Cactus Game Design Message Boards

It has been a long while since I've had time to be on this thread so if I'm missing things and these have already been done, forgive me.

I really like the current themes in the game but I think it could be made even better.  My thought here is that the themes are focused on either ethnic groups or game mechanics.  While these are great and have encouraged people to learn more about Biblical history, I would like some that could encourage more understanding of Biblical theology.  I think this could really enhance the game as a tool for witnessing.  I saw this when we were interacting with players at a local secular card store.  I thought how cool would it be if I could build a love, faith or hope deck or a prayer deck or a gospel deck or well I hope you get the idea.  Now I know many players come from very different theological church backgrounds but I'm talking about sticking to the basics that we can pretty much all agree on.  What some would call mere christianity. 

I also know that many cards that reference these ideas have been around for a long time but they don't get highlighted.  Magician characters have been around for a long time but nobody noticed or cared until there were viable strategies referencing and involving them. 

If there were several cards that referenced faith enhancements and characters that had faith (Hebrews 11?) then I would have the opportunity to build a deck around it and when I was teaching the game to a non-believer I could naturally show him what my deck was about without being preachy.  Ultimately sharing your faith comes down to the person being obedient to and trusting Christ but if we can increase the opportunities to share Christ with the game then why not?

That is probably the closest so far but it has more to do with what they do (play music) then about the purpose or what that means in relation to God.  There are small pieces of this in the game (usually individual cards) but I would love to see it built up into a strong component that you could identify decks by.

Although those could potentially be cool that is not really what I'm talking about. 

My idea is that just like Babylonians, Assyrians, Magicians, etc. you could have the focus be centered on faith, hope, love, prayer, the gospel, etc. 

So you would have cards with abilities like:  search your deck for a Fruit of the Spirit to convert x,  reveal your hand and for each Fruit of the Spirit discard x, all your heroes gain x for each Fruit of the Spirit in battle,  you may discard a Fruit of the Spirit to do x,y,z, etc,
band any hero noted by Scripture as having faith into battle,  set-aside your hand for this battle to reveal an equal number of cards from the top of your draw pile. this hero may play enhancements from there as if from hand.,  play an enhancement with faith in it to make your next good enhancement played be cannot be negated.

With some thought I'm sure these could be made to highlight these themes even more.

These could greatly make use of many old "useless" cards and more importantly people would really start paying attention to what heros had faith and what that faith did or what the Fruits of the Spirit were if it mattered that much in gameplay.   

It was there but it was easy to ignore.  As a player I didn't have to know what the Fruits of the Spirit were to play a card like Gentleness.  I could easily play a 2/2 no special ability enhancement without ever realizing what it was.  However to take advantage of aforementioned abilities I would have to learn more about them.  Now ultimately what a person learns or cares about comes down to them and who teaches them but I have seen the difference this could make with examples like magicians.  For 13? years nobody cared who were magicians or what they were.  Release a simple strategy that uses them and suddenly everyone is trying to figure that out.  There is also the fact that many people will build a Babylonian or Egyptian deck but I don't see anyone building a Love or Faith deck if they want to win.   

  times a million