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 second article in the series Tyler examines the competitive themes of Kings of Judah, Ruth, Daniel, and Prophets.
Introduction:
Last week we started to consider themes that are competitive post-rotation and pre-GoC. The first theme we looked at was Genesis. In this article we will evaluate four other competitive themes to give an overall feel for the state of the game currently.
Kings of Judah:
Another fast setup that can attack the opponent in numerous ways are the Kings of Judah (KoJ) offense. KoJ have the best add to battle fortress in the game because it is reusable and works for both offenses and defenses. KoJ is able to fully take advantage of meek abilities with adding to battle, Ride on Victoriously, Matthew’s Begats, and Book of the Law, to name a few. KoJ also has access to Faith of David for an additional add to battle, Bearing our Sin as well if you want even more. Zion is a great setup card, plus Covenant with David is amazing for this deck for both abilities on the card and The Throne of David is an amazing consistency, soul hider, setup card as well. Add territory negates, numerous add to battle, another easy Mary protection, and having easy access to Plumb Line and Solomon’s Dream is nice. The strength with KoJ is the add to battle, but there are also numerous consistency cards. I would definitely add some gold for The Emmaus Road and a potential stronger Impartial Judgement play and Humble Seeker goes well in the offense too. You don’t have to stick to unity kings, mixing up KoJ with other themes should make it stronger, but it will take away from the potential targets for adding to battle. Faith of David in play, The Lord Delivers! In play, Gates of Jerusalem, with Mary/Wall of Protection (WoP) out is extremely easy to get out and offers meek add to battle, meek protection, royalty/cloud add to battle, and an additional negate in territory. The territory class negate is important because it allows a negate to be played without taking away the granted protection through Mary or WoP. You can now add to battle twice with layers of consistent protection with a negate, that is tough to get around. Goshen can easily be added to this deck, especially with Solomon’s Dream and Zerubbabel’s Plumb Line being easily added and David’s Descendant getting out a fortress. KoJ are more of a setup offense to really get going, but it doesn’t take long to get it going. Also, Hananiah to keep grabbing or equipping a weapon is very strong. A band with weapons that can negate at any time and/or provide protection is a very strong rescue. A common play this season is setting up the big Impartial Judgement play off Awesome Ride usually. Jayden and Chad did a video on Jayden’s YouTube channel where they both unknowingly ran similar versions of this build. Both used KoJ Heroes but with Postexilics. This would be a prime example of adding two themes together for a stronger result. I would love to see more of a shift to KoJ with a few Postexilics and then have the KoJ add to battle to support instead of Postexilics with the KoJ support for additional meek Heroes with Impartial Judgement. I am seeing some Mary/Goshen/Noah play. I think Plumb Line, Solomon’s Dream, The Emmaus Road, Delivered, and Offering Your Son will all be heavily used going forward (as they already were) but because of rotation pushing out older cards people will need to add more consistency pieces to their offenses. Because of this, players will also have to find ways to incorporate numerous brigades into their deck.
Ruth:
Ruth has been played a good bit and I have gone into meek adds to numerous offenses already, but I think it is important to note that Ruth has add to battle and numerous consistency pieces within Ruth but has a tough time finding ways to fit in other brigades at time. Ruth does have Jesse and Obed for negating within their own brigade and not having to “force” Jesse in for his ability. Salmon is also one of the strongest banders in the game and if you are going to band in X (X = Ruth meek Heroes) you might as well get the most out of Windows of Narrow Light. Salmon can band in all meek Ruth Heroes and with 3 meek Heroes out you negate all characters and Enhancements, just have Bethlehem out and all your Ruth heroes work through Windows and now Salmon and his ability cannot be prevented and now he can band to numerous Heroes, negate all characters and Enhancements, and Goshen and Wall of Protection can offer more obstacles that work outside of battle that the opponent has to deal with. Ruth is known for their lack of battle winners; you are essentially making Bethlehem and your character abilities your battle winners. Isaiah + Amminadab is a solid play, but why do all of that when I can have ongoing Windows of Narrow Light, Bethlehem, and recur Marriage Covenant for a cannot be negated band off Ruth to negate everything and band in Amminadab for a CBP bounce over and over.
