Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Hello and welcome,
     This is a great game.  The brigades are only now (within the last couple of sets) starting to shape up into brigade definitions.  They are not related to books of the Bible more like classes and races.  One exception:  Blue seems to have Genesis heroes.  Some generalities:  Orange is definitely demons.  Red is warrior class heroes.  Purple is royalty.  Silver is angels. Etc.
        Angel Wars is a tough set to build a competitive deck with.  It has been made easier with the new card "High Places" but most of the cards only help the Silver (Angel) brigade.  Even then, there are not many...the lost souls are the most useful.  I'm sorry to tell you that.

      The card borders only matter with Ultra Rares and those are bright Gold along with all the promos.  The rest of the card borders seem pretty random.   

don't be afraid to ask questions....there are many knowledgeable people on the boards willing to help.

Hey, it's great to hear that you're getting in to the game! It is a very fun game, and it is a great way to learn about the Bible. As to your questions:

There wasn't really a set theme for the brigade colors until the past few years. In the last few sets that have been released, the brigades are generally along these lines:

Good brigades:

Red--OT Warriors. There really isn't a specific NT theme for red yet.
Blue--Genesis heroes (Abraham, Jacob, children of Jacob, etc.)
Gold--Judges (OT) and Luke/John heroes
White--Musicians (OT) and NT Females
Green--Prophets
Silver--Angels
Purple--Royalty
Teal (you might not have seen Teal at all, since there are none in any of the starters)--Priests

Evil Brigades:

Crimson (looks like pink)--Babylonians
Pale Green (the "lime" green you were thinking of)--Assyrians, and now Magicians (since the newest set)
Gray--Syrians (OT), Pharisees and Romans (NT)
Black--Philistines (OT), Sadducees and Greeks (mostly NT)
Gold (sometimes called Yellow, to differentiate between the good Gold brigade)--Egyptians (OT) and Herod's (since the newest set)
Brown--Evil Israelites/Royalty, Persians
Orange--Demons

As I said, not all of the cards of each brigade line up with one of the brigade identifiers, but that is the direction being taken with the newer cards, and will likely be that way in the future.

The border color is not significant to card play at all. There are even some cards that have different border colors for the same card (this happened a lot in the Patriarchs expansion).

Keep the questions coming! FYI, if you have questions about how a card is played, etc. then the Ruling Questions forum is the best for that. People on here are usually very friendly and helpful, so don't hesitate to ask about anything related to the game.

As far as the Angel Wars cards go, a lot of them aren't very widely used in decks. Each set has its great cards (a few AW cards seen in many decks are the Romans 3:23 "Revealer Lost Soul", Michael, Chamber of Angels, and some of the covenants) but also some not-so-great ones. I would probably suggest using a mix of cards from all of the sets, as a lot of the sets have great cards to go with an Angel deck. You can certainly try to build decks with mostly Angel Wars cards however. A nice thing about this game is deck styles are very flexible.

I hope you and your boys have a great experience playing Redemption, and being members of this community.

Hey! great to have you on the boards Glad to see some more ppl playing
The boards are a great place to learn more about the game and keep up to date on whats going on
I got into the game about 6 or 7 months ago and LOVE it I hope you and your boys do to.
If you are looking to buy cards that you can't find any where else, check out the Market Place section.

Be Blessed,
Bap7

Another way to divide it up, and there's going to be some debate on this as well, since most brigades have at least a little of everything, is by their strengths and weaknesses.

Silver has great characters, not a lot of fantastic winning Enhancements.  Some deck discard has been added.  Take away fight-by-numbers, or the power trio of Michael, Strong Angel, Captain of the Host, and it's tougher to win with these guys than it might first appear.  NT Warrior-Class angels are a fun theme, though, because you have two Heroes with access to the toughest Lost Souls, and there are ways to make them practically bulletproof (from discard, remove, capture, etc).

White - the NT females specialize in ignore.  There are Enhancements to ignore pretty much every brigade individually, a few more powerful ignores, and two Covenants that work great with ignores.  Musicians basically are about finding the best musical Enhancements and spamming them, so the cards they can use are very limited but their powers cover a wide range.  the Daniel cards are pretty much all anti-Babylonian/crimson.

Red has big characters with big weapons and lots of banding, and a good handful of negates.  For all those numbers, though, they surprisingly have very little fight-by-numbers capacity.  Site access has been a problem for them in the past but new cards have at least given them a little power to fight back.

