Hello! My name is Joe Andrighetti (“Jomama” on Discord) and I’m here to share some of my thoughts on Redemption limited game play. First, a little background on me so you know where I’m coming from.

I’ve played CCGs and TCGs for most of my life having discovered Magic back in elementary school in the mid 90s. I’ve played tons of these games over the years (including Redemption for its first year or two before losing track of it) but would mostly identify myself as a Magic player. I ‘re-discovered’ Redemption in February of 2023 from Jayden and Justin Aalstad at church. I was surprised to learn that it was still around after all these years and still making new sets. So I dove into it with my son Elijah and have been playing in locals, Lackey Grand Prixs and even our first Nationals!

My love of card games stems from getting in on the ground floor of Magic with my friends where we would just pick up a starter deck or a handful of packs, crack them open, and throw our favorite cards into a deck to play. I grew to love my little deck that I slowly customized over the years as I earned allowance money to buy new packs.

Eventually, I thought my deck was good enough to go to a constructed tournament. So I grabbed my friend and my trusty deck and went to a local qualifying tournament, where I promptly got destroyed. Rough for a middle schooler. But I picked myself up and started researching some constructed tournament tech for next time. I soon found that my budget couldn’t keep up with the best decks out there. Even post college, when you hit that sweet spot of earning full time job money and not having kids you need to spend it on, I found it hard to keep up and the process unsatisfying.

It’s at this point that I realized that what I really loved about Magic was the challenge of taking a limited amount of resources (in this case cards) and making the most powerful thing I could from them. The process of min/maxing what I had. Of finding little synergies between cards and building a deck towards that synergy as best I could. I fell in love with limited Magic.

What is Limited?

Limited is a card game term used to refer to a version (or format) of playing the game where instead of players making decks from their own collection (commonly called “constructed”) they are stripped down to nothing and given a similar amount of cards to make a deck out of. Both players get to come from the same place in their game using only their luck, wits, and playing skill to compete.

Limited is commonly seen as a great way for new players to a card game to get involved as it doesn’t require you have an extensive collection to play. They can compete on the same level as more enfranchised players while building up cards in their collections for future constructed play.

Limited manifests in Redemption in two main ways, closed deck and booster draft. As a new player to Redemption I was excited to explore the game in its limited form and have had many chances to play both sealed and draft. So lets (finally!) get into my thoughts on those.

Closed Deck

Closed deck is where a player gets a starter deck (currently either the K or L starter deck) and usually two packs to open along with them to add to their pool of cards when making their deck.

The Good: I think the K & L starter decks are great designs! I love how the decks mirror each other (to not give a certain one an advantage over the other) and how the cards are simple but still touching on many of the main concepts in redemption. They also do a great job of mitigating one of the most frustrating things of limited redemption, the opponent not having souls to rescue (commonly called “soul drought”). Getting to open a couple packs to add/swap some cards into your deck is a good way to help start teaching basic deck building skills.

The Bad: Two points I have here related to each other:

1. Only having two packs to add to the deck. With only two packs (18 cards, with the current Israel block packs) to potentially add to the deck and the starter decks being two brigades on offense and one on defense each you usually only end up with 3-5 cards being worthwhile to be added/swapped into your deck. This doesn’t allow much changes to actually take place with the starter decks making most closed deck events feel essentially the same. One thing that has been used to help this is swapping cards with your opponent. Which brings me to my second point.

2. Trading. Usually during the closed deck building time players sitting across from each other are given the different starter decks, player 1 gets the K deck and player 2 gets the L deck. This way when the two players open their supplemental packs player 1 can trade the cards they can’t use in their deck to player 2 for the cards that player 2 can’t use in their deck. In theory this helps both players get more cards to add to their deck than they otherwise would with just the 3-5 cards in their two packs. In my experience, however, this trading period can lead to awkward social interactions or even, unfortunately, more experienced players taking advantage of those less experienced. Also, to be discussed and done properly trading takes a little bit of time. Which leads me to:

The Ugly:

I brought this up on the discord suggestions post Nationals this year but I think the biggest problem with closed deck is the time (or lack thereof) given to open, construct, and sleeve your deck. The Redemption Host guide currently gives 15 minutes for players to get their sealed deck ready. The physical act of opening the starter deck, and packs, laying them out by brigades to see what you are working with, and then later sleeving them can take between 5-10 minutes alone. Add in trying to snap off a quick trade while being pressured by the person sitting across from you and the time needed to decide what cards to add in, take out, and move to the reserve you have very little time.

