Hello and welcome to Browa’s Budget Bazaar!
This article series is designed to provide quick and simple deck ideas in general, as well as for specific themes, that won’t be hard on your wallet! There will also be suggestions for those with more available funds on how to spruce up the deck.
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Today’s Topic: Creating a different theme deck with only tin cards (and generic souls)
Today we’ll be using 6 tins from the Faith of Our Fathers and Rock of Ages sets.
-Tin sets (each) – $12 for the full tin (cards + packs) or $8 for just the tin cards on TLG.
-The tins we’re using today are:
-Faith of our Fathers tins 4, 9, 10, and 22
-Rock of Ages tins 13, and 14
Similar to the prophet deck we built last month, today’s deck is going to be entirely of tin cards and generic souls (like the prophet deck, not all our tins have Lost Souls in them so we’ll fill the extras with generic, blank souls). We’re using 6 tins again in order to provide us with enough cards for a decent 50 card deck.
For this deck I again chose an offensive theme to pursue, and this time it’s Genesis/blue. You’ll want to set aside the 5 non-blue Heroes (Joseph is half green but we’re definitely keeping him) and the 3 non-blue Enhancements, except Two Bears, (keep both dual-alignment Enhancements (DAEs)) as we won’t be using those. You’ll also want to set aside the non-grey Evil Characters and evil Enhancements, except The Winged Leopard (we’ll use him since he can band to Antiochus IV Epiphanes), Pharaoh’s Cupbearer, and Pharaoh’s Baker. Normally Uzzah is an incredibly strong Evil Character, however since this deck only has 1 Artifact he becomes a lot more situational so I’ve chosen not to include him this time.
Genesis Heroes have a lot of utility going for them. Zebulun and Dan both let you draw, Rachel and Simeon (the latter of which combos with the former) both let you band, as does Jacob (though we don’t have any silver Heroes in this deck so his play-first ability will be what he’s useful for), Joseph and Benjamin allow you to play your Enhancements with cannot be negated (CBN) status, while Asher lets you recycle any of your Genesis cards. Rachel also lets you exchange for either of your CBN Heroes if you’d prefer that to banding.
Good Enhancement-wise, we’ll be using all 8 (not counting the DAEs). They all are useful in this deck except that Pleading for the City is very situational. Since we don’t have any silver Heroes in our deck Pleading for the City would really only be useful in the niche setting where your opponent has managed to discard enough of their Lost Souls to prevent you from winning and you’d have to get them back. However, since the deck is struggling to get to 50 as it is, I’ve chosen to include it. You’ll want to replace it with something better later (like a Dominant).
There are 2 DAEs (dual-alignment Enhancements) available to us, Seven Years of Famine and Seven Years of Plenty. They both have their uses, though it’s not recommended to put them both in play at the same time, since Famine will negate the entire point of Plenty (drawing an extra card each turn if you have a Genesis character in play). I’ve included both in the deck list, and it will take practice to know which to use when.
The Evil Characters in this deck are mostly the grey Roman and Syrian cards from the tins with the addition of a couple extras. The Winged Leopard is included for his ability to band to Antiochus and as an additional Greek character (see the evil Enhancement section for the reason for that) and the 2 Egyptians, Cupbearer and Baker, are included because they both have useful one-time abilities. You don’t have any Enhancements to use on them so more than likely they’d be better to block a battle challenge, otherwise you’d probably lose the rescue attempt.
The evil Enhancements used are all the gray ones from the tins as they are all very useful. Several of them are weapons and can be placed on your warrior-class characters (which most of them are). I’ve also chosen to include Abomination of Desolation since we have 2 Greeks. The combo will be hard to pull off (as both Greeks have high numbers so you aren’t as likely to get initiative to play the Enhancement) but if you manage to get it in an opponent’s territory you can start devastating their cards.
This deck again includes a Site! Hormah is useful for hiding Lost Souls as you can underdeck it if your human Evil Character (which all but one of yours are) is discarded. Plus, we have a Lost Soul that triggers from being placed in a Site, so this gives the possibility of using its ability.
