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2. Genesis: Genesis decks have taken off in usage since the dawn of the new Joseph, who is arguably the best hero in the game. He is certainly among the main contenders. Genesis decks incorporate the combination power of a Genesis offense with a Genesis Egyptian defense in most cases in order to maximize drawing and searching potential.

The key of any strong Genesis deck usually lies in abuse of Joseph and Zebulun. Joseph himself is able to play 3 enhancements with CBN status, all while protecting Sons of Jacob from discard (including Christian Martyr). When used in conjunction with Rachel, who can switch herself for a Joseph in your deck, and Judah, who can switch himself with a captured or discard Joseph, Joseph becomes extremely hard to stop consistently. Zebulun is also quite a hand full. While traditionally only seen in turtle decks, in a pure Genesis deck, Zebulun can be quite deadly because most Genesis decks are much more character-centric than enhancement-centric, making it significantly easier to reduce hand size and super power Zebulun's ignore ability.

Genesis also possesses a lot of speed, albeit largely unconventionally. Seven Years of Plenty offers a potential for D4 per turn for 7 turns. Dan can draw 2, if your hand size is below the opponents. Zebulun also draws one card, but that's largely to help balance his ability. Genesis' true speed lies in searching. Stone Pillar at Bethel allows you to discard an enhancement (which can easily be recurred from the discard pile by either Asher or Abraham's Descendants) to search your deck for any OT Good Card. Creation of the World can band in any Genesis heroes in your deck. Rachel can search your deck and switch herself for either Jacob or Joseph. Leah can search the deck for any of her children (if Jacob is in play).

Any defensive posture against Genesis must include Nazareth. Turning off searching can be catastrophic to Genesis decks if activated early enough. Covenant with Death is also a good option to turn off Genesis, assuming you don't mind losing your own abilities.

3. Garden Disciples: Everyone's favorite card, The Garden Tomb, is among us again this year, usually in the form of a mixed White/Purple deck featuring the Garden Girls as well as 4-7 Disciples, chiefly Matthew, Peter, John, Phillip, and Bartholomew. There isn't much to say about this deck; it's historically and statistically effective, so who can argue with its heavy usage?

The power of Garden Disciples decks starts and ends with The Garden Tomb, which, if the opponent has a redeemed soul, allows certain characters to ignore all evil brigades that do not have at least two characters in play. If drawn early through the speed of cards like Pentecost, First Fruits, Matthew, or Four Drachma Coin, The Garden Tomb can be deadly, as often the Garden Tomb play will give up a free soul to the opponent in the early game anyway, since Garden Disciples decks rarely utilize any kind of useful defense, favoring a small 5-6 blight in the game featuring Uzzah, King of Tyrus, Gomer, Amalekite's Slave, Sabbath Breaker, and Haman's Plot.

But, the real power of Garden Tomb is the fact that it's a great offense even if you never ignore a character with the Garden Tomb. The Garden Girls can make a huge 28/24 band (that can't be negated if Garden Tomb is in play) potentially backed up by any number of interrupts and negates such as Blessings, He is Risen, or Words of Encouragement. On the Purple side, My Lord and My God or Reach of Desperation provide powerful interrupt options.

Defensively, a good Garden Disciples deck is hard to stop. It's very diverse, has access to all souls in the game, and is very, very quick with both feasts and several other drawing combos. It also has the potential to grab easy early rescues from either TGT or a big band (especially Phil and Bart).



These three decks have been incredibly centralizing on the meta. Obviously, several other deck variants are fairly common (such as Isaiah or Zeke decks), but I don't think anyone can dispute the three decks above are by far the most common and arguably the most powerful.

But, now is where the fun begins. Am I right? Am I wrong? Let me know. Start the discussion. Shape the meta. You can do it.

Nice posts, Alex.  Thanks for the very thorough and informative breakdowns.  This should be great for new players and experienced players alike.

Zebulun is also quite a hand full.

OK, that was just hilarious

On a more serious note, this is an EXCELLENT breakdown of the current top offenses in the T1-2p meta.  I'd be interested in seeing you do a similar breakdown of the current top defenses.

I would post about turtles if they were relevant to the meta.

That hurts, but it is unfortunately true.  Without a time limit increase at Nats, turtles will never win the big show.

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on February 13, 2012, 11:26:58 AM

Zebulun is also quite a hand full.

OK, that was just hilarious :)

On a more serious note, this is an EXCELLENT breakdown of the current top offenses in the T1-2p meta.  I'd be interested in seeing you do a similar breakdown of the current top defenses.

Simple:
KoT - Biggest FBTN, useful for an early block
Gomer - Band to KoT, can get inish for Plot
Uzzah - Autoblock, can get inish for Plot
Am. Slave - +1 to deck, can get inish for Plot (sorta)
Sabbath Breaker - +3, can get inish to be discarded
Plot - Discard three characters, CBN.  Should be in every deck ever, even ones that were made before Plot.

It's a cycle.

More like a long-cycle that's approaching an era. 

By gaining inish against Sam's massive banding chains to drop a CBN battle winner of your own.  And as for fort killers, they take up valuable deck space, space that you could use to put in a better stop.  As Alex said above, TGT is good without TGT.  They have their share of awesome enhancements too, particularly in a GardenDiciples deck that uses AoCp.  Additionally Mono-color offenses aren't 'that' popular, mostly because defense in general is not that popular.  Also I don't know of any fort outside of ToT and GoJ that protects characters from being set-aside.

