Battle winners are an extremely important part of Redemption. Without them it is rare that you will be able to get a block or redeem a Lost Soul. There are many forms battle winners and sometimes it can be confusing as to which ones you should play in your deck. To help us decide, it is necessary for us to understand which battle winning abilities are the strongest. For this article I will not be addressing specific cards but rather general abilities. Battle winning abilities include ignore, discard, convert, underdeck, withdraw, remove, capture, end the battle, set-aside and protect. Each of these abilities can win you a battle but, are some of them more consistent or powerful than others?
Discard
Probably the most common of battle winning abilities, discard causes an opposing character to be removed from the field of battle and placed in the discard pile. The draw backs of discard is that there are lots ways to protect from it and to instead it. In Type 2, discard abilities lose a small amount of effectiveness because the best characters in an opponent’s deck will probably reappear through recursion or will have a backup copy in the deck.
Convert
Convert causes a character in battle to change its’ alignment. Converting is stronger in Type 2 than it is in Type 1 because, converting a character prevents your opponent from being able to place a duplicate copy into their territory. Convert has some serious draw backs. Due to game rules, demons cannot be converted. This means any offensive battle winner that converts a character cannot target a demon. Demons are getting played in many top tier defenses. Another issue with convert is that The god of this World was printed and provides all Evil Characters blanket protection from conversion, even in battle.
Capture
Capture abilities cause opposing character(s) to be removed from battle and placed in another location. Most often this location is a Land of Bondage, either yours or your opponents. Capture has additional benefits and draw backs then other abilities. The benefit is that some capture abilities can generate Lost Souls for you to rescue, while the drawback is it can create additional souls for your opponent to rescue. There are many ways to protect from capture weakening its strength a little farther. Currently, meta play isn’t seeing a lot of this protection so capture is a little stronger right now.
Remove from the Game
Remove from the Game is one of the strongest abilities to use, to win a battle. Removal causes an opposing character to be remove from battle and in effect the game. Once a card is removed from the game it cannot be recurred in any way, it is effectively gone for good. There is not a ton of protection from removal.
Underdeck
Underdeck does what you think; it places an opposing character beneath the owners draw pile. There is very little protection from underdeck. The only concern is that you will eventually be seeing the characters you underdeck in battle again later.
Withdraw
Withdraw abilities force an opposing character out of battle and back to its owner’s territory. Again this ability has very little forms of protection against it, but be prepared because you may be seeing the same character in battle again the very next turn.
Set Aside
Set Aside abilities take an opposing character and put them into the set aside area. Set asides usually have a return clause based on a specific amounts of turns going by. Outside of blanket protection, set aside cannot be protected from. This ability also limits your opponent from playing an additional copy to territory in Type 2.
End the Battle
End the Battle stops all players from being able to play any further Enhancements and moves the battle directly to resolution by numbers. This is generally only an evil battle winner, but it is effective. Although it doesn’t directly remove an opposing character from battle there is only one way to instead “end the battle” abilities. Usually an End the Battle card is played to increase an evil characters toughness to reach a stalemate scenario.
Ignore
Ignore abilities allow you to walk around opposing character(s). This won’t do anything to get rid of the opposing character but it can help redeem a Lost Soul.
Protect
Protecting a character a character gives you the ability to not worry about losing your character to the abilities it is protected from. For instance, if you have a protected Foreign Wives in battle your opponent cannot target her with any ability (except regardless of protection cards). A protected Hero still needs to be able to beat opposing characters by the numbers or by special ability to redeem a Lost Soul. There are ways to generate almost infinite protection for a few offensive characters.
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