Offense had several things going for it:
-A large banding chain, capping out at 29/27 (Helez+Abishai+Phineas+Dave) and a smaller one (Jonathan to Dave or Saul)
-Large, no SA (or effectively no SA) Heroes (Eliashib, Saul, Angelic Army)
-Kings TSA for FBTN
-John the Apocalyptist, with 3 CBN enhancements (2 of which were direct battlewinners) - First Seal was exclusively an enhancement
-Opportunity to band to the opponent's offense (first three members of the big chain, Seraph, Unified Kingdom)
It did have a couple weaknesses as well, namely:
-No negates/interrupts
-Useless Perpetual Priesthood. I thought it would be decent to bring out Phineas or Eliashib from deck for a cumulative 19/21, but never had the opportunity. The only use I got out of it was giving it to an opponent when Eglon made me give him an enhancement.
The defense was fairly solid as well, if less consistent. Orpah, as a chump block, was incredible. I cannot stress enough how many blocks she got on her own. In no fewer than three games my opponents wasted a defensive discard to hit her instead of the hero in battle. The two Canaanites were often protected from multi-brigade heroes because of their idols - it didn't always work, but when it did it really worked. They also got some fantastic draws using Baal Worship in battle. 2x Herod stopped my opponents from trying to copy my banding strategy, and both Cain and Hophni were low-numbers and easy to block, play SitC, play DoU. The rest was fairly standard booster defense - a few surprises (I got a couple cheeky blocks with Demon in Armor because he prevents blue and purple enhancements) but mostly just numbers and a couple negates. There are certainly bad cards here as well, but these are easier to justify - the bad OT cards fuel Orpah, the bad NT enhancement (*cough*LeadingOthersAstray*cough*) was for Galba. I used Treachery twice, I think, and both times they just gave me numbers to cancel its -3 toughness - since it was mostly used off a 7/4 character in the first place, it ended up being Orpah fodder for the most part.
Sin in the Camp and Deceptive Sin were fun. I actually ran into one person who grabbed a FoM ANB without realizing it had unity - we had a good laugh when he finally found a use for it in getting rid of SitC. These have a bit of anti-synergy with Phineas, since he discards an EE when he bands, but they were effective enough to help mess with my opponent's options.
I was REALLY surprised the Lawless made it around the table during the draft. It was incredibly helpful, both as soul gen and finding defense.
The games that I won tended to go the same way - attack with big numbers, large banding chains, or silver battlewinners, defend until I won. Derek (Watchman) was my only victory where I gave up four souls - all the rest were 2s and 3s. I tended to finish with a solid 20 mins left of the clock.
The first game I lost was the Jonathan Wagenknecht. I don't feel bad about that - he won the whole thing and posted his deck on the boards here. In particular, Lions and using Merchants of the Earth to play Failed Objective twice hurt me a lot, and I lost 2-5.
I do feel bad about the other loss. Nathan Levorson and I played round 4. He had a Mighty Warrior early, which he (mostly) used to toss my enhancements. I had trouble defending from that for a while. Fortunately, I found an early Abishai, so I just banded to Mighty Warrior and he didn't have much to do. We just went back and forth with a 12/12 toss and a 20/20 band giving souls for a few turns. Eventually we got enough defense that that wouldn't work anymore. Late in the game, we were each at 4/4. I attacked with Seraph, a 5/5 angel, while holding both First Seal and Golden Censer. I banded to his Micah, and the additional 2 defense was enough to give him initiative. He got first play, and as we already established, I had no good interrupts. We talked later and he didn't have a negate, I would have walked through with just Seraph. While the later matchups would obviously have been different, an additional win on my scorecard would have bumped me up to second. Ah, well.
