Cactus Game Design Message Boards

1   Messenger of Satan (EC)
1   Evil Spawn (Pi)
1   Wandering Spirit (TxP)
1   The False Prophet (EC)
1   The Serpent (Promo)
1   King of Tyrus (Pi)
1   Red Dragon (RoJ)
1   Abaddon, the Destroyer (RoJ)

1   Evil Armor (Pi)
1   Persistent Pestering (J)
1   Suicidal Swine Stampede
1   Sinning Hand
1   Deafening Spirit
1   The Wages of Sin (FoM)

1   Madness
1   Babylon The Harlot (RoJ)

Reserve:
1   War in Heaven (RoJ)
1   Nicolaitan's Teaching (RoJ)
1   Blasphemies (RoJ)
1   Trembling Demon
1   Demon behind the Idol
1   Dragon's Minions (RoJ)
1   The Gates of Hell

This isn't the exact defense I ran this weekend while testing my ruth deck, but it's what I'll be testing next, and it's pretty much the same, so good enough. The main idea behind this is manipulating and stacking the bottom of your deck.

Evil Spawn with Evil Armor and Wages of Sin or Persistent Pestering is so amazing. You can either play wages on your turn and underdeck it and then use it twice with ES/EA for a 3 card search, or use fearless traveler/Bronze Laver to underdeck Persistent Pestering and then use ES/EA to make them under deck 4 good cards from hand and then hit them with a battle winner.

Madness and Deafening spirit were also super fun to play with. Making more targets that they have to get through is always good.

Demon Behind the idol went unused in every game I played, so I have moved him to the reserve.

Trembling demon seems like a really nice card to have in the reserve, because he's not too amazing unless they have hand protection. Wages can grab him out, so a back up auto block seems like pretty good idea.   

I didn't run the serpent, but I will for sure in the future. His ability is just too good, and he's great for SSS. I was originally running fire foxes, an i probably will still run him, but serpent seems better in this deck. Idk what I'll take out for FF.

Something I didn't try, but I probably will is Destructive sin and Dust and Rubble. I wish I could put DS in the Reserve, but it will still work pretty well. I'll probably run CM, SW, DoN, And RaD for evil doms, which leaves only SoG, SC, and AotL for offense. It's a little sketchy taking out TW, but I guess I'll see how it goes.

IMO Damsel would be a good add, if you can find space.

I personally would run Woes over DoN. While there are some concerning CBN arts, Woes is much more versatile.

Well there are more obvious uses of Wages such as Uzzah, Death of Unrighteous, Silly Women, Lions etc all of which work into this hand control theme.

Something I noticed with Sinning Bountifully was how strong the synergy of offense/defense was. Same principle to setup Delenda combo turn 1 in t2 to 0 out their hand on their first drawing turn.

It was not without almost every combo piece which consisted of good and evil working together at the same time in the same turn yielding maximum value for the opportunity, and practically winning the game due to the overwhelming and immediate return.

Similar concept applies to Coney, obviously.

Wondering now most about how well dual alignment cards can fuel so much of the opposite at any given time. I'm feeling like with Evil Armor and deck stacking you can really optimize the value of dae especially when they are useful such as Unified Language. Seems like Egyptian Magicians is a lot more valuable in this sense over False Prophet.

I put War (has a dc ability) in my similar defense for 2k Horse access and the band with Red Dragon to setup cbn play first Dragon's Wrath and Pestering

Confusion is a strong play in this meta in my opinion because I feel like people are carelessly playing Covenant of Prayer in the assumption you won't be playing Confusion. It's become more of a reserve access tool than Confusion patch now.

That thought does raise my appreciation for the new Fall of Man curse because if you do permanently remove their Son of God and they can't play dominants in battle you are still practically setting back a lot of offenses by 3. Something I noticed about mill vs a control defense like this is you ultimately have to hit dominants and mostly Son of God to make a significant difference in terms of differential. Confusion being so direct is a must in either and maybe any control build in my opinion..