Here is a synopsis of the top 8 decks from LGP 15. I give a high-level breakdown of each deck and give some of my thoughts at the end. Note: I don’t have the official placings for the top 8. I will correct the placings at a later time. But I do know 1st and 2nd place for sure!
1st Place: Hymn – Purple Nazareth / Thieves
This deck wants to get ahead with an early Matthew and then start whittling down the opponent’s resources with cards like Jehu, Joshua, Zacchaeus, Twenty-Shekels, a purple hand control enhancement suite and the Thief package. This deck integrates both Kings and disciples, and I’ve never seen a purple offense quite like this before! While not as consistent at getting T1 Matthew as other pure Disciples deck, this deck has extra legs and tools in the mid-game as a result of leveraging Davide, Jehoshaphat, and Jehu. Side note: this deck will be wanting to keep the Disciples on their purple side for the most part since there are no clay enhancements except Authority of Christ in the reserve.
Hymn has shown that the combination of Thieves, Nazareth, and Den of Thieves is a potent concoction. However, pilots of this deck will have to be careful when choosing when to deploy their Nazareth. This deck is packed full of search effects (cards like Zion, The Deceiver, Damascus, David’s Harp, and Covenant with David) and if you play your Nazareth too early, you might end up with a bunch of dead cards in your hand. Den works nicely with Nazareth, allowing you to steal their Three Woes and limit their options to get out of the Nazareth lock. Pilots will also have to navigate the tension of cards like Zion (which require royalty unity) and playing their disciples. More helpful notes: since you are playing Disciples on their purple side, try to keep a good dominant or two in hand when attacking so you’ll always have something to reveal. A meek Matthew/Simon is much worse than the alternative.
This deck is also capable of a sneaky board reset if it has unity meek heroes in play. The idea is you block with a thief, use Den of Thieves to grab Stolen Treasures from reserve, then play Stolen Treasures to activate Three Nails (also out of the reserve). This is an uncounterable auto-block that this deck can use to get back in the game! Not sure how often this line of play came up for Hymn, but really cool to see. (Looks like he cut this from the most recent iteration of the deck, so it was probably too inconsistent to use)
One weakness of this deck could be other Matthew decks. Its playing both Ends of the Earth and Foreign Wives in the maindeck, which can cause opposing Matthews to draw up to hand limit if in the opening hand. Also, if this deck doesn’t draw enough cards in the early game, I’m worried about its ability to keep up. Nazareth works best when ahead in cards, not behind. But overall, really sweet deck from the mind of Hymn! Unique, creative, and competitive; the best of all worlds. Congrats on the victory Hymn.
2nd Place: I_am_bread – Disciples / Fools & Philistines
I_am_bread has embraced the way of the fool by playing a very aggressive Disciple based offense with lots of ways to choose opposing blockers. Pair this with a concerto of handpicked Fools that get placed in the opponents territory when their star ability is triggered and you have a recipe for a deck that can cheese its way to victory!
As far as individual card choices go, bread has some interesting inclusions. Firstly, Messengers of Joppa is a way to consistently band Matthew into play during your Resurrection turns. The idea is you band Messengers of Joppa into play off The Resurrection (The Resurrection gets Peter) and Messengers of Joppa goes and gets Matthew. Then Messengers bands to Peter and then Peter can band to Matthew.
I’m also intrigued about the decision to not include any N.T. fortresses to get out with Peter. I’m guessing that the fools package really taxes the flex slots in the deck and if you want to run Satan’s Seat, cards like Herod’s Temple and Bethlehem Stable lose a lot of their value. This is my first time seeing Tribute being played! This is the plan B for when fools get stranded in your hand. Play one of them down, activate Tribute, and “donate” the fool to their territory! If you have a Satan’s Seat in play the turn you do this, you can get around Tribute’s protect clause. Sneaky sneaky!
The tech of Transfiguration into Moses + Elijah out of the reserve is pretty sweet as well. I personally haven’t played these cards before and I’m not sure how effective they are in battle.
The defense is bare-bones-black-based Philistines. It can get some blocks off, but will fold under consistent or intense pressure. This deck isn’t trying to block repeatedly. Its trying to race.
