Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Heroes

Widow at Zeraphath - combo. thats it.

Elijah - Combo. Can be rescued by Chariot of fire. likely will never need to rescue will unless using the combo.

Jared the Beholder - combo. the band to a cloud hero has a lot of potential tech.

David Heart - combo. Resetting him and Jared can be fun if you build around.

Mahalalel - combo. Protects souls, keeps you from getting droughted and playing souls from your own deck is better than ever.

Melky CoW - combo. theres an arguement for the other one but I preffer this one. Works to search souls even if you draw him and searching you own deck and drawing 1 after is very good. *PROTECTION is an issue with David Be careful. Eber the unwilling is a potential soul searcher substitute.*

Adam the Exile - combo. Searching a STAR human has a lot of potential even outside of searching david. Can band to Jared if you draw him in the Jacob follower line. Banding to someone like Noah is also good.

Jacob Follower after god - combo. it cant be understated how good his search ability is. Doesn't just get Good Enhancements. Band ability is good.

Jacob (foof) - combo. play abilities are good. hard to utilize more than once in this build without really good draws.

The Three visitors - mostly exchanges to Jacob. battle extension if you are running Jacob's ladder.

Nahor the Scorched - STAR ABILITY is amazing. For comboing, for trying to go first, for teching agaisnt the opponent. TC ability is also very good.

Terah the Delayed - STAR ABILITY! The bounce is pretty good with Papa Abe if you run him.

Enosh the Worshipper - PLAY HIM! Negates opponents Neutrals TC and has a draw ability. The negate keeps the opponent from using neutral cards to try and recover and can answer many souls that your opponent may use to try and stop you. BE CAREFUL with how you tech against this deck.

Judah the leader - the negate ability is clutch. band ability is good. meek in a pinch.

Perez the younger - the bounce ability is amazing. use it on yourself or you opponent.

Father Abraham - probably one of the toughest choices to make is which Abraham to use or both for T2. Papa has an amzaing draw ability and can be meek. bounce him to reuse the draw. Cow Abe can CBN negate opponents neutrals to get around some tech souls and the search ability could come up.

Issac willing Sacrifice - Draw is good. If you are running both Jacobs you can use him after bouncing a jacob to search the other to switch jacobs basically. There is an arguement for the other Issac to limit opponents draws by topdecking an EC but I think that it is playable around and more niche than straight up drawing.

simeon - just need a female genesis hero in play. Keeps the opponents defensive resources limited. brutal.

leah, weary-eyed - the bounce can reset meek genesis guys and the res ability is decent.

Noah rest and comfort - can shuffle your opponents stuff without having to convert. the convert ability is great. can be a meek ant for enosh. easy to reset and reuse. there is an arguement for CoW Noah to search out ECs to further irritate your opponent. personal preference on which to run but i think currently I preffer this one.

Joseph the dreamer- can use old creation lines. mainly its his search ability that is amazing. You can get good, evil, or neutral cards in the reference range and there are many great options.

Herzon the enclosed - lets you recycle enhancements. not necessary. however you can use jacob follower to search out genesis banding enhancements and use hezron to recycle them. so makes the full creation band possible every turn. Has to be built to abuse or do not use.

NOTABLE OPTIONS I DONT CURRENTLY HAVE IN MY LIST

Benjamin - DO NOT PUT IN THE DECK. Makes LAFS CBN which is bad. maybe you can reserve him. probably not needed here.

Joseph (foof) - search is more limited but CBN effect is powerful. I prefer the more versatile search.

Angel at Shur - Can search many tech OT heroes that aren't Genesis. abuse as you like.

Lot - additional draw ability. theres a hand limit so dont overload too hard on drawing. you will be surprised on how easy it is to hit it.

Midianite slave - likely will use once but its a one time draw 2 and create a soul for the opponent. you shuffle their hand the draw for them doesn't matter.

Overall there are many options to choose from even outside these. The creation play largely lets you choose what you like and go from there. Play around with it. Its easy to forget but you can run multiples of many of the unique heroes. It is tough to find room for everything though so don't try and force everything. It won't work.

Neutrals

Most of this is searchers to help get to the combo. Like I said its tough to fit everything so I'm mostly going to highlight what I consider higher priority options.

Stone pillar at bethel - I dont like the cost to use it. But it can give you access to the combo where you may have otherwise wouldn't and can search cards like chariot of fire and Solomon's dream.

Book of the Covenant - Run three between deck and reserve. Is any deck not playing this card realistically?

Hidden treasures - how many should you run? Im currently playing one in deck and one in reserve. Its tough to rely on drawing it. Focus really need to be put into how to get it/ activate it.

Tree of Knowledge - Unity OT Souls sometimes makes this do nothing unfortunately. Limits what souls you can run a bit. Most of the souls I run are OT so I run it at 2 with full knowledge that some percent of games it will do nothing.

Fobidden Fruit - Why I run Tree. Gets you whatever you need for the combo if you build your reserve right.

Jacob's ladder - have to build around with three vistors. tought to find room but very good and is battle extension.

7 YRs of Famine - gives the combo an option outside of pigs. Bit of a build around card but I know people can make it work if they want.