I think Redemption needs to decide if they want closed deck to be a newer player friendly environment. I understand that Nationals is the most competitive forum for Redemption play but it also is a great community get together, bringing players of all skill levels from across the country together to share in this game. I think closed deck is a great format for people of all skill levels to play Redemption together and I think best way we can make it that is to increase the time for deck building to allow newer players to approach it in a less stressful situation.

Suggestions: 

1. Increase the time to build closed decks a decent amount.

2. Potentially adding a third pack that players open along with their starter.

3. Try a closed deck format where players don’t get a K/L starter deck but open a set number of packs and try to build the best deck they can from those. The amount of packs would need to be played with in order to figure out how many are needed to make a decent deck. Notably, this suggestions might be too daunting for newer players but offers much greater variety to closed deck for more experienced players.

Booster Draft

Draft is where, typically 4 players, are at a table and they each get a set number of packs, usually 6. They simultaneously open 1 pack, pick a card out, and pass the rest of the pack to their neighbor. Then, when they receive the pack from their other neighbor, take one card out of it and pass again. This continues until all the cards from each player’s 6 packs have been drafted.

The Good: Draft is my favorite way to play card games. You get agency over what cards you take for your deck and it has fun mini games of trying to read the signals of what brigades the other players at your table are taking so you can steer into what ones are best for you. I also enjoy how Redemption draft gets you to evaluate the cards in a different way than constructed. (Mary, Holy Virgin in draft? Not interested!)

The best thing to happen to Redemption limited play recently is the introduction of Roots. Getting Roots as the filler cards in packs instead of the scrolls or I/J cards has been amazing for having more options when drafting.

The Bad: 

1. Soul drought. Roots has helped mitigate this issue a little with a couple cards to help with generating souls but it can still be a problem in draft. Even more so than in closed deck as sometimes the lost soul generating cards don’t show up for you or aren’t in a brigade you can support in your deck.

2. Too few cards in your pool at the end of the draft to have many meaningful decisions on building your booster draft deck.

The packs for the current Israel’s block of sets have 9 cards in them. 4 from the actual set and 5 from Roots. At the end of drafting your 6 packs you will have a pool of 54 cards to use in your draft deck. With these you need to build at least a 50 card deck including the 7 meek lost souls you can add from, outside the draft. So assuming you drafted no lost souls, you have to add 43 of the 54 cards you drafted into your deck, allowing for 11 cards that you drafted to not need to be in your deck. With 13 brigades to be accounted for among the cards in the packs and having to balance both offense and defense this just leaves too little room for satisfying deck expression.

One thing I love about drafting is the dance of figuring out what brigades each player at the table will end up in. This usually includes taking some of the most powerful cards early and speculating on certain brigades before settling into the open brigades and solidifying your deck. This could mean something like taking a few gold heroes early and then realizing that the other players are also taking gold and getting no further support for them so moving off onto drafting green heroes and enhancements. At the end of the draft this can mean that you have a handful of heroes with no enhancement support or a bunch of powerful enhancements in a certain brigade but only 1 or 2 characters of that brigade to use them. Couple this with the couple of lost souls you took through the draft and the 11 extra cards you have are quickly dried up. This leaves underpowered decks and the feeling like you did something wrong in the draft when making your deck.

Suggestions:.

1. Increase the number of packs being drafted for larger card pools to increase the power level of draft decks and foster an environment for more deck expression during the draft and deck building phases. Alternatively, you could lower the amount of cards needed in your draft deck when building it. For example, instead of needing a 50 card deck make it a 40 card deck with 6 lost souls. These numbers could obviously be experimented with.

2. Possibly have players start with a lost soul out at the beginning of the game to help alleviate potential soul drought. This could be an extra lost soul from outside the game to keep the soul ratio in the deck the same.

3. Create a “draft pack” that each player gets at the end of the draft to supplement the cards they drafted. This looks like 8-10 cards that all players get that they can add to their deck to help round it out and avoid common problems. For example, you could have a rainbow enhancement or two for both good and evil that can be a battle winner or a negate. A meek rainbow hero and meek rainbow evil character. An artifact that can generate souls. A fort that lets you discard a card to search your deck for a card of matching type. Etc. You could even make these cards unplayable in constructed if you had balance concerns. This could even be something tournament organizers can get or build themselves from current cards. I know this is probably outside the resources for the game of redemption but wanted to put it out there as a thought or a potential future project.

Final Thoughts: 

I’ve had fun learning and exploring Redemption limited over the last year and a half but definitely think it can be improved and iterated on. I also think there is a lack of content concerning limited play that might be hampering the betterment of the formats and hurting potential excitement of people over getting to play Redemption in a limited format.

That’s all from me. If you made it through this whole article, you’re a more patient person than I am… and thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you! Let me know your thoughts on Redemption limited! Feel free to DM me on discord (@Joemama).