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After playing John’s T1-2P winner deck it has occurred to me that getting CWD Earley game is very strong and having cbp/cbn characters to back it up is better than ever

I played basically this deck in 2016 with judges/magicians/Assyrians and CWD .. it was good but not great cause most of the ecs were cbi at the time

All in all this deck does what most should without cwd and that’s have blocking ec abilities with ec abilities that give you access to other cards for blocks.. Elijah/Ehud are very powerful together with combined green gold and cbn battle winners

Generally speaking this defense/offense just does it better being cbp abilities but it made me come around to a general sense of the defensive meta

Typically playing no enh for a block or rescue is better than paying one
Uzzah/Necromancer/Lying Prophet/Profane Daughters are some examples of almost auto blockers

And usually I’m counting on a dom for a block between Christian Martyr on a loan hero or Falling Away which is what makes Auto/Gideon with Elijah really nice

Overall we have a pretty limited defensive meta. End the battles are pretty nice sometimes but it seems like soul hiding and soul drought is really still the best block in the game. As much soul protection as there is it usually seems negated or not around when needed most. On the other hand, what kinds of blocks would even be available otherwise? I’ve rounded a lot of defenses down to draw characters to get to falling away or martyr and scattered because the cbn on multiple Heroes like reap the whirlwind and no straw or abandonment seem to be staples in various defenses in combination with martyr

All in all this post is a few defensive meta thoughts to share for healthy conversation. Thanks for playing and contributing to Redemption!

Gray (Gray/Black if you have more defensive slots) stall is viable IMO as long as you believe your deck is consistently faster than the opponent. It has a definitively finite number of blocks aside from Balaam/Scribe recursion but those blocks are some of the hardest to interact with in the game right now.

I think that artifact blocks are becoming more and more meta. or just character auto blocks such as kings of judah. THe game now seems to be that who ever can activate the first ability wins the game sorta thing

I definitely think that while False Prophets and Babylonian cores are the most popular T1 defenses, there's others that have potential to be meta-defining. I've seen many more Moabites in T2 than T1, but I think they actually do have promise if anyone actually bothers to build them. Jon showed that Egyptians can do quite a lot, and it may be possible that that defense can be refined even more. JD mentioned some very strong Black characters. Demon/Magicians are just as solid as back in RoJ, just aren't as popular because they haven't gotten as many new toys lately.

I do agree with sepjazzwarrior about how offense is important when deciding what defense to play. Obviously if you're running CTB stuff you'll want the CBP-heavy brown defense so that CWD doesn't hurt you as much, and all three Flood decks in top cut ran some kind of crimson.

Quote from: Kevinthedude on September 11, 2019, 10:17:48 AM

Gray (Gray/Black if you have more defensive slots) stall is viable IMO as long as you believe your deck is consistently faster than the opponent. It has a definitively finite number of blocks aside from Balaam/Scribe recursion but those blocks are some of the hardest to interact with in the game right now.

Yes. I love gray too.

Black/gray is epic in #yeetcannon.

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