There is only one Artifact in these tins, Stone Pillar at Bethel, and it’s a useful one. You can discard a Genesis Enhancement (like Pleading for the City if you don’t need it) to search deck for any good O.T. card. This becomes even more useful once you add Dominants to this deck as you can search for New Jerusalem as well as some versions of Angel of the Lord (there are copies with an Exodus reference).
There are 2 Lost Souls with special abilities in these tins, however I chose to only include the “Site Guard” soul. The other soul, “anti-ignore“, negates O.T. ignore abilities if you have only one evil brigade in play. While we do have a couple multi-brigade Evil Characters, it’s possible that you won’t have them out with this soul and since our offense uses ignore sometimes (Zebulun and Reuben’s Torn Clothes, primarily) we don’t want to be sabotaging our own cards. Seven Years of Famine also negates ignore but it’s easier to control when that card is active and easier to plan ahead for it.
Lastly we have the Fortresses in the tins. There are 3: Obadiah’s Caves, House of Rimmon, and Rome. The 2 Evil Fortresses are both automatically useful. House of Rimmon provided territory protection to our Syrians, and Rome gives our Romans (who often have low toughness) first strike making them more likely to win battles. Obadiah’s Caves can only affect 1 of our Heroes (Joseph) but I’ve chosen to include it as Joseph is an incredibly useful hero and Caves provided capture and remove from the game protection for him (plus that gives us the 50th card for our deck).
Sample Deck List
Cards in Deck: 50
Lost Souls: 7
-6 Generic
–Site Guard
Sites: 1
–Hormah
Artifacts: 1
–Stone Pillar at Bethel
Fortresses: 3
–Obadiah’s Caves
–House of Rimmon
–Rome
Dual-Alignment Cards: 2
–Seven Years of Famine
–Seven Years of Plenty
Heroes: 10
–Asher
–Benjamin
–Dan
–Jacob
–Joseph
–Levi
–Rachel
–Reuben
–Simeon
–Zebulun
Good Enhancements: 9
–Answer to Prayer
–Buying Grain
–Forgiveness of Joseph
–Jacob Buries the Foreign gods
–Joseph Before Pharaoh
–Numerous as the Stars
–Pleading for the City
–Reuben’s Torn Clothes
–Two Bears
Evil Characters: 10
–Antiochus IV Epiphanes
–Emperor Galba
–Emperor Otho
–King Cushan-Rishathaim
–King Hazael
–Naaman
–The Strong Force
–The Winged Leopard
–Pharaoh’s Cupbearer
–Pharaoh’s Baker
Evil Enhancements: 7
–Expelling the Jews
–Gold Shield
–Healing of Naaman
–Heavy Taxes
–Namaan’s Chariot and Horses
–Night Raid
–Abomination of Desolation
Deck Upgrade Suggestions
To support the Genesis theme there are various Enhancements from other sets that are useful, and Judah from Thesaurus as well as the Local Tournament Promo Angel at Shur are both nice Heroes.
If you want to substitute more Romans and less Syrians into the deck, Rock of Ages tin 16 has some good Roman support. Emperor Augustus (a possible tournament winner Promo, I believe) is also a useful addition to a Roman defense.
Thanks for reading!
As always, the deck list above is just a general suggestion/guideline for building the deck, and Redemption caters to and encourages creative alternatives and testing with different card combinations or setups. Try throwing a mix you like in there and see how it goes!
Thanks very much for reading! Three Lions Gaming Deck Builder packs are now available and contain pre-defined packs for various offensive and defensive themes. You can build a 56-card deck by purchasing 3 of these (at $12.50 each) for $37.50 total. That’s a great deal for a basic deck, especially since the themes will mesh with themselves a little better than these 6-tin decks do, haha. I will be doing an overview of the available packs in my next article, so stay tuned for that!
To buy singles, sealed product, and other gaming supplies, please visit Three Lions Gaming!