But Sam decks are good without Sam…
In my Sam deck, I've found that I attacking with a lone hero or maybe another banded in so I can get inish with a CBN battle winner in hand benefits me more than throwing all my heroes into one RA.

I'm not saying that TGT isn't good and it won't Nats, I'm just saying Sam has more speed and more power, thus giving it an edge in my mind.

   I think that TGT is the deck that does that because the Meta Defense is pretty much splash/standalones.  And as for stopping soul generating characters like TAS; he can't make souls if they he's being ignored preblock.

T1 defenses arent centralizing the meta? What?

No more than usual.

TGT will still often end up with an early walk in before they get their counter up and in games where things come down to the wire, that walk in is often the difference between victory and defeat.

TGT cannot walk in before your opponent has rescued a Lost Soul. That means in order to use TGT to it's fullest extent, you have to have already given something up, which a lot of the time will mean you're already one soul behind. Like you said, in games where things come to the wire, that edge is often the difference between victory and defeat. Standalone, while probably the best defense, is not dominating and centralizing the meta right now. I play online as much as anyone else, and I rarely see anyone use the standalone right now. I also never really see it in the southern PA/MD tournaments (which has a meta that's relatively based on the forums, due to a lot of forum-goers participating) and I didn't see it once in the Long Island tournament I went to this weekend. Now it might be different in MN right now, but the national meta is not MN, and the fact of the matter is that not everyone will be playing the best decks ever, due to RLKs, inexperienced players, and players who haven't played much (or at all) this season.

By gaining inish against Sam's massive banding chains to drop a CBN battle winner of your own.  And as for fort killers, they take up valuable deck space, space that you could use to put in a better stop.  As Alex said above, TGT is good without TGT.  They have their share of awesome enhancements too, particularly in a GardenDiciples deck that uses AoCp.  Additionally Mono-color offenses aren't 'that' popular, mostly because defense in general is not that popular.  Also I don't know of any fort outside of ToT and GoJ that protects characters from being set-aside.

Can you name some CBN evil battle winners that stop a six or seven character FBTN banding chain? I can't think of anything, beyond using A-Pole with Wrath of Satan or something, but if you have A-Pole up, I'm not going to attack unless I have Ishmaiah the Gibeonite and Foreign Sword, DoN, or Captured Ark. The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head that really stops a FBTN banding chain is 12-Fingered-Giant, and stopping him is as simple as (if he's in territory, or in opponent's deck) using Ishmaiah on him or Outpost, or just using Bravery of David, Angel of the Lord, Grapes of Wrath or Samuel's Edict (all cards that will be found in the vast majority of Sam decks, especially FBTNB ones). TGT is only good without TGT because of Mary the Mother of James. That four hero banding is hard to stop, and aside from TGT itself, it's the only thing TGT has that's hard to stop. White has 'He is Risen', which is admittedly one of the best enhancements in the game, but as far as hard-hitting, powerful enhancements go, that's all they've got.

Keep in mind that when people are referring to TGT, they are not referring to Gardensciples. Most TGT decks refer to strictly TGT (the Garden girls, Lydia, John, Peter, and enhancements) or WaterGarden decks (decks that also splash in some Samaritans to use with Water Jar and some soul generation). Gardensciples is a different beast, which is, in my opinion, vastly superior to regular TGT or WaterGarden decks, and still inferior to Sam decks. The reasons that it's better than TGT are pretty simple. Take the best of TGT without any filler (most variants use the Garden Girls, Susie, TGT, 'He is Risen' and Consider the Lilies, with maybe one or two other enhancements), and some of the best of Disciples (John, Matt, Thomas, Peter, Bart, and Phil), with some of their best enhancements (AoCp, Passover Hymn, MLaMG). You get a lot of speed (two feasts, FDC, Matt, and some people use Fishing Boat), and you get a lot of power. Again, this is all my opinion, but I would say the power Gardensciples decks have is comprable to what a Sam deck pushes out. Now the reason that Gardensciples are probably not as good as a well-built Sam deck is because Sam decks are, inarguably, faster. We're talking about a deck that, with a strong draw (not even necessarily a perfect one) can deck out in three turns, six turns at the most. Gardensciples can deck out in six turns on a good day. That extra speed is massive when you look at the comparible power between the two decks. Gardensciples and Sam might be trading blows, but Sam is getting set up faster, so it's getting its power, and of course, SoG/NJ, faster as well.

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Sure TGT got counters but I haven't really seen anyone using them extensively.  That really is the basis of my argumentation, people aren't using TGT counters, therefore, what's stopping it from winning nats again?

Better offenses being available is what's stopping it from winning Nats. "No strong counters came out" isn't a strong argument; it's essentially the equivalent of saying, "Syrians didn't get any counters this set, so what's stopping them from being the Nats winning defense?" Technically, nothing, except there are simply better options out there. I'm not saying that TGT definitely won't win Nats this year, but it winning last year was a bit of a fluke (six first turn Mayhems anyone) and Disciples, from what I can recall (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong), still dominated the top 10 list.

Only the lower places in the top ten. top 5 was TGT/Old skool speed/Andrew wester.

Yeah, but on the same hand, 100% of his losses came from playing a disciples deck.