Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Once John Earley sends me back my decklist I will post my type 1 2 player deck. I do not think many people know, but it was a 70 card, defense heavy, site lockout. I did lose to 2 teal/green's. One had TGT in it, one did not. The one I lost to at the end, Nick Marshal's, was Teal/Tomb and he drew very fast and my defense did not set up. My first game was my other lose to Jonathon Greeson who had he not had Mayhem, or had I got a decent draw off Mayhem instead of nothing, would have lost 5-4. But either way I still ranked with a defensive heavy deck, and beat a lot of top players and speed decks.

No, it had 2 Judges, a Judge's seat and some A-bomb stuff.

The thing of it is, there's no balance.  Either you go defense heavy and wait all day to play offense and have already won before you attack to stop speed/TGT decks, or you go fast and hope to win quickly and if you can't after a couple turns you lose.  A decent offense and defense deck that can attack always at any time and defend at any time usually gets beat.

Daniel

 

p.s. I understand a lot might change because of the new cards, just haven't had the time to try em out.

Hey,

A few factual errors:

New Jerusalem was first released with the Womens set.  It was not in the set itself but was printed with the set and was available as a promotional card.  The Warriors set just created a new way of acquiring New Jerusalem.

The first 10/10 human hero was Elhanan in the Warriors set, not any of the apostles guys.
The first non-FBTN hero to be above 7/7 would have been Gabriel in the Warriors set, not any of the apostles guys.

Quadrate's last name is Turnidge.  Mike Turnidge.  And his defenseless deck was not mostly Fight by the Numbers.  It was a Purple and Silver deck.  It included The Strong Angel and Captain of the Host because they were silver, but contained no other Fight by the Numbers heroes.

A few almost factual errors:

Holy of Holies was released in the 2nd Edition starter decks, after warriors before apostles.  It was Holy of Holies, not anything in the apostles set that was Cactus' main response to the dominance of Fight by the Numbers.

While Fight by the Numbers decks may have been the most talked about decks in the warriors era, I'm not sure they "dominated the game's Meta."  When I won nationals in 2000 I didn't remember anyone (other than myself) playing a Fight by the Numbers deck in Type 1.  Several people commented that they had Fight by the Numbers decks but they chose not to play with them for some reason.  Also of note, at that time there was minimal Redemption presence on the internet and no major tournaments outside of nationals, so the meta of that era was more defined by what your local group was playing with than by what was being used nationwide.  I think it was more in the years that followed (2001-2003) - when the online community and tournament scene started to develop and the new sets (apostles and patriarchs) did little to slow Fight by the Numbers - that Fight by the Numbers truly "dominated the game's Meta."

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

I was aware of the New Jerusalem promotion, but unaware of it's release date. Thanks for clarifying.

Elhanan and Gabriel. I am dissapointed that I forgot about Gabriel at least.

Turnidge. Hmm, maybe I didn't know that after all. I thought I was simply forgetting. As for his deck, I was mostly going on hearsay, I'll edit in your comments though.

I agree that Holy of Holies was the main response to fight by the numbers, but I don't think you could argue that large 10/10 characters had any other purposes but serving as fight by the numbers counters. They certainly didn't have any strategic element. Perhaps I am crediting Cactus with strategic thinking where there was none.

That's probably a solid point about local metas though. Without the development of a centralized authority on the good and bad (the boards), it is probably a stretch for me to say that FBTN dominated the meta.

"When I won nationals in 2000 I didn't remember anyone (other than myself) playing a Fight by the Numbers deck in Type 1."

I didn't play any opponents at that tournament that did NOT have FBN.

In a double-elimination format?  That would have been a trick.

The priests set did not play a significant part in the creation or viability of my deck.  I actually built the deck the year before priests was released.  Even after priests was released only two cards from the set made it into my deck.  And in the four years I played that deck it never contained any teal cards (although adding teal was a common change made by the players that built variants of my deck).  The set that had the biggest impact on the development of the deck was the 10th Anniversary Starters which introduced several evil multicolor enhancements which inspired me to attempt to build a splash defense in the style of the warriors era FBTN offenses.

I looked at a combination of both your deck and Kevin's deck (as listed on your site). If I recall correctly, Kevin implemented a Phinehas and Zeal for the Lord in to his deck while you did not. I remember tha being one of the bigger differences between them. If I recall correctly, you had something like 40-45 of 56 cards in common.

It was during the year after priests was released that my deck was most successful and became known across the country.  In addition to Kevin Shride, Chad Soderstrom also built a variant of my deck.  Chad won nationals in 2006 with his first variant of my deck and placed 5th in 2007 with a different variant of it.

Chad built one too? Wow, I had never heard that before.

While I have always said that any attempt to summarize what my deck was trying to do will inevitably fail due to the wide variety of things I was trying to work into the deck, your description is impressively accurate.

Thanks. I was trying to produce as accurate a description as I could without having been a prt of the creative process, so I looked at your deck list, read your commentary again, and recalled my thought processes when building similar decks. I am glad I got it close.