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Great observations from one of the games stop strategists!

I love all the site access (direct or indirect) cards.  Sitelock is just not that fun to play against, and using valuable card slots to give site access is not fun either.

It will be very difficult to play Site lock after CoW is released. We haven't even revealed one of the best counters yet! 

It just seems that TEC/PC/CoW have been steadily increasing the power of Hezekiah's Signet Ring to the point where I am including it in basically every deck I play.

We also have cards yet to be revealed that will help answer the "HSR problem". Even previously "unstoppable" artifacts like Water Jar, Stalks of Flax, Four DC and a discarded upon activate Darius' Decree will have counters now.

Joshua decks will absolutely be a thing.

Not that thrilled about the site lock counters. Almost every NT defense I have uses CP, Corazon, Hormah and maybe one other site.

Yes but with those you also get the benefit printed on the site itself, which is not being countered in every case (there are more ways to deal with sites generally, to be sure).  If you only included those sites, it doesn't sound like you're actually going to be hurt by the availability of access.

Also, as we have seen time and time again, people will stop playing the thing that has counters...now people stop playing counters...now people start playing the thing...and we eventually reach some sort of equilibrium.

I'm mixed about the set because on the one-hand I'm not sure that releasing a tournament legal set so close to nationals is helpful for competition; however, it looks like the creators did a good job making sure that you don't absolutely have to have to new cards to be competitive, because most of the game changers are actually counters. There are some cards that are going to put people at an huge advantage for having them too because redemption plateaus its power curve through counters. In other words if you are not playing with the counters you are essentially playing at the previous state. I say essentially because of course ghost counters are a thing as Redoubter astutely points out. Moreover, I find its release and legalization ironic after we had such an open and honest discussion about playtester advantage lol

To me, it looks like this is an attempt to restructure the tournament season for the better while promoting the game at the same time. Which is awesome, I just wish there would have been a little more transparency upfront for the people who rushed to buy boxes of EC right away.

Yeah, i was kind of "meh" so to speak when i realized that this is going to be legal at nationals. In my opinion i do not think it should be legal because some people (Playtesters and anyone else who has a lot of money to spend on redemption) is going to get the cards that are not necessarily available to others. I don't know thats my opinion though.

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Moreover, I find its release and legalization ironic after we had such an open and honest discussion about playtester advantage lol

That was discussed quite a bit and we are hopeful that by doing the previews it will lessen the impact of any potential advantage.

That helps and it' well received but doesn't offset the competitive advantage introduced by a crunched timeline. And its more than about playtesting advantages. The average person will attend about 2 tournaments to test their deck before Nationals. Of course their is root but that really just helps narrow down what you want to play and helps you familiarize yourself with how the new set interacts with other cards, it isn't an accurate assessment of how your deck is going to do against the tournament field.

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Which is awesome, I just wish there would have been a little more transparency upfront for the people who rushed to buy boxes of EC right away.

I'm not sure I follow what you are meaning with this comment--what does EC have to do with this set's timing release?

Well, cards that people bought and opened from packs may not be as useful now with the new set. Say I bought 4 self controls to spread across decks. Now, I might only want to use 3 because of Moses. I am down 1 copy of self control now that theoretically has less trade value additionally, yet I was under the assumption that the new cards are the only legal cards before Nationals. And rightfully so, because of the precedent that redemption has set of adding 1 legal set per tournament season.

While this is a great-looking set (and the best is yet to come), there are some things I would've liked to see, mostly regarding the art. Imo, artwork is a great selling point for a set, and should be handled with the same care that special abilities are given. Keep in mind, lots of these new cards look amazing (Deceitful Sin, Egyptian Treasures, and the two forts revealed so far come to mind as outstanding looking). I am talking mainly about remakes.

Mostly regarding cards such as Jepthah, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Gideon, Daniel, etc. These cards, currently, are already quite playable. Why not give the new versions new art as well, ala the new Moses? It would greatly help differentiate the different versions, and it would be refreshing to look at as well.

Josh, thank you for offering feedback in a meaningful way. I appreciate constructive criticism that includes a proposed solution!

A great deal of effort and work goes into finding art for Redemption cards. It comes with some pretty big challenges. Cactus Game Design doesn't give us a budget for art. That leaves us mostly needing to find pieces that are available in the public domain or reuse old pieces. There's a very small group of elders that are skilled in the area of seeking art that is usable. As you noticed, we were able to find some pretty nice pieces to use this year... and some that aren't all that appealing but fit the card ability and verse. Because of the limitations, there are many cards that involve a few hours labor just to find an appropriate piece!

One things we've started doing occasionally is contacting an artist to see about the possibility of using his or her illustration. More times than not they don't reply. This year I had a 0% success rate. But in the past I was able to get pieces like Eye On It and Soldier of God (PC).

In hindsight, you're 100% correct that it would have been a great idea to differentiate the characters you named above in additional ways. Different art and/or different stats could have both been better implemented. In some cases we did that, but we probably could have done a better job. With cards like Jacob and Daniel, it's easy to see a pretty decent piece of art and just keep it. Is there something better (or at least equal quality) available? Maybe. We probably didn't spend any time trying to find out. There are a handful that we did look and simply didn't find anything better. Looking back I kind of wish we would have re-evaluated the stats for all reprints instead of just a few of them. I'll take the blame for our lack of effort on both the art and stats. If we have reprints next year we will do better.

One other thing I saw was the white background on Aaron's Staff. White backgrounds irritate me, and I think in the future they should be kept off cards in general.

I understand this was probably a cost thing, but it seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

I agree 100%. I don't like white backgrounds. There are two cards in this set that have it though. In both cases it was the best quality piece we could find that is free to use.

I'm curious what people think. Would it be better to simply not print a card because all we can find is "less than optimal" art? For example, should we have axed Aaron's Staff and never printed that Tabernacle/Temple Artifact because there isn't high quality art available?

Also, I know some people (myself included) would have loved to see full-art cards introduced, and the player-created cards would have been the perfect opportunity to try it, I think. 

When the National Tournament Card Creation Winners preview their cards you'll see that the cards did get a little special treatment. It's just not full art.

One of the things I've always loved about this game is that Rob listens to the players. Even though we're not getting full art cards in the upcoming Cloud of Witnesses release, I have a feeling that some fun designs are in our future.

No, beasts are demonic in origin. (all beasts are demons but not all demons are beasts)

so cross beams of the cross will not prevent animals from blocking. good to know.