Join Tyler Stevens one of the most accomplished Redemption champions for his thoughts on the state of the game currently post-rotation and prior to the release of The Gospel of Christ set. In this first article in the series Tyler shares some introductory thoughts on the state of the game and examines the first competitive theme of Genesis.
Introduction:
First off, I want to both thank and apologize to the Land of Redemption editor Chad. I promised him an article after Nationals about my perspective at Nationals from a Judge’s perspective plus my Type 2 write-up. I think it took me two months to even post my deck on the forums and all I had to do was copy and paste from Lackey! Needless to say, life got busy after Nationals for me, and Chad was awesome about checking in with me on content for Land of Redemption. Well, I finally got some free time and got with Chad on what would be some good topics to discuss. The current Type 1 and Type 2 meta before the release of The Gospel of Christ (GoC) phase 1 has been discussed heavily as of late. I think the Redemption community is eagerly awaiting GoC, but also must figure out and test how life looks now that the rotation format has been implemented. GoC phase 1 plus rotation is a lot to handle. I don’t blame players for thinking they should wait on deck building for rotation since GoC will likely shake up the meta. The question then is why bother? Well, here we go…
In my opinion, players should start building for rotation as soon as possible. GoC will indeed shake up the meta, but the meta will still have plenty of Old Testament (O.T.) offenses, I will say that I think more O.T. offenses will be played this season overall. However, Nationals I think that will favor GoC offenses slightly more. That being said, when you consider all the O.T. offenses in rotation and then compare that to GoC offenses plus potential offenses they impact, there will be more O.T. offenses that are competitive in rotation. If you look at last year’s Nationals and see the decks used we witness the Love at First Sight deck, commonly referred to as the LaFS deck, which shook up the entire meta and caused the community to come together and prompted Jayden to do videos to show the counters to LaFS and videos of LaFS. Because of this, the variety of decks really differed, and people went against their seasonal decks in favor of counter-LaFS, or LaFS builds. To further support my stance on O.T. offenses hanging with GoC at Nationals, the previous set, Lineage of Christ (LoC), was a phenomenal set that came out during two years of COVID. To put it simply, it was very difficult for the community to get together and playtest ideas. Couple that with LaFS and you have a community that might not have been able to fully dive into LoC. LoC offered so many amazing strategies and boosts to themes. I have been saying how strong a meek offense is, Mary and Joseph, especially with the new Humble Seeker, and add Goshen, Noah, and Windows of Narrow Light, you have some extremely strong rescues that have layers for the opponent to get through. For example protection plus negating their cards, that requires minimal setup. Genesis builds and Kings of Judah didn’t see too much top-tier play, although Ruth builds did see a lot of play. Jayden had been talking about Postexilics, and then showed the community how strong they were the entire season last year. My main point here is that most people played a Throne build two years ago, a counter-LaFS or LaFS build this past year, and very few played their build, or really tested out other themes from LoC. Shout out to Derek who took second place with his Blood and Fire deck.
Because of the newly implemented rotation format players are forced, me included, to play outside their comfort zone of age old tired and true decks. People were able to band directly to Isaiah through a hero band that granted them cannot be negated protection of their heroes with a fortress that let them draw and play first! Also, The Angel Under the Oak also granted cannot be negated protection to Gideon who, depending on which version you decided to use, could grab a battle winner or play a cannot be negated Samuel’s Edict. These are extremely strong attacks that are easy to setup, hard to stop, and even easier to setup. Plays like these were amazing and had a huge impact on the community and how the game is played. I will speak for myself though, that in rotation I have felt that my attacks were vulnerable and I was not confident in my rescue because my heroes were not protected, or I could not play first, or that I was not protected and could not play first! IT is crazy to think that way, but I understand the thought process because at least for the last two years the CBN-protected-draw-play first with a possibility to play a CBN enhancement and recur that enhancement to play it again was way too good, and honestly, not a healthy state for the game. I love where the meta looks to be going, especially with the expectations of GoC. This article is more about the meta shift now and going over some of the stronger themes out there in the current game. This article doesn’t necessarily say what themes, or bits of themes, and cards should be mixed in with others; that is for the community to come up with! This article is to bring attention to interacting with setup cards, what brigades have the consistency pieces, how many, what ways they have to access setup cards, how to use them, and strong attacks within the theme. One important note that I have heard and spoken to other players about is how the meta seems to be more balanced, slower, and favoring defense. I don’t think that will be the meta, I think that is what is being played right now in the very limited sense of rotation. I still think the winning decks will be more favored to offense and have more specific rescues, rely on banding, and choosing the blocker. In addition they will have fast setup and plenty of drawing like always, just done in a new way.
The community is eagerly anticipating GoC and competitive Redemption with rotation, but the decks need to start rolling out now! I want to give a brief overview of competitive themes, I won’t tier them, but I do want to bring attention to themes and what they are good at.
