Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Disciples/Pharisees: 50 Cards

Lost Soul (Hopper)
Lost Soul (Negater)
Lost Soul (Revealer)
Lost Soul (Wanderer)
Lost Soul (1 Round Protect)
Lost Soul (N.T. Only)
Lost Soul (Shuffler)
Lost Souls (Unlimited)

The Ends of the Earth
Nazareth

Chariot of Fire
Four-Drachma Coin
Lampstand of the Sanctuary
Unholy Writ

Angel of the Lord
New Jerusalem
Son of God

Fishing Boat
Herod's Temple

Simon the Zealot (D)
Bartholomew (D)
Philip (D)
Thaddeus (D)
John (10A)
James, son of Zebedee
Matthew (D)
Thomas (D)
James, son of Alphaeus (D)
Peter
Andrew

The New Covenant

Faith as a Mustard Seed (D)
Passover Hym
Pentecost
Reach of Desperation
My Lord and My God
A New Commandment
Authority of Christ (Promo)

Christian Martyr

High Priest’s Palace

Scribe
The Entrapping Pharisee
Hard-Hearted Religious Leader
Proud Pharisee
Pharisees
Sabbath Breaker

Peter's Curse
Rain Becomes Dust

Pretension
Balaam’s Disobedience

I would add the hopper.  It won't slow your deck down any, and it generates souls.

He's using the negate soul which would defeat the purpose.

I would take out one of the pharisees for the 2/2 unique guy and add bearing bad news over saul

No Blue Tassels=no winning against Herods.

Why Saul?

Just a Hireling (black/gray)
Tenants Kill the Son (Gray/Black)
Self-Righteous Prayer

these are good also

Needs a blue guy/girl and the most broken card in standard right now.

Faith as a Mustard Seed has never seemed very good in my expirience.

Mayhem.

You seem to have a LOT of evil characters for not many evil enhancements.

i went up against a herod super turtle at nc regionals with no blue tassels tech and i did perfectly fine. herods for one are usually too slow to set up against disciples, and phil/bart (bread n butta) and james the lesser say no to capture. in fact, my very last rescue was with a james the lesser that dropped a super-passover hymn with a crown of thorns on board. devestating.

See, that's the problem. Superturtles are not Herods. Herods with a fast offense (such as white, the normal pairing) don't take long to get set up at all.

the deck i played against wasnt big at all, no bigger than a 56. it was super turtle because 90% of the deck was dedicated to defense, with nothing outside of jake/cap/angel at shur/dust and ashes/job and possibly job's faith and abes descendent. if a defense-heavy deck within those size limits fails to hold off disciples, then the pairing will be even worse for a balanced deck that doesnt have as many defensive options as the super turtle.

the original point anyways was the lack of blue tassels, which the deck is perfectly fine without; disciples has many options to get around capture within its vast toolbox.

I'll have to agree with Pol on this one point, Herods are best paired with a faster offense. The only time I've even remotely had problems when facing a Herods defense with a Disciples offense is when my opponents offense could keep up and take advantage of the nice autoblocks that a Herods defense can make.

I played with this super turtle defense at NE regionals + some other games, and my strategy against disciples was basically to capture with Herod's Dungeon, use super long bands to take advantage of Disciples typically only having 3-4 battle winners, and using timing FBTN battles to prevent Bart for totally shutting down Herod's Dungeon.

How many disciples decks did you end up playing?

At regionals, 2. I also playtested the defense against 2 or 3. The best one did was timeout win 2-1.

Quote from: Minister Polarius on June 11, 2011, 02:19:29 PM

No, it doesn't. Superturtle is bad regardless of size. I very clearly specified that the best Herods are paired with a fast offense for best results, which is not the case you are describing.

I don't see why they would be a more effective defense against di other than the fact that the offense would take more pressure off the defense. Is that what you mean?  Because it seems to me the bigger the defense (and especially with herods) the more di will have trouble. You just have a lot more blocking options because 90 % of your deck is defense.

and the fact a bigger herod defense has far better synergy with herods temple than a smaller d. you can super turtle and discard defensively for days to herods temple and not be phased by it in the slightest.

I have never tried Saul in my Pharisee defense. Is there any value in converting him or is he there simply as a Grey Pharisee?

i also do not understand why saul is in there. the only reason i can think to have him in there is for the phar/proud phar/saul/romans destroy jerusalem combo, but for one rdj is not in the deck, and two it would cripple his offense substantially.

i dont know a disciples deck that doesnt use passover hymn though, so there goes treachery (which i actually did use to discard treachery in the prep phase against the super turtle at nc)...