Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Muah ha ha, more ANB converts 

Welcome to the boards! I posted a brief explanation of how the Flood offense works on this thread, but the TL;DR is "search out everything and stay ahead of your opponent". If you can find Noah and Ark on the first turn, you're in a very good place - my deck ran about ten cards that could get to one or the other to try to make sure I found them every game.

A lot of the specific card choices are down to personal preference. Covenant with Adam is indeed quite good, and I've added it to my deck post-Nats (although I haven't had a chance to test the changes I've made very deeply). Jonah's trickier - he's undeniably good, but he breaks the unity on ANB and Rainbow, so I'd recommend not including him until you're very comfortable with how the deck works. I'll also note one difference between my version and JD's and Jay's is that they focused a lot on The Flood, whereas I mostly relied on big numbers and negates to bludgeon my way through defenses. Both strategies have merit, but I'll let you mess around and figure out what you like.

As far as combos go, here's a couple that not everyone realizes right away: Shem's Wife can be a battlewinner with any Add to Battle/mid-battle band ability like You Will Remain or Bless the Nations. Even though he'll be grabbing Flood Survivors 90% of the time, Noah can grab evil characters as well - there's few things as distressing to an opponent as grabbing back the Merchants they just Angel'd in territory. TxP Nebuchadnezzar to Betrayal can get rid of battlewinners in the opponent's hand and draw you some cards - very powerful, especially if the underdeck gets rid of their ammo. ANB during draw phase can give you all the benefits of going first and drawing first - starting with an 11 card hand while your opponent has nothing is preeeety good. If you have Pitch and Gopher Wood active on Ark, ANB can also tick down the turn timers on heroes in Ark.

Great info on that post Bobbert. Thanks for providing the link to that... seems like there is quite a bit of activity to familiarize myself with. Probably going to be quite the learning curve as I play it.

How do you guys decide what to place in reserve vs main deck? I mean, there’s cards that seem like they would be great to draw into, but at the same time, could be accessed via reserve searching cards. How do you reason which cards to reserve vs their effectiveness if main decked?

Excellent break down Jaylor. Thanks for making it simple for a newb to understand. May seem like common sense for veteran players, but being new to the concept of a reserve and how it’s used most effectively, that breakdown was wonderful.

I really appreciate everyone’s input and thoughts to help get me started in the right direction. Seems a bit overwhelming adding in cloud cards, a reserve and star abilities, plus the increase in territory class effects coming from I/J. The great info I’ve received here helps a ton! Excited to get started playing the deck. My buddy that introduced me to the game will be getting his new deck in within the next couple days, so I’ll be able to try it out then. We are both making the jump from the starter decks.

If anyone has any other tips or suggestions for cards to try, feel free to share. Thanks again everyone!! Seems like an awesome community to be a part of.

*To be competitive in type 1 2 player you WILL need TSC, Three Woes, Falling Away, Grapes, Rubble and Dust/Don

I agree with everything you said except this. While I think that Three Woes is the single most important card for a competitive deck after Son of God, the others are nice but optional, as long as you can make it to seven doms that aren't Doubt. Obviously The Second Coming is much more versatile than NJ, but NJ can fill a fair amount of the same space in a deck (especially the new one that can do the old "copy opponent's SoG" play). Most competitive decks at this point run SoG/TSC/AotL/CM/3W, with two flex slots - while those are usually two of the other four you've listed, you definitely don't need all of them in the same deck.

NJ is ok until the district level I'd say. The problem with NJ is that you have to go out of your way to work your deck around it.

If it's a Throne deck, I'd say you could compete at the state level.

Is it legal to have the ANB dominant and enhancement in the same T1 deck?

I'll get my Congressman on the phone.

I believe I remember hearing that you are allowed to run both by game rule. The list under "Duplicate Card" in the REG primarily concerns characters, but the guidelines are same name and either same brigade or art. Since doms don't have a brigade and they both use different art, this leads me to think you can. That said, it also says "All Artifact, Covenant, Curse, Dominant and Fortress cards are considered unique" - I don't know if that means they would be exclusive because one is a dom, although I'd wager this was intended more for Falling Away and the different art starter doms.

Given the ability to have the enhancement and dom, is it worth running the enhancement with just Noah?  Or would you want to include a hero like Enoch or Joseph? (or Jonah like the 3rd place deck)

1. I was thinking you could just keep the non-flood survivor in hand. 
2. If you're using Enoch, you can just SoG him. 
3. The enhancement doesn't have unity so if you use it before the dom, it puts the Unity breaker off the table.  Then just keep it off the table.  If you've already used the dom, you can break the Unity whenever you want to play the enhancement.
4. In type 2, I think you can run Patriarchs Noah's Sons and Fall of Man sons so training in Righteousness would be a really slow way to get the sons or wives to be green.
5. Coat of Many Colors (actually, now that I think of it, joseph+ANB is apropos considering how he was reunited with his family)