Genesis:
Obviously Flood Survivors are tried and true, I won’t take too much time explaining what they are good at, but I do think that you can add numerous new attacks and builds to Flood. There are a lot of builds for Flood, do you use Numerous as the Stars to set up your heroes, which Noah/Shem do you use? Do you use unity Flood survivors, and if so, do you still incorporate LoC or CoW versions? Do you use Jacob to snag Numerous for an insanely fast Flood set-up? Do you incorporate all of the meek protection, do you add Enosh for negating neutrals, do you add Hezron/Reu for The First Sacrifice + The Dove Returns recursion for hand and territory control? There are a lot of decisions to make with the Flood. Do you use The Flood, and if so, how do you maximize that card? Hopefully, breaking down some of the Genesis sub-themes, builds, and plays will help out.
More so, I want to get into how consistent Genesis is overall, and that they have arguably the best set up card in the game. Genesis has numerous ways to go into their deck or reserve for Heroes and because of the new Reserve rule of not being able to access the Reserve the first turn of the game, offenses that are able to go to their deck consistently have a massive advantage on offenses without the same resources. Genesis is able to go straight to Jacob, Follower of God who is then able to snag a Genesis enhancement from deck. Covenant of Eden, Covenant with Noah, and Stone Pillar at Bethel are solid artifacts that can be fetched through Offering Your Son or Delivered to grab Heroes. Faith and Faith of Sarah can grab cloud Heroes or a Genesis hero, which is what we want so we can snag Jacob, Followed of God first turn. Jacob first turn to a Numerous as the Stars (when the deck is built to support this card) can get out a lot of human Heroes. You can select to get out the territory class negate Heroes, Jonah, banding Heroes, or Genesis Heroes. Really you can go any way you want with this. If you go to a first turn Jacob, then I would say Enosh, Noah, and characters that restrict, hurt, or hinder your opponent should be your selections. I would grab Enosh, Jonah, a meek hero, and Jesse. If you think that is a lot of colors, blue interacts well with green so it’s one additional brigade of white but having Jesse down with a meek hero to negate all of the opponent’s characters in territory on turn 1, plus having Jonah out, is debilitating for the opponent to get around. Enosh works perfect with the offense and negates opponents neutral cards. If you are able to have Enosh and Jesse out first turn, Ruth offenses can also do this easily, then you have a massive advantage on your opponent already. You can also get out Mary and Noah and Genesis can get Goshen out easily.
Genesis also pairs perfectly with animals as blue/crimson dual cards are plentiful and usually provide additional speed. Offering Your Son to grab Covenant with Philistia to grab an animal and gain a draw 2 is a huge boost. You can also grab numerous animals to use as battle winners and consistently get draw 2’s. Remember, Noah’s Ark (Ark of Salvation) is commonly played and holds a blue Covenant which Genesis has plenty of. Covenant with Eden as a Covenant is very difficult to get around and rarely played. If you play around this while it is active and run Noah with Goshen, the opponent has to get around numerous obstacles. Numerous as the Stars to set up Mary/Joseph/Enosh and then get out Goshen with Two by Two, Faith of Noah, and/or Egypt is a very strong first turn setup. Noah prevents cards, offers the meek variable for Mary, Joseph, Enosh and Goshen. In addition Noah will prevent cards, shuffle a card (this is great when he is banded in – I’m looking at you Earley) and be able to play everything through Goshen while being protected by Mary for cards played in battle until Noah plays an enhancement. Once again, these attacks offer numerous obstacles the opponent has to respond to and overcome and Genesis is able to set up this game state early on.
Patriarchs are very fast and have the add to battle feature those other offenses lack. Patriarchs add to battle abilities should be considered when building Genesis offenses to offset the lack of adding to battle that certain sub-Genesis themes do not offer. I do love Father Abraham with Faith of Abraham, that is a strong attack. Abraham being able to play Answer to Prayer is also amazing because you can search for and band in a hero which can be Jacob and he can grab another Genesis enhancement and band to a meek hero and then you can wrap in more meek madness. Remember, Genesis has access to The First Sacrifice, Offering Your Son, Delivered, (limited but Solomon’s Dream and Zerubbabel’s Plumb Line), The Emmaus Road through a lot of dual brigade blue/green, and of course Numerous as the Stars. Another fun Genesis combo that I know John Hendrix will love, is coupling Reu with Jeshua in a Genesis deck. Topdecking a Genesis card grants you a draw 2 with both of those heroes out, that’s not bad, especially when Hezron can consistently recur and topdeck Genesis Enhancements. Couple all of that with the consistency artifacts and Covenants and you are setup to build a deck however you want. There’s more to Genesis, but I am already nearing 1500 words and want to get to other themes!
Conclusion:
So this article serves as introduction to the state of the game post rotation and pre-GoC. In addition, the first competitive theme of Genesis has been examined. Please join us next week for part 2 in this series which will explore additional competitive themes!
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