Cactus Game Design Message Boards

2. Practically forces single color defense, making game less interesting - Seems like everyone will feel forced to pull out their Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Syrian/Emperor, Demon defenses again.  Isn't more variety a good thing?

Only thing I have found is a Gold evil "place" enhancement, whose name escapes me, that negates and eventually discards a fortress

Made too powerful by color independent cards – Ark, I am Patience, Holy Grail, Angel of Lord, Jepthah, Women as Snares.  All of these cards can be placed in ANY Garden Tomb deck to be instant, practically unstoppable special abilities.  I don't have to be playing Red to use Jepthah to help the "tomb", nor do I have to use Pale Green to take advantage of Women as Snares to help out.

7. Will create decks with more defense than offense - Is this what we want?  Won't this run the risk of longer games while people wait for their offense to get going?

9. Makes one feel they have to play Garden Tomb to have any chance of winning - Anyone care to guess how many Garden Tomb decks will be at Nationals this year?  I know how to make a good Garden Tomb deck, but thus far I've resisted the temptation to make one for the reasons above.

Scenario.  I draw one lost soul.  You draw 2 and go first, or draw one and win the toss.  My opening hand has 2 or even 3 EC (not bad right?)
Turn one.  You play Salome and Garden Tomb.  I can’t block.  You have 1 Lost Soul.

Later turn when I have drawn another Lost Soul:  After I have played all 3 of my EC (for fear of Garden Tomb), you play Holy Grail on one, Angel of Lord on another.  I can’t block with my one EC.  You have 2 lost souls.

Next turn, you Holy Grail or Jepthah my last EC in play.  You may have another lost soul now.

Now you have basically won, unless I draw a lot of EC in one turn or I have the right dominants (to kill you or rescue my own lost souls).  I need to get two more EC out quickly to be able to block you.  If you have NJ and Son of God you can probably win right now anyway.
I know this is ideal drawing for the "Tomb" player, but then again I also said I had 3 EC in my starting hand, which is also rare with 7 or 8 EC in the entire deck.

I've not been playing long, so maybe there are more defenses against it than I have thought of.  Is anyone else out there as frustrated with the Garden Tomb craze as I am?  Thanks for listening.

Quote from: RED on May 06, 2010, 04:56:10 PM

One:What was it like when you started?(the Metagame)

When I first started playing Redemption, it was in the summer of 1995.  I picked up a starter deck set and a couple blue packs from the "Lion's Den" Christian Bookstore up in Batavia, NY run by a friendly guy named Daniel.  I played the game against myself a couple times, and then when I returned to college, taught it to my friends Dave and Aaron.  At the time we were mainly just experimenting with it as a comparison to another strategy card game that I had created based on the Bible as well.  Since the game was extremely "limited" back in those days, we didn't like it at all and preferred playing my game instead.  So it sat in a box for a decade.  The metagame at that point was "play a bunch of 2/2 GEs on your 4/4 GC and hope to end up bigger than the 6/6 EC with it's 2/2 EEs".

When I returned to Redemption about a decade later, I was brought back by a student of mine named Dawn who had come from a playgroup out in Kansas City, led by rpgdirector.  At this point, Priests had just come out and the game had evolved significantly.  The dominant offense of the time were Angels and the newly feared Z-temple priests.  The dominant defense was the minimal standalone splash defense.

Quote from: RED on May 06, 2010, 04:56:10 PM

Three:How did you do at your first tournamet? Also any advice for new tournament players?

After playing with my students for a few months, I started taking them to some tournaments.  Our first one was a local up in Northern KY hosted by Ben Huntsman.  There I reconnected with an old college buddy named Jon Greeson (Soul Seeker), and found out about an active group around Cincinnati.

I remember best my first and last games of that tournament.  My first turn of my first game, I drew 7 out of 8 LSs in my deck.  I thought I would lose for sure.  But that game happened to be against a kid whose older brother made a deck out of all his best cards, and then put all the rest in a deck for his little brother.  Needless to say, none of his enhs ever matched up with his characters and I was able to pull off the win after all.  I tried to give him some pointers throughout the game and he was really sweet to me the rest of the tournament.  He would root for me in all of my games and congratulate me if I won.  This brings up 2 pieces of advice for new tournament players:  never give up on a game, and always be kind to your opponent whether you are winning or losing (teach don't taunt).

My last game of that tournament was surprisingly the championship game and it was against my good friend Jon Greeson (who was an experienced pro already and had been mopping up on people).  I remember that there was a huge lost soul drought for a looooong time, which led to us both having to discard cards at the end of turns a lot.  I remember one turn he discarded Destruction of Nehustan.  I was floored.  I didn't even own a Destruction of Nehustan at that point (or a lot of other good cards, in fact I was borrowing a New Jerusalem dominant for the tourney), and to think that the rest of his hand was better than that was extremely intimidating.  Partly due to the LS drought, and partly due to my slow play due to having to read a lot of his cards that I'd never seen before, we ended up timing out in a tie.  He still ended up winning the tournament (due to a much higher differential), but I remember thinking that maybe I could really compete in this game with the big dogs (little did I know how terrible I really was back then).  My advice for new tournament players is to NOT expect to play for the championship in your first tournament.  And also that anyone can beat anyone given the right draw, which gives hope to the noob, and should give humility to the star.

Quote from: RED on May 06, 2010, 04:56:10 PM

Five:Lastly how do you think the meta shifted since you started-Good or Bad?

If you count when I started the first time 1995, the question is easy.  The game has DEFINITELY shifted for the good.

If you count when I started the second time, the question becomes very difficult.  On the one hand, the meta has definitely shifted toward pre-block ignore (TGT especially, but also Zebulun, and several common GEs like RTC) which I REALLY HATE!  It's frustrating enough when you have to give away LSs because you haven't drawn ECs.  It's even more frustrating when you have to give away LSs with an EC sitting in your territory, or ECs sitting in your hand.

On the other hand, back when I started playing again, the only offenses that really had a chance were Silver and Teal.  Blue, Red, Gold, White, and Green all stunk.  Purple was pretty bad too.  Back then, the choice was "What would you splash with your silver?"  In addition to this, the standalone splash defense was so dominant and took so few cards, that way too many decks were playing that as well.  The overall result was that there was a LOT of similarity between decks, and therefore, less variety in games.

So I guess if I had to come down off the fence on one side, I would have to say that things are better now than they have ever been.  You can go to a tournament and truly have no idea what kind of deck you'll be facing each round (unless you're at the top table, in which case you know that there will be a TGT in there somewhere).  This continual improvement in the game is really an amazing testament to how God has led Rob and the volunteer playtesters to make this game the best that it can be.  I'm blessed to have a chance to play it and be a part of this community.