Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Hey guys, this is the T1 2P deck that I used to win T1 2P at North Central Regionals this weekend--notes and game commentary to follow. 

M.G.G.A (Make Guardian Great Again)

Dominants
Son of God
The Second Coming
Angel of the Lord
Guardian of Your Souls (RoJ)
Three Woes
Christian Martyr
Falling Away (Wo)

Lost Souls
Darkness
Remnant
Lawless
Exiles
Prosperity
Wanderer
Dull

Forts/Arts
Storehouse (promo)
Noah's Ark (PoC)
Book of the Covenant (PoC)
Endless Treasures
Four Drachma Coin

Heroes
Paul
Barnabas
Polycarp
Peter (TEC)
The Watchful Leaders
Epaphras
Stephen
Claudia
Philemon
Onesimus

GE
Faith of Samuel
Overcome
Preaching in the Synagouge
Mercy of James
Created by Christ
Elymas Struck Blind
Gamaliel's Speech

Evil Characters
Pagan Sailors
Kings of the Earth
The Serpent
Profane Daughters
The Amalekites Slave
Damsel with Spirit of Divination
Deceiving Spirit
The Deceiver

EE/Curses
Mourn and Weep
Scattered
Nicolaitans' Teaching
Death of Unrighteous
Suicidal Swine Stampede
Lacking Prophecy

Reserve
I am Creator
You Will Remain
Eternal Covenant
The Angel of the Winds
John the Revelator
Hezekiah's Signet Ring
Persian Horsemen/Horses
Haman's Plot
Wasting Disease (PoC)
Flying Scroll

Game Commentary

Round 1 vs Josh K.

Josh and I had played a fairly epic game at the Iowa state tournament where I barely squeaked out a 5-4 win with my Red Spread Redemption deck. This game was...not quite so epic. I used turn one Remnant to grab Angel of Winds to go to Barnabas to generate a LS only to have Three Woes played against Barnabas to put the LS back. However, this early play of Three Woes by Josh allowed me to get rid of it a couple turns later with Mercy of James, which kept important counters like Wasting Disease and Storehouse from being negated. There were several more key moments that shaped the outcome of the game, which I'll summarize briefly.
--Me discarding Angel of Winds from hand (to avoid having it sit in territory to potentially be stolen), but then shuffling my own Barnabas with Lacking Prophecy and being LS droughted for several turns thereafter.
--Me using Three Woes as good to keep Wasting Disease from being discarded, which certainly kept Josh's offense in check, but didn't allow me to negate his Storehouse to generate a LS.
--Me having Guardian of Your Souls to keep Sheol from underdecking LS.

In the end, the combination of the LS shuffling cards (DoU/SSS), the battlefield clearing cards (Scattered/Lacking Prophecy) and Wasting Disease kept Josh's offense in check, but a few too many turns of LS drought kept me from getting to 5. Final score 4-1 win.

Round 2 vs Willow I.

Willow had lost a close game to Bill in Round 1, and because I only had a time out win, we ended up matched in Round 2. I had a very strong opening, but she made some good plays as well to keep things close. I was able to utilize The Serpent to stall her good dominants, and we were sitting at a 2-2 tie. After using my Falling Away to make it 2-1, I got to 3 after winning a battle using Angel of the Lord. She then used SoG/NJ to tie it back up, but fortunately for me, I drew into SoG (while holding TSC) on my next turn. Final score 5-3 win.

Round 3 vs Simon M.

I had a fantastic opening against Simon and my offense was set up very quickly. He had an early False Leaders, but I was able to deal with that in order to avoid him punishing my searches. Unfortunately for him, he missed an early LS activation ability, which might have given him a chance to keep up a bit with my drawing. On the end of my 3rd turn I was winning 3-2 and had 4 cards left in deck (one of which was Son of God). Feeling a bit sheepish because of how great my draw had been, I played Mourn and Weep in my discard phase to restrict Simon for going after LS #3 before I drew into Son of God on turn 4 for the win. Final score 5-2 win.

Round 4 vs Caleb B.

Caleb was using John's #Mayhem deck from last season and it worked brilliantly. Caleb drew his Hopper LS and I had Dull LS from my opening draw, but no other LS. While weighing his attack options, he decided to use SoG on the Dull. I surmised that he probably had his Angel under the Oak so I used Falling Away to grab Dull back. To my dismay, he quickly dropped TSC to get back SoG and once again rescue the Dull. He got pretty much everything out and rescued the Hopper so I knew at that point, my best option was to play slower (i.e. not doing any extra drawing or searching) and hoping that my Lost Souls didn't come out too quickly. As it turned out, that's exactly what happened. I used my Three Woes to stop his Covet LS and by the time I finally drew more LS, I had my LS shuffle options in hand. This was the first game where Nic's Teaching really proved beneficial as I stole his Caleb, banded to his Asahel and used the CtB ability to pick off Priest of Zeus who I knew he likely had nothing to play (except for maybe Wages of Sin). In the end, he simply went too many turns without being able to rescue and the #Mayhem defense does not have many blocking options as it's more so designed to slow down the opponent rather than block. Final score 5-3 win.

