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Hello my name is Benjamin Campbell,

This year’s National tournament was the first tournament that I have attended since the last time nationals was in Ohio in 2008, and even that was a “come out of retirement game” because I hadn’t played at that point since Nats 2006 in NY if I remember correctly.

First, it was great to see Roy Cruz, Al Bauer, Rob Anderson, Chris Bany, and Justin Alstad because they are the only ones that were really around much when I was playing consistently.

It was awesome to play some competitive games for the first time in eight years. It felt surreal, all of the memories I had playing Redemption resurfaced. I certainly am thankful for the fun times I've had through this game.

My family has loved the game of Redemption for a long time, but the only remaining players are my mother and I. We had a ton of fun!

Round 1: Stephen Coates: Kentucky
I remember sitting down and I was at seat #2 and thinking, well this is the last time I will be ranked this high.

As I started shuffling my cards I reverted to my sixteen year old self and started feeling my heartbeat increase and my nerves kick in high gear. I reminded myself that it was just a game, and I felt relaxed the rest of the tournament.

I remember beginning the game with an opening hand Simeon / Captain and my opponent had 2-3 lost souls available. Eight years ago this would have meant a swift victory, apparently not anymore. He had more souls and decided that I should go first. I attacked and he blocked, in this moment I decided that I would have a good chance at a quick game if I could get rid of this block, so I threw down “The Second Coming” and searched for AOTL and promptly killed his gold Evil Character. It was something that I would come to regret. The rest of the game was a war. He got everything CBN / CBP and was eventually able to slow my band, and the Moses offense FBN. He was running a blue genesis offense, and while it has a lot of CBN stuff my Pale Green defense did not have much trouble. He won an early soul with a battle winner off of Joseph, I fell it away, and we had a lot of fun back and forth battles. It was 2-0 and the judge came over and said, “5 minutes” I had the Serpent in my hand and decided if I times it correctly I could make sure he couldn’t use good doms the rest of the game. He attacked and I blocked with the Serpent / DOU. He was not amused, but the timing was perfect. I won two more rescues, and would have most likely been given a free lost soul if I had one more turn. He had SOG/NJ that he couldn’t use and we were out of time. I thought it was interesting that I was running a BOM deck and yet most of my lost souls were won with   4-0 win for me.

2 points +4 differential

Round 2: Kevin Mcilrath: Connecticut

I live in the NE region and thus pay some attention to those who do well there. I had been informed that the player I was playing, “Kevin Mcilrath” had won regionals this year in type 1-2 player. I was wondering what this game would be like, and it was certainly a fun game.

He was running a judges deck that heavily utilized the new Moses. He did not draw a lot of defense and I took an early 2-1 lead. Mid-way through He was beginning to pick up momentum and had killed most of my evil characters with an annoyingly successful Judges seat and the ever useful Jephthah. He was having a lot of success with Moses and I was beginning to get a little worried I wouldn’t have enough left to beat him. Then he made an error. I don’t know why but he attacked with something other than Moses after drawing off of AUTO. This was a dream come true. I blocked with The Serpent paralyzed Moses for 5 turns, played Confusion to rid him of Son of God, and then he says, “If you don’t give me the lost soul I’m going to negate all of that.” So I played Death of Unrighteousness. The rest was just a matter of time. And I ended up winning 5-2.

5 points +7 differential

Part 1

Round 5: Ryan Ertmer

I was sitting up fairly high. I think I was 12th at this point, but I don’t remember exactly. My opponent was SUCH a nice guy. This was one definitely some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing in a tournament game. He was great. So great! He was running an angel’s offense with a mashup of animals, brown, and magicians.  There were a lot of cards that he had that I did not know, and my inexperience with some of the newer cards slows down my play. It was back and forth the entire Game but I did pull off Confusion and that was huge, but he captured Moses and gave him to me as a redeemed soul and that hurt a lot. It was enough to give me the timeout win.
4-3 Win

10 Points +7 Differential

Round 6: Luke Marshall
Going into this round I had only lost 1 game, but I had two timeout wins, so I knew that I could not afford to lose if I wanted to get into top cut.

This was easily the most fun game of the tournament, Luke Marshall is an awesome guy!  He was running a much different variation of the 1 Sam offense, it seemed that his defense was much larger than any I saw during the tournament. It may have just been more effective, but it was certainly a challenge. It was a character based brown defense. The game begins and I have 2 lost souls out and no defense…three turns go by and I have no evil characters but 5-6 evil enhancements. The second time that day that I had trouble getting evil characters early on. During the game I had a difficult time with the new Medium of Endor, because I was running things like Moses Parents and Melchizedek for support Moses, so I did lose a couple of rescues because of Medium of Endor.

I finally got evil characters and so his rescuing stopped. I played Son of God earlier than normal to get rid of one of his pesky lost souls (I think it was punisher), he played forgotten history and removed it from my discard pile. He used Hezekiah’s Signet ring for much of the game. I do remember that I discarded my own coliseum because I wanted to be able to use forgotten history and scattered, and he discarded shipwreck because he only used it to get rid of coliseum and we laughed about that. I was playing catch up, and was getting close. He used Son of God to grab another lost soul and I believe angel of the Lord for the fourth. The last turn is where it gets interesting. I rescue but he blocks me so I am stuck with half of the two-liner rescued, but son of God has been removed from the game so it is stranded there in his territory. I’m thinking ok, it’s over he can’t beat my defense, I’m getting a time out loss. He attacks draws 2 with AUTO I block with my Egyptian Magicians and band to his Foreign Wives…His face turns completely Red because he forgot that Foreign wives is Egyptian. I'm feeling great because that was his last turn, but little did I know that an earlier mistake would come back to haunt me. I had a block where I blocked with the serpent and played Death of unrighteousness, but did not play confusion because he had already played Son of God, and I was just so concentrated on winning the battle that I did not think about "The second Coming." The battle ends and he puts down a whole bunch of cards, plays mayhem, manages to draw the Second coming to get son of God and wins.

5-3
10 points +5 Differential.

Part 3

I'm Josiah,

For clarification the t1-2p nats I won was with a deck Gabe updated from Tim M.  I changed 2 cards from Gabes build. I hadn't ever played that deck or even that style of deck before though. 

This is an awesome report and it was great meeting you. Hopefully you don't wait for years to come back around :-)

I'm Josiah,

For clarification the t1-2p nats I won was with a deck Gabe updated from Tim M.  I changed 2 cards from Gabes build. I hadn't ever played that deck or even that style of deck before though. 

This is an awesome report and it was great meeting you. Hopefully you don't wait for years to come back around :-)

It was great to get to meet you as well. I'm already looking forward to next year, and am hoping to try to get some of the teens in my youth group playing!

You actually told me about lackey at the tournament. I was the guy who thanked you for all of your articles and being willing to put your deck online, which by the way obviously did not hurt you at all. lol

I did download lackey, but I haven't played any games on it yet. I don't know exactly how.