Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Use of Ingredients:
Foreign Spearman- pretty easy splash, kinda hurts my TGT but it's usable with Wickedness Abounds and it's a great way to use Plot without having to rip it.
Simeon- super powerful with my offense, can band to 6 of the 13 other heroes and can use both Meeting the Messiah to help TGT as well to do some more banding. Yay!
Windows of Narrow Light- as you can see, I have 3 no SA heroes with support after their protection. All of the no-SA heroes have a good purpose aside from WoNL as well, the females for Suzy and 'He Is Risen', and John the Baptist for Spirit as a Dove and Birth Foretold, also, as aforementioned, they're all prophets for Simeon's band. Yippee!
Genderless- for offense I used the one genderless hero--Priests of Christ--and he's nice to be able to use Passover and Unleavened Bread and Benedictus. On defense, I have Complainers, Angry Mob, and Doubt. Complainers because he's cool if they attack with their only good hero, Angry Mob because you have a slight chance of getting rid of their only good hero so why not...?, and Doubt because they won't be expecting any resistance to their Strong Angel, and then boom. Doubt.

Uncommon cards included to be fun and why:
Philip's Daughters, Mary, John the Baptist- all no SA so Windows protects them, Birth Foretold protects John from opponents altogether, and they're all prophets that Simeon can band to, once again using an ingredient to high potential
Elisabeth- N.T. female that helps Susanna, another prophet for Simeon, *also see below*
Zecharias, Father of John- Figured I'd give him a shot, he helps out Priests of Christ with the teal aspect, is indeed a prophet, cool Gabriel synergy, can use Benedictus and Passover and Unleavened Bread (see below)
Passover and Unleavened Bread- this is one that I've liked to combo with TGT whenever it was possible, it's nice to take out the one EC that's stopping the ignore from TGT so it helps a lot
Spirit as a Dove- another way to get Son of God or any other sweet N.T. good card I want (Grapes, AotL, etc.) and it's cbn if John the Baptist is in play

Notable Synergies Not Already Mentioned:
Fun banding chain: Simeon+Zecharias+Elisabeth, if Gabe is out then the first evil card in battle is prevented thanks to Zecharias
Gabriel can recur Consider the Lilies, Magnificat, Birth Foretold, and Benedictus
King Amon&King Manny combo for infinite Scattered, Gib. Trick, etc.
Cov. with Death because Mary the Mother of James is CBN with TGT and my Kings are CBN with Gates and I might not want Angry Mob to work if I have fun heroes out.
Speed Bump lost soul is nice with forced draw.

Notable Ironies:
I almost forgot to put in TGT, it wasn't until I talked about the Cov. with Death and Mary, Mother of James synergy that I realized I didn't have TGT in there... Pretty big piece of the pie I ALMOST forgot. I ended up taking out Darius' Decree for it.

Hope you accept it (because that took awhile to type out ) and I hope you like it!


"I Doubt There's a Use for That Card"

Cards in Deck: 56

Lost Souls: 7
Revealer
First Rounder
Female Only (W)
Doubler (2-liner)
Same Book
Thorns
Speed Bump

Dominants: 6 (and Doubt)
Son of God (J)
Angel of the Lord (C)
New Jerusalem (Wa)
Grapes of Wrath
Christian Martyr (C)
Vain Philosophy
Doubt

Fortresses: 2
The Garden Tomb
Herod's Temple (Di, ya know, the actual fortress one)
Gates of Jerusalem

Artifacts: 2
Windows of Narrow Light (Read: Windows of Narrow Light)
Gifts of the Magi

Curses: 1
Covenant with Death

Heroes: 13 (Say what? Yup. 13. A little less cool than 14 but Gen. Widow just didn't fit the bill)
Philip's Daughters
Mary (D, 2nd Edition)
John the Baptist (Pr)
Susanna
Salome (the not the EC one)
Mary, the Mother of James
Joanna
Simeon (Wa)
Elisabeth (Yerp.)
Gabriel (Di)
The Strong Angel (Wa)
Priests of Christ
Zecharias, Father of John

Good Enhancements: 11
Passover and Unleavened Bread
Benedictus
'He Is Risen'
Consider the Lilies
Magnificat
Spirit as a Dove
Birth Foretold
Angelic Advice
Striking Herod
Meeting the Messiah
Repentance and Restitution

Evil Characters: 7
Foreign Spearman <--Not sure how the "-an" will turn out. I made it black AND white, maybe it'll be gray, maybe it'll look dumb. We'll see. It's supposed to be gray though.
King Manasseh (Di)
King Amon (Di)
Angry Mob
Complainers
King Zedekiah
The Jeering Youths

Evil Enhancements: 5
Scattered
Wickedness Abounds
Haman's Plot
Gibeonite Trickery
Dungeon of Malachi

Great job, this deck is very nice and I like what you were working with.

I loved your use of Isaiah, I think that is a perfect way to maximize Windows.  With his Call, Isaiah is already one of the best heroes you can have, and his ability is just icing on the card cake.  It also makes it much easier to pull him out of deck.  I wish that you could have used Windows more, myself, because it was not made more central.  True, you have some Legions to take advantage, with great numbers and good enhancement backup, but that's it for no-SA heroes.  Otherwise, your offense is very sound as far as I am concerned, with a good deal of power, backup, and staying power.  It also puts Simeon in a great spot to make all of your prophets bigger (of which you have many).

