FoM Blue Part One: Return with a Vengeance
(Disclaimer: this is from a T2 perspective, but some parts might apply to T1)
Blue was my first offensive color in Redemption, and I played it for many years, adopting the Genesis theme when it came around. First mainly abusing Jacob>Reuben’s Torn Clothes, but then as players adjusted their decks and more counters were printed my deck eventually became more centered around the sons of Jacob, mainly Benjamin and Joseph. These heroes were great as they had good numbers for initiative and could play great battle winning enhancements CBN.
This worked fairly well, but as time went on I started running into a problem. Banding evil characters, particularly CBN bands and even more so CBN demon bands were very difficult to deal with. Forgiveness of Joseph could work for a turn against human bands, but then the next turn I would be stuck once again.
Reluctantly, I let go of my trusty Blue heroes, and moved on to play other themes. But perhaps it is time for them to return. With a vengeance.
Deceit & Vengeance
There are many good new blue cards this year. But this is the one that I believe pushes blue over the top. Let me break it down.
The Good:
-Gets rid of the majority of my opponent’s characters for 3 turns
-Often wins the battle
-Does NOT hurt my characters
-It is a Set Aside, which has long been my favorite form of battle winner, as few thing protect against it and it also prevents a second copy of the set aside characters from entering play while they wait to return.
-If I use a son of Jacob to play Deceit & Vengeance, it permanently gets rid of the characters.
Looking at it like that it sounds AMAZING! But it wouldn’t be fair to just look at the positives.
The Bad:
-Doesn’t get rid of females or genderless
-Is negatable
-Doesn’t interrupt and can’t play on good initiative characters
-Can only use 2 copies in deck/reserve
Ok so putting it all together like that, D&V ends up sounding like an above average, but not exceptional card.
Admittedly not targeting females/genderless is unfortunate. But fortunately males make up a large majority of the best evil characters in the game. The few females/genderless you come across must just be targeted down by other battle winners. But what if we could find a simple way to get around most of the rest of the bad? Then wouldn’t we be back to AMAZING!?
The way around the bad starts with Benjamin. He has great initiative, is a son of Jacob, and D&V is CBN on him. Of course, not by himself. He would die if he just played it. However, there exist 2 cards to help with this problem: Answer to Prayer and Book of Hosai. Both of these enhancements conveniently grant 3 toughness so D&V doesn’t kill Benjamin. But what makes them even better is that they allow you to play Deceit & Vengeance into battle (Answer to Prayer even takes it from deck!).
And as for the 2 copies per deck? Abraham’s Descendant allows you to keep putting it back beneath your deck, where it can be searched out again with Answer to Prayer, a card you wanted to use it with anyways! Asher can also be used for even more recycling if necessary.
I think these solutions more than make up for D&V inherent drawbacks, and I can’t wait to start using it when it is released! But what do you think? Am I overestimating this card? Or are there even better ways to make use/abuse of it? I didn't even start to get into the side battle shenanigans...
