Moses (CoW) is the type of card you need to build your deck around. He’s not a Hero that will serve you well if you just toss him into any deck that uses one or more of his brigades. But a deck focused on taking advantage of the power Moses provides has the potential to be devastating!

Building a Moses Deck

One of the fun things about Moses is that there are quite a few approaches you can take when building a deck around him. There are 3 different silver Heroes you can use to get him out of your deck. You can also use Faith of Sarah or Music Leader.

A Moses deck needs to choose whether or not it plans to run Coliseum-friendly Enhancements (and possibly Coliseum) or counter Coliseum so you can use CBN Enhancements. There are CBN negates available in each of Moses’ three brigades making the latter very tempting. There are also CBP negates available in each of Moses’ brigades but they all require you to build your deck with specific brigades or themes.

You can focus your deck on white, green or gold offense, or you can spread out across multiple brigades. You can include a few clever ways to band Moses into battle making a lethal FBTN band.

It’s also important to choose a defense and Lost Souls that will compliment Moses’ strengths, or at least not be hampered greatly by his power.

Another neat trick you can use is to build in ways to turn off your own Moses. Do you need the “Wanderer” Lost Soul to work so you can swap for an opponent’s 3-Liner? Activate Covenant with Death. Want to play Provisions or Wheel within a Wheel? Activate Thorns and Thistles. Want to use Table of Demons to get your Gates of Hell and really punish your opponent? Activate Golden Calf.

The possibilities for decks that can take advantage of Moses is really pretty broad. I’m excited to see what others come up with and what has success in other areas.

Pre-States

I built my first deck focused solely on taking advantage of Moses a little over a week before the Iowa State Tournament. I had a chance to test it in a few games with members of my play group. During those games, one thing kept coming up over and over and over…

“That doesn’t work, because of Moses.”

We got used to saying that so often that when someone attempted to use an ability that Moses negates we’d just point and say “because of Moses”. That phrase caught on quickly and became the name of my deck, which I then shortened to just BoM.

The deck had worked so well that there was no question as to what I’d be playing at States. It was definitely going to be BoM. But several slots in the deck were still in transition. I was swapping different cards in and out to see what works best.

I’m not convinced that the version of the offense I played at States is optimal. And I’m considering a complete overhaul of the defense I used.

Iowa States T1-2P

My first game vs. Zach went very quickly. In fact, we might have been the first game finished. I got Confusion off right away for Son of God. Zach happened to be holding that and NJ in his hand. He got two rescues off of my defense, meaning it would have been a 5-4 game had he played his Dominants before I could Confusion.

Round 2 I faced Justin, one of the top players in the game. This easily could have been my toughest match all day. I went first and activated Broken Covenant, discarded an Evil Character from my hand and announced I was going to draw 3. Justin was kind enough to remind me that he had no evil brigades in play. Doh! I guess Broken Covenant isn’t an automatic draw 3…

Fortunately, my misplay did not end up being costly. Justin had Lost Souls but no Heroes and nothing that could stop my opening AuTO + Moses for two turns. When he finally got The Ram with Two Horns to stand in Moses’ way on turn 3 I was able to use the card he created against him, Word of Their Testimony, to take out his Ram and a Persian Presidents in his territory.

Justin was eventually able to band to my Moses to get a rescue. At the end of the game Moses had rescued all 6 Lost Souls in our 5-1 game. Justin grabbed his deck and showed me 5 CBP/CBN evil Enhancements that could have taken out Moses had he drawn them.

Round 3 I faced Kye. He’s one of our strongest local players and always gives me a challenge. This game would be no different. We had a very long game that went to time.

I had a slow Hero draw. Kye did an amazing job taking advantage of that by keeping my Heroes off the table using any means possible, including ripping a Haman’s Plot against me to clear my only 3 Heroes. Fortunately, my defense and some soul drought were able to keep him at bay too for the most part.

He had one Redeemed Soul and half of a 2-Liner so he played Son of God to get to 3. I used my Falling Away to take back to 2-Liner, expecting him to follow up with The Second Coming for Son of God to rescue it again, but that didn’t happen.

Kye later got his Confusion off, choosing my Son of God. This really put me in a tough spot since I assumed he had another Dominant rescue and I was down to rescuing my souls the old fashioned way. I eventually wore down his defense to the point that my Heroes could start walking in for rescues but time was almost up and we were both almost decked out.

When I finally found my Confusion and attempted to return the favor, I named The Second Coming. A return of AotL or SoG was what I needed to avoid. It was a complete miss as Kye wasn’t using TSC or NJ! Even with the miss this information now informed me that I was in the driver’s seat. In the final turn of the game I rescued my 5th Lost Soul making the score 5-3.

The 4th and final round vs. Jayden was a battle of the undefeated players. Jayden had the good start with AuTO + Moses who walked in for two easy rescues. When I gave Jayden half of the 2-liner he played Son of God immediately to rescue the other half.

I opened with Samuel and David, the Psalmist. Not the strongest rescue but David proved to be extremely important in this game. I place Sword of the Spirit on him and used it to discard one of Jayden’s Evil Characters. After my rescuers were withdrawn I played Silly Women to my territory as “bait”.

Sure enough, Jayden took it. He banded Simeon to my Samuel to David, the Psalmist using my SotS to discard Silly Women. I blocked with Messenger of Satan from hand to draw 9! The draw turned up Falling Away so I promptly took back the 2-liner. Jayden immediately dropped TSC for SoG to take it back. Then I noticed that Vain Philosophy was also in my draw. Another misplay on my part. I dropped Suicidal Swine Stampede to shuffle all my Lost Souls.

During my draw step, Jayden promptly played his Mayhem, eliminating my efforts from the turn before. Mayhem coughed up another Lost Soul which Jayden would take on the following turn, leaving the game 4-1 in his favor and looking pretty bleak for me.

This is where David, the Psalmist really shined. I had battle winners I could attempt to use on Samuel or David so I kept pushing them into battle. David allowed me to essentially underdeck my Lost Souls, or leave the top 3 when there were no souls coming up.

David, the Psalmist did his soul hiding trick for me 3-4 turns before Jayden found a way to get rid of him. Still, I didn’t draw my remaining 4 Lost Souls during the 3-4 turns following that. Given enough turns my offense is going to find a way to get some rescues and find my Dominants. I pulled out a 5-4 win during a game that felt like I should have lost. That put me in 1st and Jayden in 2nd for the main event.

2 BoMs, 2 Builds

Despite both of the top two decks being BoM decks, I’d guess that our offense varied by at least 5-6 cards. Our defenses were very different. All told I’d guess that our decks had less than 50% of their cards in common.

While Moses is extremely powerful I like that there can be so much variety in the way you take advantage of him. Often times the same counters are going to work against most versions of a BoM deck, too. As the State, Regional and National tournament results come in, I look forward to seeing how people will attempt to play their BoM decks.

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By Gabe

Gabe has been playing Redemption since early in 2006. While life has changed a lot since that time, his love for Redemption has not. He hosts a playgroup and assists with the design and development of upcoming set releases and even plays competitively on occasion.