Hello everyone and welcome to the next installment of Cloud of Witnesses Musings!  Today I will be commenting on some combos I’ve noticed with the new CoW cards.  When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But when life gives you 129 new Redemption cards 3 months before Nationals, you make combos!

Let’s look at the new Hebrews 5:11 lost soul, dubbed the “Dull” lost soul:

Note first that your opponent only has to “use” the good look/reveal/search ability.  This means that it triggers for any hero your opponent controls, including those that you own.  Choose the rescuer and side battles anyone?  Also, note that there is no limit on the number of uses – each time the opponent uses one of these good abilities, you get to search your deck for an EC or EE.  Finally, consider the combination of having the Dull LS and Golden Cherubim in play at the same time:  The Dull LS triggers on good look, reveal, and search, and Golden Cherubim triggers on all draw.  That basically covers all the bases for your opponent’s “speed” options, except for evil look/reveal/search abilities.

For all you combo-lovers out there, I’m imagining a defense that uses King Rehoboam to abuse this LS.  When your opponent attacks, you block with Rehoboam.  Cause a side battle between your Philip’s Daughters (controlled by opponent) and your Ezekiel (controlled by you).  Daughters’ ability includes a Reveal, so the Dull LS triggers, but it has to wait for Daughters and Ezekiel to complete.  Ezekiel triggers next, underdecks Drawn Sword, and finally the Dull LS triggers, letting you search out the Drawn Sword that was just underdecked.  It’s a mutual destruction, so your opponent would get to play an enhancement on Daughters first (unless you have Darius’ Decree active).  But either way, Daughters probably can’t target Ezekiel, meaning eventually you have initiative to play a CBN Drawn Sword to take out the rescuing hero.  Daughters probably dies, so you could include Peter or Luke for healing, but they don’t really fit in an Ezekiel deck.  Better would be Eternal Covenant – you would just have to wait for your turn to get Daughters back.  Rinse and repeat!

Since I mentioned Eternal Covenant, I’ll just say that in most situations, I would prefer this over Chariot of Fire.  Why?  Well, first, you get a hero back immediately.  With Chariot of Fire, you have to wait.  That can make all the difference in a Redemption game.  Second, all those heroes might clog your deck.  Usually there’s one hero that is better than others to be rescuing with, like King David when your opponent is playing with one of the many evil themes that consists of mostly royalty.  In many cases, I’d actually prefer to NOT get back all my heroes with Chariot, if I had the choice.

Eternal Covenant forms mini-combos with Uriah and Israelite Archer as well.  Uriah will be absolutely amazing with Eternal Covenant, because his awesomeness goes beyond discarding an EC every turn; he also gets initiative and makes a lot of awesome Red battlewinners CBN.  Throw in the new Joab and the old Jephthah, and you have some serious territory destruction with an OT WC offense.

Now let’s look at the new Gideon.  He’s got an ability now, so he can’t use CBN Edicts.  But that doesn’t mean that he can’t be awesome!  He gets initiative much easier now with his 2/2 stats, and don’t forget that he still benefits from AuTO’s bulletproofiness.

So what can Gideon search for?  Well, the new Faith of Gideon, for one:

There are 3 more cards that form a sweet combo with Gideon and his Faith.  Here is the ability for Cloud of Witnesses, the new good fortress that plays to set-aside:

And the new Wool Fleece, which can be activated on Gideon:

And lastly, the underrated Epaphroditus, who gets no love because the Philippi church got no love this past season.  He’s not necessary for the combo, but he would certainly make it more reliable:

The combo is actually quite simple.  The offense is Clay/Cloud with Gideon, Epaphroditus, and a few missionaries in there somewhere.  Use The Angel Under the Oak to tutor/recur Gideon and make him bulletproof, or use Angel with the Secret Name to negate Nazareth and make Gideon CBN.  Gideon searches out Faith of Gideon, which he probably gets initiative to play in battle.  Make an EC fight the blocking EC, and make sure the blocking EC will die if no enhancements are played.  Wool Fleece makes sure you are blocked by only one EC, and Epaphroditus stops your opponent from playing EEs during Faith of Gideon’s side battle.  Faith of Gideon is essentially CBI when executed this way, and you probably win the battle (especially if Gideon is bulletproof!).  Then, during your next upkeep, you get to use Cloud of Witnesses to underdeck Faith of Gideon, which Gideon will search out the next time he enters battle.

Cloud of Witnesses (the fortress) also combos with Golgotha.  After your successful rescue in which you use a Cloud card, you get to shuffle an evil enhancement.  And you can place an evil enhancement on Golgotha during your rescue!  Note that this won’t work if you use Angel with the Secret Name during your rescue.

How about that new evil fortress Coliseum?  It has potential to be a game-changer, although probably more in T2 than T1, since you need to draw it before your opponent uses their CBN enhancements.  The first comparable card I thought of when I read Coliseum’s ability (in terms of wide-sweeping game state effect) was Covenant with Death.

Negation of protect abilities stops a lot of chump blocks like Philetus and Failed Objective, but it also stops some hero protection too.  Stopping Thaddeus is my favorite part of Coliseum.  The game-changing part of Coliseum is tossing enhancements with “cannot be negated” in the ability.  This stops so many of the most powerful cards in the game, like Scattered, the best evil battle enders, Samuel’s Edict, Eye On It (I’m just kidding…), the list goes on.  Ironically, the oldest CBN cards like Authority of Christ (promo), Transfiguration, Gibeonite Trickery, Haman’s Plot, etc. are not affected, because of the way CBN cards were worded back then.  To get your CBN enhancements, you will need to use characters that grant CBN, like Michael, Naaman, Thomas, Nergalsharezar, Simon the Magician, Joshua the High Priest, etc.

An “anti-meta” combination of Coliseum, Covenant with Death, and Nazareth could be brutal, especially in a T2 game.

The combination of Coliseum with the new The Throne of Grace could be quite powerful too.  The Throne of Grace is a new good fortress that plays to set-aside.

The combo is simple:  If your opponent can’t play CBN evil enhancements (except through characters like Naaman, Nergalsharezar, etc.), then basically everything they play will be negatable.  And The Throne of Grace gives you the option to turn any single-brigade good enhancement in hand into a negate!  There were obviously safeguards built into this ability; easily recurred cards like Fruits of the Spirit, Armors of God, dual-alignment enhancements, etc. are multi-brigade, and angels like Gabriel (I) can’t use it.  However, there is an underrated human hero from 2013 that can recur a handful of white battlewinners straight to hand, which would double as negates with The Throne of Grace in play…

Looks like I’m out of room for now.  I will be back soon with more thought-provoking commentary on the new Cloud cards!

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By JoshH

Josh has collected Redemption cards since the original unlimited booster packs, but has only been playing Redemption competitively since 2010. He has fallen in love with pretty much every strategy game ever introduced to him. When Josh plays Redemption, he tries to find and build creative decks that are outside the mold of the current popular decks.