabites are more of a T2 theme, you will probably see Ruth more there, but they are still totally viable in T1. What Ruth lacks in depth they make up for in power. Ruth, David, Boaz’ Foreman, Jesse, and Obed have some great abilities. The goal of this offense is to set up a powerful band that never runs out of negates and infrequently gets chump blocked. Coliseum, Guardian of Your Souls, and Orphans Lost Soul are good support for this offense. Those three cards help the Ruth offense to overwhelm the opponent with speed and recursion. One cool band this deck can do is to take Salmon the Cloaked with X=3 to band to Boaz the Redeemer/Elders of the City/Obed the Servant. Boaz gets a Ruth card from from deck or reserve, Elders fetches a Ruth card you already played, and Obed draws 3. I could see a Ruth build giving some of the top builds in the game a run for their money.
A few non-theme specific cards that haven’t been mentioned include Naaman Servant Girl, Lamb’s Righteousness, Transfiguration, Blessings, Words of Encouragement, Moses, Esther, the Courageous, Joy, Spirit as a Dove, Miriam, and Prophets of Gibeath. It should be noted that white in general is blessed with one of the fastest set up combos with Consider the Lilies, Love Righteousness, Fifth Seal/Justice Seekers, along with cards like Out of Egypt too. This allows you to get what you want early in the game quickly.
Purple:
Purple is the brigade of Royalty and Disciples. 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 Reassuring Angels and Patmos for searching out heroes. Since the changes to how ignore works making 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 and/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 try 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 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 have changed a lot with the banning of Samuel, but still get the job done with Angel under the Oak to Joshua, the Conqueror or Captain of the Host (PoC) to Joshua the Conqueror who then exchanges with a OT Red warrior that starts off a banding chain that will include red and Purple kings, then ends with FooF Isaiah (banded in by Jehoshaphat since Isaiah is a musician or something like Zadok (PoC) to make your purple kings cannot be negated protected from opponents, or it ends with Jeremiah, Hope Bringer so that when you play a card off of the old The Throne of David, its effectively cannot be negated as your opponent will have to toss the first enhancement they play. The Strong Angel (RoJ) is an alternate option to end the band for toss shenanigans or even Elijah (PoC) for choose the blocker strategies. The banding chain varies a lot from deck to deck, but usually includes David, Outcasts Refuge, Jehoshaphat, the Seeker, Abigail, King Saul (CoW), Asahel, Ishmaiah the Gibeonite, and Zadok (PoC). Prominent enhancements include Spears, Sling Stones, Royal Parade, Council of Abigail, David’s Proclamation, Isaiah’s Call, and Wheel within a Wheel. This is still a very new deck concept so there are a lot of different variations out there, and since it has a lot of brigades in it there are a lot of different ways you can go with it, so feel free to experiment! The top 3 decks at 2020 Nationals were all Throne decks, so this is definitely something to watch out for.
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 it’s 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 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.
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