Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Goals of this deck type: To slow down the drawing of your deck (possibly for your opponent if you venture into that portion of strategy). By slowing down the drawing of your deck you gain some advantages:

1. If pulled off with the right type of built deck, you should be able to work with what you have and get the most out of your cards and plays. Generally this means playing focused on characters, banding, and healing cards rather than enhancements.
2. Slows down (or see perma-stalling below) Lost Soul generation for your opponent.
3. Indirectly hurts opponents who may be relying on the cards you play in territory (ex. drawing and playing a card your opponent can band to)
4. A situational advantage where you have no hand (played all your cards or are relying on your cards in territory). Opponent's cards such as I am Holy are effectively useless against you.
5. Opponent decks out before you. Most of the time this means they have run out of defense and offense. If you can make it this far and still have power, you should have no problem winning (Only try to have your opponent deck out before you if the situation is right, this isn't the main goal of anti-draw).

Perma-stalling - The combo that inspired this deck type. For the combo you need 3 cards (please clarify if there are any other cards with similar abilities that would do the same thing)

1. David's Harp
2. Chamber of Angels
3. Hammer of Heaven
(use the reg to read abilities)

If you are able to make a rescue with an angel using Hammer of Heaven and have a target to return the enhancement to top of your draw pile, lose the battle so david's harp activates on that angel in battle so that angel returns, and discard angels at the end of turn to chamber and have those recycle, you will draw these 3 same cards the next turn which means you won't draw any new cards.

While this combo is not impossible to pull off, it is not practical. Anti-Draw should focus more on the slowing process than the altogether elimination of drawing new cards to be effective. Keep in mind there is flexibility with this strategy. David's Harp (which should be a staple in any anti-draw deck) can be used on your opponent's heroes to anti-draw them from gaining new cards. Follow this up with hand discard, words of discouragement and some "opponent may not draw cards next turn" and you may have some serious effect on their ability to function.

I am still in the process of theorizing what cards to use and building of the deck, but I want to stress that it is flexibility of this new type, Anti-Draw that will either make an outstanding new deck type, or if not built the correct way, fail miserably. The deck isn't designed to rely on one significant combo, but if you can find ways such as slowing your opponent's drawing down (especially in the beginning portion of the game) you will have a huge advantage over your opponent.

As I leave, I have one request. Help me think of some cards that would fit the Anti-Draw theme of either slowing your drawing or your opponent's drawing down. I'll eventually compile them at the bottom of this post and get working on the next new viable deck type.

"Staple Cards"
David's Harp
Chamber of Angels
Hammer of Heaven
Book of Hozai (Blue Anti-draw)
Prosperity (Purple/Blue Anti-Draw)
Burial Shroud
Zaccheus (Gold Anti-Draw)

"Optional Cards"
Generous Widow (Gold Anti-Draw)
Rain Becomes Dust (combine with choose the blocker/attacker Generous widow/evil drawing weapon)
Ambush The City (Gold) / The Long Day (Blue)
Altar of Ahaz

yeah Primary objective would be a great card. and it seems like at most the offense would be silver and one other color to be viable

Hm... LOVE the idea. I will definitely build this and help you to make it playable. As for ideas... I'd throw in cards that recur, like anb. It gets you deck back up to size. David's harp is definitely good. Run gray/crimson hand discard for evil(they both*I think* have cards that make them not able to draw/discard cards from their hand) and both have recur. For offense... Silver works nicely, throw in chariot of fire. Looks awesome.

Just realized if you go blue (possibly for zebulun), the long day would activate david's harp twice correct?

What if your opponent were to use lots of shuffle cards.... like green prophets?

Alright I'm going through all my cards that i have now and here are a few more that I found to be helpful

Angelic Advice: Silver (shuffles artifact piles back into deck)
Wickedness Removed: Silver/Green (displaces top 5 cards and discards evil, making your opponent possibly deck out faster)
Repentance and restitution: Gold (forces opponent to draw 4 if u win the rescue)
Cup of Wrath: Blue (side-battle abuse)
Strength revealed: Crimson (don't like this color for this type)(rearranges top 6 cards of opponent's draw pile cannot be negated)
All Hope lost: pale green: heroes may not enter battle until healed... (great way to slow them down especially if you anti-draw your opponent_)
Joesph's Silver Cup: May be useful

Anti-Draw is a broad term for either slowing your draws down or your opponent's draws down. Or in another sense, your relative drawing speed compared to your opponent (so if your opponent is drawing more cards than you, they will deck out quicker than you assuming they are playing a normal sized deck).

Each element of anti-draw, whoever you are targeting, has it's own advantages and weaknesses and in theory, a good anti-draw deck will be able to exploit these advantages at the correct times.

Here's a few more examples of where I see Anti-Draw going:

1. I have no lost souls in my territory yet my opponent has a few I can go after. If I play book of hozai and place 9 cards in my hand back to the top of my draw pile, that is 3 more turns until my opponent has the potential to see me draw more souls. Using book of hozai as such makes it more effective than burial shroud.

2. If I battle challenge with generous widow with burial shroud up, I am changing the speed of the game. With 2 uses of shroud, we will be down 4 cards but I can use chamber to slow my draws down and recycle things I can use against you to win while simultaneously slowing my lost souls drawn.

3. Anti-Draw works very well with hand discard. Ex: I play an anti-draw card that causes you to not draw cards your next turn followed by a few hand discard cards. When it comes back to my turn, I can then activate I am Holy, go out with dan... etc... and you will be stuck with a limited hand your current and next turn.

Intresting idea, I'd love to see it in action, I am a bit skeptical because a run a semi similar game, cept i use deck d/c to deck out people quicker, and very large decks.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, I just wanna see it work. I'd love to see a new archetype.

Now that I think about it, A purple/blue deck relying on Book of Hozai and Prosperity seems more realistic for anti-draw than returning 1 or 2 cards max to the top of your deck per turn.