As far as weaknesses go, from what I can tell the fools defense can really shoot itself in the feet sometimes. This strategy does have painful moments where you have multiple dead fools in your hand. Fools can be a bit “high-risk, high-reward” and we saw this deck fold under an explosive start from Hymn’s deck in the finals (which can be viewed here). But to be fair, I’m sure any deck would have had a hard time keeping up with the T1 we saw in that game. Cards like Murderous Command and Warrior Overtaken are great answers to a choose the blocker gameplan, but Bread is prepared to fight these cards with Harvest Time into a Complacent lost soul to restrict those dominants from ruining his day during battle.
I had the misfortune of being stomped in the LGP by another fools deck where I didn’t get to present a single evil character in battle (all were fools chosen to block for me). If decks like these run hot, they can take down any opposing deck. Very cool deck, and great job I_am_bread!
3rd Place: FloodedRed – Angels / Black Splash
RootedRed has been in the kitchen, cooking and looking for the best decks in Redemption. When he plays a deck, I take notice and try to see what I can learn. This deck is a defensive-heavy build with a resilient Angel package used to close out the game after the defense has stalled out the opponent.
While some decks these days dedicate 0-2 dom slots to the defense, Red has chosen to dedicate 4 (if you count Chronicles)! This gives him the ability to block consistently and get great blocks. He’s shying away from good dominants in favor of powerful defensive ones. This is why he’s able to leverage Peter’s Curse in the reserve to lock down good Dominants for 3 turns (which can be gotten of an Endless Treasures).
The offense he’s chosen doesn’t need Dominants to help it break through opponents defenses. The way I think about these silver-based offenses is that they are like battering rams. Chamber of Angels gives the deck inevitability and simple bands like Micheal into Captain of the Hosts or Micheal banded to Angel at Jerusalem leave opponents with few long-term answers. Even if they do have an answer, Chamber means Micheal and Captain can come right back next turn for a repeated rescue attempt. Bam. Bam. Bam. Like a battering ram.
A deck like this can easily run behind in cards. In order to address this, Red is utilizing all of the good silver cards that draw other cards (Magnifying Multitudes, Swift Beings, Angel Chariots, and Legion of Angels) plus some defensive draw (Balaam, Denarius, Mask of Self-Glorification, and Herdsmen) to keep up. It also uses two Storehouse effects (Storehouse and Jerusalem) to get cards out of the reserve each turn.
Decks that can get rid of Chamber of Angels will deny this deck its inevitability, same with decks that Restrict defensive dominants. This deck can play from behind, but in games where opponents are working with twice as many resources as you, it can be difficult to pilot this deck successfully.
The card that stands out to me here is Balaam, Son of Beor. I believe this card should be seeing more play. It has a great territory class ability, and if it gets to block and get a Christian Martyr or Warrior Overtaken out of your deck, its bonkers. The only problem is that this card doesn’t have any modifiers. Great job Red at finding a good shell for this character, and maybe this will lead to other types of defense-heavy decks incorporating Balaam into their gameplan.
4th Place Joemama: Nazareth Disciples / Black
Joemama has been playing Turbo Nazareth Disciples for as long as I can remember. But that doesn’t mean that much, since my Redemption-related knowledge only stretches back to January 2024.
Anyways, this deck is all about getting to a turn one Matthew, getting ahead on cards, then slamming down a Nazareth to make it difficult for the opponent to claw back into the game. The innovation of this build is the incorporation of CtheTree’s “Soul Surfer” elements that allow the deck to start setting up its gameplan on Turn 0 of the game due to the decks many star abilities that play lost souls from decks. Think cards like The Manger, Repudiating Rulers, and Harvest Time. Notably, using the Accusers lost soul to negate O.T. characters in battle, which makes the #1 counter to Matthew (Herdsmen of Gerar) irrelevant. It can also deal with opposing Crowds lost souls by using the Wanderer to exchange before battle.
Joemama has been refining his list and is well-practiced with this deck. Its a difficult deck to pilot due to the scenarios you can find yourself in. For example, the deck plays a lot of cards that search the deck or reserve, and if you play your Nazareth, you can almost lock yourself out of the game. In addition to the normal knowledge you need to have about playing Type 1 Redemption, doing well with this deck involves knowing when to play Nazareth and strategically using your own cards to negate or bounce your Nazareth. Trying to play this deck feels like navigating a tight-rope, which is exciting but also very punishing for newer pilots.