LOST SOULS

This is a very important part of the deck. You want to have every opportunity to get the combo first turn and also Start the game first. There are options outside of the ones I chose. I built to emphasize getting the combo consistently while also having some counterplay against opening turn tech souls.

Remnant - run 2. hero searcher. also can take problematic tech characters like the STAR ability play a curse guys.

Exiles - can get book or Hidden treasures in my build. run 2.

Hunter - can get Remnant or Exiles or other OT tech souls as needed.

Covet - The toughest choice for this deck. It can get you to whatever soul you need to start provided your opponent is playing many of these options. but it also gives a soul to your opponent and has unity OT. it may not work and it could make it to where you dont start the game. Not sure what the right call on this one is. consistency matters though.

Awake - Conflicts with Covet and Tree. however use it to search your own deck for a soul and you will be able to get a piece you need and increase your chances of going first. Too good to not run at 2 imo. Worth the downsides.

Pigs - have to at least play 1 for the combo. conflicts with covet and tree.

Wanderer - The Exchange is amazing right now. Exchange for your opponents exiles or Remnant and trigger it yourself. Exchange for their tech souls to try and stop you if they are one sided effects.  With how decks are built to go first now and how important souls are to that wanderer may be a staple. run 2.

I have 1 slot that I have as a flex so im going to mention some of the options ive looked into

Blind soul - seems dumb at first glance. negates pigs. but it answers tech NT souls and is searchable being OT and during the combo Judah can negate it to combo under it.

FBTN soul - NT Which is unfortunate but doesn't effect opening draw souls and helps deal with tech souls. Also negateable during the combo via Judah.

Thorns- pretty good soul to stop chumps. also keeps hunter on the table. a bit double edged though for when your opponent draws hunter and you dont.

Distressed - Deals with many Tech Characters.

Remiss - Bounce their tech character and keep going with your combo.

Still reading, but one note on the Melchizedek version that plays souls is it protects cloud heroes from converting to meek which stops converting Father Abraham for the extra draw and heart after God for the search.

Oh yea that’s right. I was thinking if Rebekah converting Isaac for that additional draw 2 which would be stopped.

I think the best defense for this is certainly False Prophets, probably in both Type 1 and Type 2. That's what John and I had been testing and in Type 2 when you can have four copies of False Prophecy, two copies of Balaam's Prophecy, and Vain Visions, then you can make it significantly more difficult for your opponent to recover by setting their top 6 after you combo. In T1 you still get one copy of each of those which isn't too bad. This also gives you access to Famine in the Land to bounce their Heroes in case they go first (which is how John beat me in a game after I went first with Throne and was +12 or so on turn 1). You also get False Peace which helps you combo (as can Balaam's Prophecy usually) and then you have access to a few other characters like Damsel, False Prophet, and Profane Daughters that open up things like Divination, Wages, and Delivered.

We never arrived at the Creation version though, which I think is probably better as long as it's just as consistent as the non-Creation version (I think John said he'd post his list at some point...). But I guess leave it to Joe to figure out how to break Creation once and for all.

Quote from: TheJaylor on July 01, 2021, 07:17:59 PM

I think the best defense for this is certainly False Prophets, probably in both Type 1 and Type 2. That's what John and I had been testing and in Type 2 when you can have four copies of False Prophecy, two copies of Balaam's Prophecy, and Vain Visions, then you can make it significantly more difficult for your opponent to recover by setting their top 6 after you combo. In T1 you still get one copy of each of those which isn't too bad. This also gives you access to Famine in the Land to bounce their Heroes in case they go first (which is how John beat me in a game after I went first with Throne and was +12 or so on turn 1). You also get False Peace which helps you combo (as can Balaam's Prophecy usually) and then you have access to a few other characters like Damsel, False Prophet, and Profane Daughters that open up things like Divination, Wages, and Delivered.

We never arrived at the Creation version though, which I think is probably better as long as it's just as consistent as the non-Creation version (I think John said he'd post his list at some point...). But I guess leave it to Joe to figure out how to break Creation once and for all.

Hey its technically your fault I found the combo. The last T2 video we did clued me in instantly. 

I love the defensive ideas. I cycled around from pale green for early DoUs and confusion, and maybe words of discouragement for spiciness. Crimson for Nebby to pride of lions, lurking, and the like. Gold because of grain tenders and besieging the city mostly plus people being totally unprepared for it more than likely. I wanted to do gray for a False prophets Hybrid with Syrians but reserve space for Damascus and having Characters on defense for Delivered lead me away from that direction for the version I was looking at.

Though I do wonder if teching against a mirror match is necessary at this point or if more needs to be done to shore up against dedicated counter decks.

Lol So THAT's where I figured it out... I remember now. I put the old Love at First Sight in to give myself cards cuz I realized the new one didn't work with Pigs. And then I realized the new one works with LaFS and I now remember deliberately not mentioning LaFS in the deck tech as to not give that away cuz I wanted to try it out myself first. Jay asked me about it the other day and I was like, Hm, I don't actually remember exactly when I figured it out. Guess I should've asked you afterwards if you realized it too.

Yeah, problem with DoU, Confusion, Words, etc. is that you actually have to block for those which usually you won't have to do. It will be interesting to see how things go now that the cat's out of the bag and people will have to play counters, which is kind of annoying since I'd rather see more of a variety of decks, but we shall see.