An alternate win condition is fun topic of discussion that continues to crop up from time to time in the Redemption community. If you’re unfamiliar with the term it means there’s a way to win the game apart from the normal route to victory. In Redemption that’s normally done by rescuing Lost Souls using Heroes in battle. Today, we’re going to look back at a card that could have been Redemptions first alternate win condition.

Alternate Rescue Condition

First, I should clarify that rescuing Lost Souls is the only method to victory in Redemption. The tournament structure relies on rescued Lost Souls to rank and pair players. What we really mean is alternate rescue condition.

Having a player lose when the deck is depleted, or by simply converting a certain number of Evil Characters into Heroes doesn’t work within the game unless we adapt a new system for running events.

The 1st Alternate Win Card – Almost

Due to the popularity of the idea with players, we explored adding an alternate win condition to the game in the Early Church set. The image below is the special ability as it was originally suggested.

I remember the night I suggested this, our lead developer Bryon saw it and expressed excitement. He had just gotten home from a Toby Mac concert when we were talking and immediately made the connection between the name and one of his songs. Had you noticed that connection?

We used to begin testing around the 1st of the year giving us a few months to work with the new cards before they had to go to the printer in early summer so they could be ready by Nationals.

With the Early Church phase 1 and phase 2 sets, our time to work with the cards was cut down to only a couple months each in the summer and fall instead of the winter and spring. Most of our testers were pretty busy and had to do more theorizing than testing.

One of our team members theorized that in order for an alternate win condition to be fair it has to be limited to the one rescue per turn suggesting we try this version.

Another team member expressed some concerns and suggested we use the following ability, which is a little longer than what we normally allow.

Because there was some disunity on what direction we wanted to go with this, Rob expressed concern about us finding a resolution. He suggested we might save the card for a future set so that we have more time to work on it.

A couple of our team members colluded and came up with an alternate ability for the card, giving us the version of Eye On It that we know today. One of our team members actually thought it would be a really powerful card. We didn’t have time to play test this version and it went to print as suggested.

In practice, this card is extremely difficult to trigger and gives very little reward for the investment. It’s difficult to play with and requires a deck to be built around it if you expect to gain any benefit.

It’s Not Too Late

While it may be too late for Eye On It to be Redemption’s first alternate win condition card, we may see alternate win conditions in the future. There are a number of clever ways to pull these off. The trick will be finding options that encourage interaction between players.

We’ve also changed our development and testing practices so that we have more time to design and test the new set. This year we began work on the new set immediately following Nationals in August.

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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.