Round 5 vs John E.

Going into the final round I was the only defeated player so I was in the top position. However, due to my time out win in Round 1, I knew that a loss could easily drop me out of the top 3 if a couple other players had 4 full wins and just one loss. I had the advantage of knowing what John's deck wanted to do and him not knowing exactly what I was playing, but I also knew that he had a few cards that would give me a lot of trouble (namely Covenant with Death). Fortunately for me, John found none of his tutors for CwD early on and my offense took full advantage of not being negated or restricted. He had a turn 1 Elisha that shuffled my Three Woes, but my Kings of the Earth/Damsel band allowed me to draw into Christian Martyr for the block. One of the funniest moments of the tournament occurred when I converted John's Necromancer with Preaching in the Synagogue to win a LS. However, we realized that Necromancer's ability would still function as a Hero so I decided to then take Necromancer with Nic's Teaching. Later on, I used Necromancer to banish/copy John's Elisha which shuffled John's Shipwreck (which he was running as a Storehouse counter). That should have been the last rescue of the game, but John Jedi mind-tricked me and I somehow allowed him to use his own DoU despite me having Gam's Speech and GoyS...

Fortunately his Lost Souls did not stay hidden and I was able to pick up LS #5 before he was able to start getting his defense set up in order to allow his offense to mount a comeback. Final score 5-2 win.

Very cool deck.  So you can negate DoU from hand with I thought it doesn't give special initiative?  I am bad with the rules lol...

Yeah, I didn't really want to share just how bad of a misplay I made, but whatever... 

I had seen John's hand so I knew he had Scattered and DoU. He also had Medium in Endor so he would be able to exchange to a Hero that would give him initiative (another advantage of playing a mono-brigade offense though, all my Heroes could use all my enhancements). However, we obviously both knew I had Gam's so DoU wouldn't be a factor. He asked if I was holding the "big 2" and I said yeah (I was at 2 and there were exactly 3 LS in his LoB). He blocked, exchanged for the Hero that gave him initiative and dropped what I thought was DoU so I immediately tapped Gam's Speech...except it was Scattered... which I had like 3 cards in hand that would negate/interrupt...but I had tapped Speech too quickly... So now my Gam's is burned and he has initiative for DoU. I then became so focused on trying to decide if I wanted to use SoG/TSC before all the LS were shuffled that I failed to remember that I had GoyS sitting in my LoR (for EXACTLY this situation...). Even when I decided to use SoG/TSC to put me at 4 and John tossed the LS into my LoR, it still didn't click in my brain that any of the 3 enhancements in my hand or 3 martyrs in my territory could instead his DoU...

Talk about being tilted...in the end it didn't matter, it just gave John an opportunity to dig for his CM so he could discard the Hero paralyzed by Serpent so he could play his own big 2 before surrendering LS #5. Certainly a good lesson in not playing too fast and thankful it did not cost me the tournament win. 

The true irony of the situation was that the attempted discard of my Wasting Disease and me using Woes was during a battle challenge where I was just trying to draw into GoyS since I knew you were running Falling Away. I remember thinking it might have been better to just not attack and give you an opportunity to do damage, but that felt pretty passive.

Our game would've been more interesting if you just kept Woes for my Storehouse and let me discard your Wasting Disease. That slowed everything down to a halt. I probably would've searched/drawn out a soul or two for you to rescue. As it was, I wasn't about to let you shuffle my Storehouse for free. If the drought is going, I'll let it roll. Why reward Justin when I can just sit there and let him suffer with me?

Perhaps...at that point though, you hadn't drawn your Storehouse so there was still a chance I would get Barnabas back first. If Storehouse had already been on the table, I'm certain I save Woes for it. I've also seen firsthand how quickly your offense can develop if searching is unimpeded... And I completely understand about rolling with the drought, I did the exact same thing to Caleb in round 4 as mentioned above.

well, Damsel D9 + DoU, Scattered, Lacking Prophecy, and CM all in near back-to-back successive blocks

But that's what my strategy was all along...

Let's not forget that you had first turn AutO...per usual 

I'm kinda shocked to see Profane Daughters without Charms in Reserve.

Did you ever came across an Evil Banding chain using that deck? I wonder how to deal with 2-3 big guys and some smaller ones with pesky SAs like those Persians in each and every RA? How can this deck handle defenses like those?

Did you ever came across an Evil Banding chain using that deck? I wonder how to deal with 2-3 big guys and some smaller ones with pesky SAs like those Persians in each and every RA? How can this deck handle defenses like those?

Not that I can recall, but Overcome is a really nice card for dealing with multiple ECs since I can usually use the recursion ability.

No Eternal Inheritance? Side note.  Unfamiliar with clay, got wrecked by this deck.

The strongest attacks with this deck are the banding options which means I'm probably not getting initiative. However, EI might be nice to have in the event I run into a protected Foreign Wives (I had also considered Peter's Sermon for the same reason).