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I have posted many threads about things I don’t like about specific rules or cards in this game.  But after “selling” a friend last night on the merits of the game, I was reminded why I enjoy Redemption so much, and I felt like sharing and getting your thoughts.  This is a long article, so thanks in advance for reading.

TEN REASONS I LIKE REDEMPTION SO MUCH:

1)    It is FROM THE BIBLE.  As a believer, I am instantly drawn to any game that uses the word of God as its source.  And to my delight, not only was a scripture reference on every card in the game (or almost), but the references compared with abilities usually make sense.  Frankly there are MANY bible games out there these days, but regrettably the game play is so poor that it feels like a chore to actually play.  But I have never felt this with Redemption.  And because the bible seems a limitless source of data, the designers are still not close to running out of material for new cards any time soon.

2)   It is REVERENT and almost always SCRIPTURAL.  One could have easily placed a verse on every card and then made the game silly or even irreverent, like having a Jesus hero card who could then end up doing bad things.  I was elated to find that the designers foresaw these problems though, and made them near impossible to happen.  Like the “Son of God” card being explained to me as “the most powerful card in the game, playable at any time, and unstoppable.”  That’s really cool for a believer to think about! (I don’t like that there are certain lost souls He CANNOT rescue, but I’m trying to be positive here.)

3)   The PLAYERS.  Let’s be honest.  Most non-believers in this world, sadly, will not go near a bible-based game no matter how fun you tell them it is.  If they do that’s great, especially for what they might LEARN from the game, but because of this fact MOST Redemption players are bible believers.  As a recovering Magic the Gathering (MTG) player from years ago, I can attest to Magic having a VERY different player base than Redemption.  Let’s just say, don’t expect a fight to break out a Redemption tournament   The players of this game REALLY want to help each other learn the game and make their own decks better, as opposed to MTG where many are so secretive and flat out rude.  A perfect place to find the kindness I refer to is the forums.  Imagine a place where I can send someone a trade message that their $20 card is on its way and I look forward to receiving their cards soon, and I have no fear of being scammed.  That’s the level of friendship and trust that exists in this game.

4)   The GOAL of the game.  If I remember Magic the Gathering correctly, you were trying to literally drain the life of your opponent (or accomplish the same thing by stalling until they draw their deck out).  That’s kind of brutal when you think about it, and not very “Christ-like”.  In this game, your heroes are on the same “side” as the heroes of the other players – GOD’S SIDE, and we’re simply having a friendly “race”, if you will.  We want to see whose heroes can redeem/rescue 5 lost souls before the other players’ heroes.  If you don’t feel right blocking your opponent’s attempts at getting your lost souls, just let them have them!  You probably won’t win, but I use this example to show that the game doesn’t FORCE you to do something that your conscience tells you might be wrong.  The whole game revolves around the long battle between good and evil (God and Satan) since before the world began.  While there are cards that represent demons and other evil characters, I never feel like I’m “role-playing” them in such a way that I’m enjoying being a bad guy.  You simply cannot win the game without doing something GOOD, by trying to save the lost, just as our Lord did while He was on the earth.  And I like how the game can seamlessly switch from one battle that clearly seems to be a spiritual contest of wills (like between Apollos and a demon trying to hinder his success) and physical battles (like Men of Judah against a Phillistine Garrison).  Once you open your mind to the wide-open timeline, and the various natures of the “battles”, it’s easy to get immersed in the overall global conflict that is going on around us at every moment.