For those of you following my channel, you’ll know that this is a deck I’ve had some experience with. Its cool to see Joemama trying out some of the changes I’ve suggested! If you’d like to learn more about this deck, you can watch the deck-tech here.
The best draws of this Turbo Nazareth deck can feel unbeatable, but experienced Redemption players can navigate their way out of the lock if they stay untilted, play to their outs, and draw their Woes/Shipwreck.
My advice for deck builders right now? Have a plan for Nazareth. Have a plan for a turn one Matthew. If your deck can’t beat either of these things, I don’t think its going to have much legs in an upcoming tournament. Oh, and if your plan is just using Herdsmen of Gerar as an answer to Matthew? Note that Matthew decks are evolving, and the presence of Accusers might force players to adopt a different answer.
Note: If you end up deciding to play this list, add Duplicity into the reserve. Your Repudiating Rulers will thank you later.
5th Place: AgurTheWise – Nativity / Black Grey
Agur has been on a roll lately, crushing any who have the misfortune of being paired against him. The wheels fell off for him during his first match of the top 8, but I believe he could have taken this deck all the way to the finals if things had gone a bit differently.
I’ve spent a lot of time on my channel playing and talking about Nativity decks, and the source of my inspiration can be traced back to Agur and what’s he’s built here. The gameplan of this deck is to setup a Turn 1 Resurrection, banding a bunch of heroes into play and snowball the game from there using a suite of powerful Nativity cards. During the mid-late game, Star of Bethlehem can be used in conjuncture with Flight into Egypt to give your banding chains protection from harm, which is incredibly strong against most defenses that are seeing play.
There are a couple good reasons to play Nativity versus just a disciples-based offense. Nativity plays heroes that have great modifiers; most of them have Cannot Be Negated printed on them! This is valuable against the types of decks that are trying to counter Matthew decks using Holy of Holies.
Nativity isn’t as fast as other disciple decks, but what it lacks in speed it makes up for in resilience. Bethlehem Stable allows your heroes to come back turn after turn, almost like Chamber of Angels!
Agur is running with a Black/Gray based defense that can present several great blocks while also drawing cards with Nicodemus, Denarius, and Pretension. Pretension is a great way to punish people playing down their heroes into their territory, and Otho can get some devastating blocks when paired with Herod’s Temple. I’d say the reason to play this particular defense vs others is the strength of Herdsmen of Gerar which can help your disciples matchup.
I could write an entire article about Nativity, but for the sake of moving along, if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts about Nativity, watch my Nativity masterclass video!
6th Place: Redwing – Disciples / Gray
See? Matthew decks are adapting! This one is also playing Accusers to counter a Herdsmen block, but its not using a bunch of cards with star abilities to play lost souls from decks on turn 1, which makes getting access to Accusers more difficult but not impossible. I understand this decision, because typically having those star cards in your deck makes it weaker overall outside of setting up on turn 0 (does anyone really want to play Day of Judgement in their deck?)
I digress. What Redwing has here is one of the decks to beat! Its playing Disciples with a Gray based defense. Its running both Namaan and Nicodemus to give their powerful gray battle winners CBN. Book of the Covenant into Send the Helper helps keep the gas coming, while Achim plays a pivotal role in helping slow down other decks by negating the opponent’s neutral cards. Falling Away into Simon the Zealous to choose the blocker is usually a guaranteed rescue, and its pretty easy to setup a free lost soul with Eternal Inheritance as well.
When I measure decks I’m building or testing, this is the type of deck I measure them against. The benchmark, so to say. Are my decks doing powerful enough things to compete with Disciples? Does my offense have a game-plan to get through Gray based defenses consistently? Do I have a plan to either prevent or catch up to Disciples? These are the questions in the back of my mind as I’m trying to evaluate decks. Thanks Redwing for giving me the list to publish here!
