Cactus Game Design Message Boards

While I can't be sure right now, I have spent the last few years behind in my Redemption decks, gaining most of my new cards from Booster Draft and prizes, (this goes back to Early Church actually) because I haven't had a stable job since Early Church came out. And I've been fairly successful (consistently making top 4 at my tournaments) but rarely getting into the top 2 (so usually being 3 or 4) and the two people that usually beat me have had much more access to the newer cards. So I'm guessing that not having access to CoW and RoJ will put players at a disadvantage to players who do have access. This is especially true for RoJ which will give players access to the Reserve pile to offload some of their situational cards and/or get around certain counters, specifically counters against search. I'm not sure what the advantage will be, but when the skill is mostly level (which I assume the top players of Redemption be close enough to), I think having access to CoW and RoJ would be the deciding factor, especially if we normalize for random chance.

So put it in simple words, I think players will be at a disadvantage if they don't have access to CoW and RoJ, especially due to the versatility of Second Coming and the power of 3 Woes (which I'm thinking could be more powerful than Second Coming)

All this is based on T2 game play, my inexperience in competitive T1 makes me completely unable to comment on it with any degree of accuracy.

You could probably come up with a pre CoW deck that wouldn't get completely run over but I don't think it could win anything higher than a district (assuming there is decent REP competition).