7)   The variety of GAMEPLAY.  I will admit that when I got my starter deck and saw the tiny FORTY PAGE rulebook I nearly cried.  I will also admit that even now some rules are very difficult for even an experienced player to get right all the time.  But if the rulebook for this game were only 5 pages, due to much less game stages and options, I would have become bored with it months ago.  You can make this game as complicated as you are comfortable with, and I don’t mean this in a bad sense.  Don’t understand set aside, curses, covenants, artifacts, sites, fortresses, interrupts, capture, convert, territory-class, weapon/warrior class, immunity, ignore, etc?  Then don’t use them.  The only requirements for deck building are 7 lost souls for every 50-56 cards, and one more for every 7 cards in your deck after that.  You don’t even have to use dominants if you don’t want to!  Now you’ll need to at least understand these abilities when your opponent is using them against you, but it’s the scalable complexity level that keeps me glued to the game.  How many of us wanted our first deck to be the biggest power/toughness characters we could find?  What did we discover?  That we lost every battle because we never had initiative!  So then we made a deck of every 1/1 and 2/2 hero we could find, and then what?  We’d get blocked by Sapphira and have no way to beat her in a battle by the numbers!  And while I’m on this subject, one of the things I love the most about this game is the initiative system and the lack of a “casting cost” to put characters, artifacts and fortresses into play.  In MTG, everything revolved around having enough MANA, so a certain percentage of your deck had to be “lands” to slowly, and I mean over SEVERAL turns, build up to where I can actually bring a 10/10 person or monster into play.  NOT SO IN REDEMPTION!  In this game if you draw 4 powerful heroes and 4 powerful evil characters on your first turn and you want to put them out there right away to use (usually not wise), go right ahead!  And you draw THREE cards each turn instead of just one, so you’ll get through your deck faster than other games.  Especially when blocking, having to choose between bringing in some powerful ability and surrendering initiative is just priceless.  Or what about when we first stopped a rescue attempt by using our Son of God on OUR OWN lost soul!  That was an epiphany for all of us, finding a defensive use for an offensive card.  And then we realized that if I rescue HIS shuffler lost soul with MY Son of God right now, then all 5 of my lost souls will go away!  Those are great moments, and I love to see the look on a new player’s face when they realize this.  But there’s so much more to decide in the game than this.  Like bluffing by putting your 1/1 hero into battle when he has King of Tyrus in his territory.  Maybe I can actually scare him into not blocking this round, even though I have nothing in my hand to win the battle!  Or simply making a rescue attempt with a hero on blind faith on the first turn when you have nothing in your hand to win the battle with.  Took me a long time to realize that my opponent might have nothing to BLOCK with either, and that’s why I hopefully put more than one hero in my deck anyway!  Then trying to find creative ways to get past a seemingly unstoppable offense or defense, by maybe banding to his own characters, throwing a ton of interrupts and negates into your deck, using Hur to hopefully make him get some more lost souls into play, stopping his banding with 12 fingered giant or household idols, blocking not to win the battle but instead to play a card like Great Image and discard all his other heroes, keeping track of what dominants he hasn’t played yet and might still have in his hand, agonizing over which of your 7 awesome artifacts to activate for the next round.  Each game you lose makes you go back to your stockpile of cards to look for those one or two cards that really would have messed up your opponent.  I remember when a friend kept losing to my FBTN deck and finally constructed a deck with the sole purpose of stopping ME, by putting everything in his deck that could possibly hurt FBTN.  He didn’t have much room for anything else after that, but he won!  In the most hotly contested games against the best players, each player feels like the general of their troops, trying to look not just at this battle but several turns ahead as well.  Like a chess game with cards, with the randomness of the draw pile thrown in.  It’s good that for most things in this game the designers created a counter to the strategy, so that hopefully no one strategy becomes the dominant one and ruins the game as a result.  (Now I don’t find tournament decks these days as diverse as they once were, but again I’m trying to be positive.)

That’s all the time I have for now, and I’d like to hear your reasons as well that I might have left out.  Thanks so much for your patience with this LONG read, and with any grammatical errors I missed.  Thank you most of all to our gracious Lord who have us His word to live by but also to enjoy in this manner.  And a secondary thank you to Rob and everyone else for all their hard work on this game.  We all admit that it is not perfect, but it is my favorite imperfect game out there right now!

God bless you all.

Eric

Tri-wall of text plus 

I almost lol'd at number  10. Abijah son of Samuel, Whore of Babylon, Jezebel, Doeg's Slaughter, Woman in the Ephah, etc.

he gos to the lenth of writing all those cards he forgets Bathsheba 

Quote from: The Warrior on June 16, 2010, 07:59:21 PM

Quote from: Ring Wraith on June 16, 2010, 07:56:40 PM

I almost lol'd at number  10. Abijah son of Samuel, Whore of Babylon, Jezebel, Doeg's Slaughter, Woman in the Ephah, etc.

he gos to the lenth of writing all those cards he forgets Bathsheba 

or Eve.

or Wall-E

Yeah, 10 cards out of 2000+ I'd say we're doing a pretty good job, considering that most of them are older cards, and even then nothing extremely graphic is shown - Bathsheba is covered except for the mid to upper back, you see more on a beach - Same with Jezebel, same with all the rest.

I wouldn't say it's bad, but I definitely think it would have been better if some of the worst one's weren't printed.

I also forgot Put to Flight.
fact. Abijah Son of Samuel should have different art. fact.

its completely irrelevant how many 'graphically inappropriate' cards redemption has...the fact still remains it exists in the game.

i took the time to read the thread because i came expecting to read how redemption can stand on its own merits; however, its mainly just a mtg/everything else bashing. disappointed.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but I fail see how it is "mainly" what you said.  While some of that exists to be sure, you think I said nothing about the merits of Redemption?  Wow.

Yup, though I also like the "No useless cards" policy of Redemption, making new cards to make "useless" cards useful.

Thanks stefferweffer!  I enjoyed reading.

It's not really "mainly" about bashing MTG...although to be fair, you did mention MTG in 6 of your 10 points, and usually in a negative way.

While that is true, readers will always view that sort of verbage in a negative light - they came to read why Redemption is awesome, so when they read about MTG so much, they connect it to a MTG bash rather than a Redemption pump.