Daniel:
This deck might be the best, or one of the best offenses when Michael, Chief Prince comes out and it has to be the best when GoC comes out because of Daniel. This build has access to nearly all of the tutor cards as well. Eyes to See/Jeshua combo (if you are ok with losing Michael’s toss), Virgin Birth/Out of Egypt, The Emmaus Road, Daniel’s Prayer, Angelic Guidance, Fifth Seal/Love Righteousness, Offering Your Son, Numerous as the Stars and Delivered. Did I miss anything!? Just like the previously listed white offense, the strength of this offense is derived from it’s heroes. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abed-Nego, Servants by the River, Daniel’s Guardian, Michael, Chief Prince, The Foretelling Angel, are all Daniel reference heroes for Michael, Chief Prince’s ability to work, and you want that to work. That’s only 8 heroes though, I would recommend adding Captain of the Host, Cherubim to start the band to Daniel when needed, The Angel of the Winds to help setup, The Four Living Creatures for another silver/white hero, The Angel of Might can play any white enhancement, and The Guardian Cherub in a band is actually a really good play, he always snags a negate. That’s an additional 6 silver heroes to have Michael keep his toss ability, or you can play white heroes with bounce to keep Michael’s ability working.
Regardless, you really aren’t attacking with anything else in this offense. I will say it is centered around the Daniel band and you want to get out the Daniel band and keep the band alive and growing. Just in case the Daniel offense is new to you, all the Daniel humans’ band and they provide lost soul protection from evil cards, top-decking a good Daniel card from Reserve, preventing the next enhancement (unless it is a Daniel Enhancement), a draw 1, protecting Daniel humans from discard, makes Daniel banding cannot be interrupted, negates fortresses, Evil Characters, and N.T. Characters. When you end the band with Daniel, then Daniel can band to another Daniel hero, all the other Daniel humans’ band to Daniel humans. Daniel can then band to Servants by the River who protect lost souls and Daniel human heroes from lone Evil Characters (pairs great with The Great White Throne/Wool Fleece and Daniel’s negate ability) and then Servants can band to a Daniel angel which should be Michael, Chief Prince. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Michael will toss all multi-brigade evil Enhancements (while all human Heroes are Daniel reference) and can band to an O.T. angel warrior. You can then band Captain to Joshua to all sorts of craziness, or The Defender of Saints to Jeremiah or what have you, but I prefer to keep the toss with Michael and band Captain of the Host for an additional draw one and a negate, then Captain bands to The Guardian Cherub to snag Flaming Sword (even from discard) and you grabbed a negate for your massive band that tosses a lot, prevents the next enhancement they play, draws, negates all sorts of targets, and if you can stop banding, then you are protected from lone Evil Characters. Like I said, you don’t need to attack with anything else, but you do want ways to get out and get back heroes with this offense.
Prophets:
Green should be rampant at Nationals and played heavily all season because seemingly every good card has dual brigade green on it. That’s not true, but green has a lot.
I won’t spend too much detail on Prophets because they have been around for so long but Elijah, Jeremiah, Elisha, Cherubim bands with or without Ezekiel, Daniel, Malachi recursion, Moses, Zechariah, and Isaiah all can be built around, mixed together, and mixed with other themes. Green can do so much in so many ways. Elisha and Cherubim can target evil Dominants, but Elisha can easily grant cannot be negated Enhancements, which is especially good with Two Bears and other green Enhancements. Elisha can also discard an evil Enhancement from opponent’s deck. The current meta is running around 5 evil Enhancements for battle winners, maybe a couple more in Reserve at most. The point is, you attack with Elisha twice and have The First Sacrifice with Jeremiah mixed in with a Cherubim band, you aren’t losing many battles. Band in Malachi, play The Coming Prince, or have Exiles to get back The First Sacrifice numerous times and the opponent quite simply won’t have any enhancements to block with. I think this is sneakily Prophets strongest attack. The First Sacrifice to look at their hand and then attack with Elijah to Elisha to discard what you just put under their deck if it was an evil Enhancement, or a Cherubim to Jeremiah band to further hit their hand and toss their, presumably, only battle winner in their hand is a great rescue. Isaiah is a great hero moving forward but he can be hard to get initiative with. I like a Zechariah band more than an Isaiah band overall. I do think Prophets mixed with other brigades to gain a bit of their best strategies is always the best move as red can easily band to Prophets which opens up a lot of other cards in general.
Conclusion:
Well there you have it, the state of the game currently! Hopefully these two articles help in considering some of the major current meta trends in Redemption and lead to advances in deck building and exploring each of these themes.
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