I also love your defense in general, and the use of Magicians to go well with the Foreign splashing being used.  However, I think there is a little oversight, because Divination would be perfect to use for the Magician component or for throwing away for the best numbers you can get to play off of Spearmen.  I like your defense, but this would have put everything together on the same dish, in my opinion.

The only real problem I have is that you only used one genderless card, but it works well with your Magicians and the brigades being used overall, so it does add to the deck.  I'd have liked to see you use this ingredient to its fullest, but that's the only major complaint I have with this deck, I really do like it overall.

Alright, this deck is superb.  I love the little things you have added to it, but it is overall very sound and meshes well.

Lots of heroes with no SA, who work so well with the heroes you added to them, I really have to congratulate your efficient use.  I did not see someone going all-NT on us for this one, very nice.  I think you missed the most powerful no-SA hero (Isaiah), and you both neglected the most obnoxious (Gideon), and yet you still make something better than I expected.  Simeon works in seamlessly as well, with all of your prophets, but you added another kick by including more Luke.

Priests of Christ was expected from someone hoping to use genderless in the offense, but I didn't think anyone would use it effectively.  You manage to do this by combining TGT, feasts, and another Teal hero that meshes perfectly with the rest of the offense, very nice.

Also, on the genderless topic, your use of Jeering Youths and Angry Mob as actually effective components in your defense is impressive on its own, but your defense is stout as well.  The only part that doesn't fit to me is Spearmen, which is unfortunate.  Of all of your enhancements, I only see 2 with any strength, and that is 2 and 3 between them, so not much effect there.  He is only really useful if you also have your Covenant with Death active, so he is often going to have no use for you unless you can goad your opponent into attacking with FBTN and have just the right enhancements.

Beyond Spearmen being a problem to me, I also don't like Doubt so much here.  I see what you were trying to do, and I appreciate that, but it just doesn't go with the overall taste of this deck.  Instead of this one, you could have added more power through another dominant, and it can only block one turn for you.  After that, it sits there as nothing, and no Nathan or anything else to shuffle it into your deck.

Basically, I love this deck, and it has a lot of GREAT additions, but I would have liked to have seen more use from Spearmen and something instead of Doubt.

Enjoy!

Cards: 63

Lost Souls:8
Speed Bump
Anti Withdraw(In the clouds)
Womans(the first two can be W, but this one is from the started deck)
Draw 1
Recurer
Fool
Anti Burial
*/4

Dominants:7
Sog(J)
New J(Promo)
CM(any)
DoN
Strife
FA
Angle of the Lord

Forts:3
High Places
Gates of Hell
Herod's Temple

Artifacts: 8
Chariots of fire
Cov. of Palestine
Unknown Nation
Holy of Holies
Golden Cherubim
CoM
Charms
Gifts

Heroes: 7
King Solomon(TxP)
Watchful Servant
Martha
Gen Widow
Hur
Gabe(I)
Mike

GEs: 6
Meetin the Messiah
Loaves and fishes
R and R
Striking Herod
Philosophy
In the clouds

Evil Characters: 15
Antiochus
Goat
Greek Scholars
Wandering Spirit
Spirit of Temptation
Trembling Demon
KoT
Damsel
Balaam
Manny
Job's Three friends
King Amon
King Rey
Gomer
Wives

Evil Enhancements: 9
Abomb
JiP
Worshiping Demons
SSS
Sinning Hand(Great Card, cause no one want to discard half there hand)
Hypocrite's Proselyte
Plot
Scattered
Wickedness of the Tenants

This is an Abomb deck.  I found that all the cards work out well in this deck, because Solomon searches for High Places, Scholars is a greek, Philosophy is useful in insteading, and the friend gave me the idea of brown, which works great in the deck.  Amon for recursion, Rey to put characters that draw in a side battle, and infiniblock. Great stuff.  The main point of the defense is banding and negation.  The offense is standard watchful servant a bomb.  For the little number of cards that I doubled up already, some hurt.  Not being able to use Mayhem was bad, and I am pretty sure that there was something else that I forgot.

I like where you took this deck, going straight to Abom, which does seem like the natural choice.  However, you added a little twist, by adding in Gates of Hell, which does help with adding bulk and options to the defense (even though Solomon cannot search for it). 

The only issue I have with Solomon is that the King is naked; he ain’t got no support!  No other purple, no real help from artifacts or fortresses, no bands, he is all alone.  Sure, you have a side-battle combo with him and In The Clouds while still pulling out fortresses, but he’s not generally the guy you want on your side of the battle in that case due to numbers.

On In The Clouds, I always like seeing this combo get used, but just needed to point out that anti-Withdraw does not work for it, as it is a Return ability.  Since you mentioned that in the listing, I just wanted to make sure that ruling was resolved.

Overall, I like the deck, but I feel you missed out on some opportunities.  For one, you only have 7 dominants for 8 souls.  You gotta maximize that ratio, even if you don’t have Mayhem to use.  For example, I don’t see Vain Philosophy in any of the decks you turned in, and that is a fantastically-powerful card, as well as fitting given the theme of this dish.  Also, I see a version of King Manny in each of your decks, meaning one of them is using a no-SA version, which is definitely going to hurt the power.

Your defense is formidable, but I’d like to have seen maybe some cuts on that artifact pile to make your offense a lot more threatening the whole game, since I don’t know how easily you will have your defense hold out forever with the way your combos fit together and you have to hold for end-game the way I see it.

Overall, good deck, and I like what you did with it.  I just think you could have really wowed us with a couple of tweaks.