Gold - Judges have a lot of destruction, esp. in territory.  NT Heroes have a lot of ways to go and get Lost Souls out of your deck, and lots of convert cards as well.  I like to combine them with Lazarus, Soldier of God and Seeker of the Lost for a "Salvation Army" offense.

Green - prophets have okay character powers, but lots of great battle-winning Enhancements.

Teal - no females and only a couple New Testament Heroes, and no fight-by-numbers.  But a lot of great abilities, mostly unstoppable battle-winners.  Some people have also used some of the more obscure card combos to do a lot of speed drawing and such.

Blue - Genesis cards have a lot of banding, a lot of recursion, and great abilities on both characters and Enhancements.  This is one of the strongest brigades around.

Purple - this was traditionally a small color but grew as we moved a lot of the kings from other brigades into purple.  Purple's a little hard to describe because, like blue, it's kind of a catch-all brigade.

Black - Philistines have a lot of destruction cards, like gold, and a lot of negates, like red.  Sadducees are mostly about finding ways to deny the Lost Soul, usually by sacrificing themselves.

Gray - Syrians are a capture-heavy theme.  Pharisees are similar to Sadducees in that they look for sneaky ninja ways to stop an opponent, like messing with the cards in their hand.

Crimson - Babylonians do a lot of things well, mainly capture and Site lockout.  Crimson also has several cards that blend well with orange (Seven Sons of Sceva, The Serpent, Leviathan).

Gold - Egyptians have a TON of deck discard, and some decent capture as well.  Herods focus more on forced withdrawal.  Both themes kind of blend over into each other.

Pale Green - Assyrians are the evil blue.  They do everything well and they are super-powerful.  Magicians are only just emerging but they do a lot of deck manipulation, card placement and orange-blending.

Brown - brown is the evil purple.  For starters, brown and purple stomp on each other a lot.  For another thing, brown is that catch-all brigade that kind of defies description.  However, brown is one of the best Site lockout brigades around, arguably better even than crimson.

Orange - orange and silver hate each other the way brown and purple hate each other.  Orange is weak in battle winners but strong in placed cards, and cards that are sent to/taken from bottom of deck.  Orange and Pale with placed cards blend VERY well, especially now that High Places is available.

Again, these are general themes, and subject I'm sure to a lot of debate.  Perhaps some people can submit general offensive ideas that have worked well for them in these colors.

Maus, if you check out our Board and Card Games section, you'll probably find I've started a good percentage of the threads there.  I have turned into an avid boardgamer since finding the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society about three years ago.  If you're ever in town for Origins, let me know so I can look for you.

Starcraft is one of the most fun games I have ever played.  Agricola not so much, but it's not fair to Agricola to say that, because I've only played it once, and honestly the worker placement mechanic just doesn't shine for me.  I was unimpressed with Caylus and Age of Empires III, Stone Age I like somewhat better, and the nice thing about Agricola is the different decks to add variety.  But the whole worker placement thing... eh... I can't describe it.

my BGG profile

The Schaef,

Thanks for the long post, that was really helpful in describing the different colors.  Give me something to look forward to when we open up those elusive booster packs.

Maus

Do you have the expansion yet?  I liked the original well enough but the expansion really makes the game complete.  I never play without it now.

I don't have the expansion, but when money becomes available, I'm tempted to get it.  Well, that and a bunch of other expansions for Tide of Iron, Combat Commander, Battlelore, ...

Let's not forget Redemption boosters!

Maus

Unfortunately, since Timmierz moved from your area, Redemption games are few and far between.

I wouldn't start with angel wars. I found that kings and apostles (apostles even more) are the best sets to give you lots of good cards to strengthen lots of different brigades.

A few suggestions:

Have each of you use different brigades. You can all share a big selection and then you each take what cards you need for each brigade.

Ask anything that you don't quite get, or when you just need suggestions for deck ideas. We're always willing to help, ask TOO MUCH. 

Have fun!


Priests is a great set, but it mainly boosts teal and orange.... however it has a few very nice cards for all the other brigades... not a bad set, especially with cards like lampstand of the sanctuary, all the protection fortresses for the various brigades, and some nice artifacts that can work with any brigade you're using.

I wouldn't buy any more angel wars. Period. The only brigade it boosted for good, silver, wasn't a very good boost and I rarely use angel wars cards in my angel decks.

Ah... true. However, I think that if he buys other packs he can make many brigades, instead of having 3 angel decks.

play a few games with the starter decks first.
that way all 3 of ya can get the idea on the game and read the rulebook if you haven't before custom building your own deck

I will probably be posting a rules question thread really soon, the questions are starting to build!

Maus