7th Place: TheGuardian – Gold / Black Splash
The Guardian is a sniper. He’s keen to exploit any pivotal weakness in your defense and pick apart your blocks with hand control cards like Twenty Shekels, Teaching in Parables, and First Sacrifice. Nobody is safe in your territory either. Cards like Zacchaeus, Elijah, and Jephthah punish opponents who carelessly (or involuntarily thanks to Twenty Shekels) play down unprotected evil characters into their territory.
His defense is also a force to be reckoned with. Packing both Murderous Command AND Warrior Overtaken, his defense is equipped to force opponents to have answers to multiple blockers and constantly be playing around the powerful add to battle dominants. Notably, most of the evil characters in the deck have the ability to draw obscene amounts of cards, which is one of the most powerful things you can be doing in Redemption.
This deck is a control deck. 57 cards, 8 dominants. This deck loves going second and this deck loves it when its opponent draws cards, because it loves drawing cards with its Herdsmen defense. However this deck hates hand protection and cards that restrict dominants during the battle phase.
I’ve only ever seen TheGuardian play this deck. I believe its a viable and powerful strategy in the right hands. But its turns can get pretty complicated and force you to make many correct decisions in a limited amount of time in order to get results. This is a deck that rewards mastery, which Justin is reaping the benefits of big time (I believe he just won the Iowa State tournament with this deck).
If you’d like to learn more about GoldenEye, I’ve made a deck tech you can watch here. But for a quick summary of some of the things that stand out to me:
- The Defense forces opponents to make bad decisions. If they attack with large banding chains, it leaves them vulnerable to multiple Scattered effects. If they attack with a single hero, Blood Avenger can often times get a profitable auto block.
- Amazing Faith is a really powerful enhancement. So much so, that TheGuardian is playing Simon the Cyrene to go activate The New Covenant and put Amazing Faith into his hand on Turn 1.
- Teaching in Parables is equally as powerful. It can negate a fortress providing hand protection and reserve the best evil card in the opponents hand. Pair Amazing Faith and Teaching in Parables with Bartimaeus and Watchful Servant to have a powerful offense that can draw a lot of cards and keep getting these busted enhancements back over and over again.
- Moses is used to slow down territory class characters and enhancements. Twenty Shekels allows TheGuardian to “retire” Moses, play some of HIS territory class enhancements, then put Moses back on duty. Cute and powerful!
As far as weaknesses go, this defense is vulnerable to cards that toss multicolor enhancements, like Micheal, Goshen, and Shepherds of Bethlehem. This deck can have a hard time with Micheal if he’s paired with Chamber of Angels. I’m also surmising this deck would be weak to turbo Nazareth builds, but I don’t have enough experience with the archetype to say for sure.
8th Place: Mr Hiatus – N.T. Gold / Demon Thieves
Tyler is a powerhouse of pumping out decklists. I watch a lot of his videos, and the thing I pay attention to the most on his channel is where “the rubber meets the road” and where his theories gets put into practice. It’s one thing to create a deck and goldfish a couple hands with it. Its another thing to bring it to a tournament and refine the idea. All this to say, when Tyler plays a deck at an event, its a sign he really believes in the deck and I take note.
But I do have a caveat to make. Apparently Tyler didn’t have enough time to really think about what deck he wanted to play for this tournament match, and he reportedly spent 28 minutes cooking this one up before the match. So take what I just said and throw it out the window haha!
Jokes aside, let’s take a look and see what strategy Tyler was hoping to accomplish here.
This is a N.T. gold offense with a Demon-Thieves defense. Tyler really likes Demon-Thieves as a defensive strategy. Things that stand out to me:
- Multiple Add to Battle on the defense. Warrior Overtaken AND Murderous Command AND Gates of Hell. Typically you wouldn’t expect to see these in a Thieves deck, but Tyler has managed to fit all three in. I love the fact that Warrior Overtaken can go get Delilah out the reserve to make a sneaky band when the battle is going south or if you just need to borrow their best Evil Character for a turn. Murderous Command can get Amalekite Slave or Foreign Wives.
- Apparently something that can give this deck trouble are CBN enhancements, and Tyler is trying to hedge against that by playing The Coliseum. Just make sure you don’t accidentally toss your Amazing Faith though! I love how the Highwayman has so many good N.T. evil fortresses to get out of this deck! (Jerusalem, The Coliseum, and Gates of Hell).
