Cactus Game Design Message Boards

So, you might be thinking, what makes this so fast? I don't see Pentecost or First Fruits anywhere... Well, the trick is to catch the opponent by surprise with a turn one Captive Priest chain into Priests of Christ. If they block from hand, which is likely on turn one, you grab Valley of Dry Bones from deck with Priests of Christ and drop it to add your Captive Priests back into battle and grab four (well, actually five) more priests from deck. My go to set of four would be Eleazar, Melchizedek, Jeremiah, and Zechariah. Ezra leads the gang by releasing a Captive Priest, banding to him, and fetching one of the other four. Suddenly you get to search for Urim and Thummim and a House of Eleazar priest (usually Joshua), you're protecting souls and discouraging evil searching, looking at their hand and tossing the next evil enhancement, and negating non-star enhancements.

On future turns you keep grabbing priests with Ezra and a Captive Priest, starting with Zadok to band to someone else and then Aaron who bands to Zadok. My first game at Nats I'm pretty sure I had 10 or so Heroes by turn 3. Zadok Anoints grabs Cherubim and Haggai to get the CBI FBTN banding chain of Zeke -> Cherubim -> Aaron -> Zadok -> Haggai -> Zechariah, or any of the battle-winners in case the banding chain isn't going to work, which you would know because you've been looking at their hand every turn with Urim and Thummim. Potter and the Clay usually made Joshua a 0/1, and then he would walk in with Light in the Darkness or Day of the Lord. Another offensive option is taking a peak at their hand and putting Elijah at the end of the chain to pick off the Evil Character that either had nothing to play or was vulnerable to Covenant with Adam.

A few notable cards:

City of Refuge -- Caught a few people off guard when they tried to Martyr or Angel my character. Limits opponents options but my deck was built for it (at least for the most part, I added Regrets in the Reserve the night before without thinking about the fact that it would almost always be useless).

Melchizedek -- Sheol was in most decks and against a deck like this that does a lot of searching, it was definitely worth running even with my own Sheol (and Burial, which I swapped in for Vain Vision the night before without thinking about Melchizedek). I think the CoW Melch could've been good too to protect priests from capture and conversion alongside discard from City of Refuge, but Zechariah would negate him and I figured the soul protection and potential to snipe a Scattered or Rubble and Dust from deck would be better.

Urim and Thummim + The First Sacrifice -- The First Sacrifice is already a really good card, but using Urim and Thummim to know when you actually need to use it makes it even better.

Kidron Valley -- With the prevalence of idols, curses, and arts with capture abilities, I wish I could put this card and a few priests in every deck.


The reality is that I rarely got the combo off on the first turn either because I wasn't blocked, they didn't have a Lost Soul, or I didn't have it, the last of which being the least likely. However, between either being blocked from hand eventually, drawing Valley naturally, or using Triumphal Entry, I was able to get Valley pretty quickly. In some games, like against Tyler at Nats, it actually worked out better for me to wait because I was able to pull off a Head of Gold or Seized and I think a Charms beforehand to grab a Captain, Mighty Men, King Saul and a few others.

I went back and forth on the defense across the tournaments. I started out with a similar crimson defense except I ran two The Afflicted and four Hypocrisy which was pretty fun. At NC Regs I switched to a gray defense centered around the idea that if their Storehouse was working, The Entrapping Pharisees was an auto-block and if not, then I was looking at their hand with Urim and Thummim. I also used Roman Spearmen and a bunch of the high-strength gray Enhancements that have come out recently such as Seventh Bowl, Cut Off, Plot to Kill, Distortion, Plunder and Pillage, and Stricken.

I was actually planning to use this deck for multi with a Prophets defense and use my Judges CwD deck that won the Type 2 Only for two player, but John Earley (the guy who won Type 1 with a similar Judges/Prophets CwD deck) convinced me the night before that I should use this offense in two player. After some debating some with myself, I eventually decided that while it might not be as consistently good, it would likely be consistently fun, so I threw together a standard Babylonian defense and went for it.

Jeremy Chambers

This game actually went fairly similar to the one with Brandon in that Jeremy got off to a really quick start and while I think I got setup fairly quickly, I had to wear down his defense for awhile before I starting rescuing more souls. This game could have ended completely different than it did since Jeremy was drawing quite a bit and got off to a 5-2 lead without playing the big two, but I was able to slow down his offense and make a comeback before he got to them. I did really like Jeremy's deck though and am looking forward to trying out the offense myself at some point.

Result: 7-5 victory


Tyler Stevens

I really like playing Tyler, he's a great guy and for some reason he almost always lets me win... Jokes aside though, this game started out pretty well for me and I think I combo'd relatively early, but not too early so I was able to grab a good chunk of Tyler's Heroes with Valley as well as I mentioned in the deck analysis. Tyler was able to grab two off of me before his defense got swarmed by the presbyterate.

Result: 7-2 victory


Greg Miller

As Greg mentioned in his report, our decks had faced each other a few times already. He admitted to adding in a few more counters before Nats to stop my combo and likewise I mentioned that I teched a bit for his offense too by adding a second City of Refuge. Of course it wasn't until Thursday morning that I realized it didn't matter too much since Isaiah's Call negates Sites, but I figured I'd just hope for the best. As he noted, my City of Refuge ended up giving him quite a bit more value than me and I ended up having to burn my Rubble and Dust on that to get rid of a Jonah instead of a Called Isaiah or something. But, like he said, he didn't get PoJ out early enough and the lightning priests with some help from Elijah were able to sneak out a timeout victory.

Result: 5-1 victory


Overall it was a really fun deck to play. I'd definitely recommend trying it out sometime even if your opponent is going to see it coming. Just watch out for The Great Fish...

I know I've said this before, but I love this deck. Using old cards that nobody remembers like Ezra is really cool, and that explosive setup gets it going fast (though I'm a bit disappointed you switched back to Secomd Coming over new NJ to double the Valley  )

Haha, yeah, I was debating switching to NJ for Nats and I think I would have if we had gotten the new one already. Ultimately I just decided it wasn't quite as flexible and I didn't really need to get 8. Definitely would've been more fun though and I don't think I ended up ever needing Scapegoat so maybe that's what comes out for NJ|Bride of Christ.