- I don’t have much experience playing N.T. Gold offenses, but I really like Zacchaeus, Bartimaeus, and Watchful Servant backed up with Amazing Faith and Teaching in Parables. I would want to gain more experience with this offense before I make any comments on it. But compared to other offenses out there, this one is slower than Disciples, but fits in a smaller package. The question in my mind is why did Tyler choose this particular offense to go with his defense? The answer is unclear to me right now. If I had to guess, its because he wanted to focus on a defense-heavy deck and choose an offense that was slim but still had a powerful gameplan that complemented his hand-control strategy. Judas + Teaching is a great way to attack the hand.
Overall, promising archetype! I’m curious to see what a more refined list would have looked like, and if some of the things we are seeing here are still more in the “theory” side of things than the practical (for example, is Warrior Overtaken with no Philistines in the maindeck good? It might be, but I just don’t know).
Conclusion
What are some of the high-level takeaways here?
- Early hand and deck protection is at an all-time premium.
Early hand protection will help against Matthew decks as well as decks trying to enact a hand-control gameplan or a Nazareth lockdown. It also randomly hoses combo decks like Ashkelon that are floating around in the rafters. I’m convinced Jayden has an Ashkelon build he’s perfecting, waiting to unleash it at the right time (Concealed Riches cough cough). Decks that can get an early Storehouse, Crowds Lost Soul, or Bethlehem Stable is where I want to be when choosing a deck. And if you pair this with a way to get rid of an evil Three Woes that can negate your fortresses’ protection, even better!
- Don’t depend upon neutrals.
The prevalence of territory class characters that negate neutrals (think Resurrection Revealer, Obed, and Achim) mean that against the top tier decks, you can’t rely on your artifacts and lost souls to help get out of a tricky bind. I would say The Cross looks really well positioned right now, except for the presence of all these negate neutral territory class characters. When building a deck, I’m carefully considering how many artifacts I’m playing so I don’t end up with too many dead cards if I get stuck under a Resurrection Revealer.
- Matthew is still powerful.
Turns out drawing 7 cards on turn one is good. Who would have known!? Like I’ve been saying throughout this article, be prepared to face this card and have a gameplan. Some suggestions: make your deck mono-brigades on offense/defense. Play Herdsmen or Foreign Wives. Use add to battle dominants. Play The Cross. Use a defensive-heavy deck that can absorb the explosive disciples turn 1. Play disciples yourself, go first and slam a Nazareth in their face. I’m just spitballing here…
- Nazareth still has room to grow.
I feel Nazareth decks are underplayed. I attribute this to the difficulty in building your deck with Nazareth in mind and also piloting it. There is also an “unfun” factor that some players will avoid in favor of more “fair” strategies (citation: see Staxs decks in MtG). Hymn seems to have found a winning recipe in Nazareth + Thieves. I expect to see iterations of turbo Nazareth continue to develop. I’m curious what Joemama’s Turbo Nazareth deck but with a Thief defense would be capable of… (ominous brewing sounds)
- Warrior Overtaken and Murderous Command are helping defenses fight back.
I’m glad that we have some more starter deck dominants seeing play. Christian Martyr and Angel of the Lord have proven to be strong staples throughout the entirety of Redemption, and now it looks like Murderous Command and Warriors Overtaken might be joining them! I love the complexity and deckbuilding decisions these cards add to the game and they feel like fair ways defenses can leverage to fight back against overpowered offenses that have many “free” rescues. Cards like these mean no rescue is truly “free” anymore. Great job design team! Promo versions when?
Well, that’s it! Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you next time! To add a personal touch to this article, here are a couple things you can be praying for:
- I just started a new job! I’m so grateful. Pray for wisdom and that I don’t cognitively overload myself during the onboarding process.
- I feel a bit disappointed with how a potential relationship fell through. Things were going great until they weren’t. Its easy to take experiences like this and become cynical, but God wants our hearts to stay full of faith, hope, and love.
Thanks Redemption community!
To buy singles, sealed product, and other gaming supplies mentioned, please visit our sponsors!
