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Now that the Egyptians cards have been spoiled I'd like to share this updated edition of a deck I had a good deal of success with prior to and around the time of TexP. It's pretty fun to play but not a lot of fun to play against.

Deck Size - 56

Evil Characters - 16

(deck discarder)
Egyptian Horsemen
The Hard-Hearted Pharaoh
Taskmaster (FoM)
Huge Egyptian
Queen Tahpenes
Herod Agrippa I
Famine (third seal)
Drusilla
Salome (TeP)
Evil Spawn (D)

(other guys)
Jambres (FoM)
Jannes (FoM)
Egyptian Magicians
Egyptian Wise Men (FoM)
The Deceiver
King of Tyrus (Wa)

Evil Enhancements - 11

(deck discard)
Egyptian Treasures
Egyptian Spear
Herod’s Sword

(interrupt/negate)
Egyptian Horses
Swift Horses (D)
Fourth Bowl of Wrath

(battle winners)
No Straw!
Evicted
Revolt
Wonders Forgotten
Beheaded

Heroes - 5

(deck discard)
Amasai the Raider
Gabriel (Wa)
Spy (with Warriors Spear)

(removal)
Jephthah (Pa)
The Two Witnesses

Good Enhancements - 2

Warrior’s Spear
Sword of the Spirit

Support Cards - 8

(deck discard)
Given Over to Egypt
Pithom
Raamses

(removal)
Magic Charms
Holy Grail

(other stuff)
Magician’s Staves
Unknown Nation
Covenant of Prayer

Lost Souls - 7

Hosea 13:2 (deck discard)
Genesis 6:5 (Wicked)
Ezekiel 34:6 (Wanderer)
Exodus 11:5 (Hunter)
Deuteronomy 5:21 (Covet)
James 4:6/Proverbs 3:34 (Humble)
Deuteronomy 30:15 (Prosperity)

Dominants - 7

Rubble and Dust
Three Woes
The Second Coming
Christian Martyr
Angel of the Lord
Falling Away (CoW)
Grapes of Wrath

Reserve - 10

(Alternate win conditions)
Watchful Servant

(Evil Characters)
The Murdering Pharaoh
Egyptian Charioteers
Outsiders (Hawkeye)

(Evil Enhancements- all Exodus)
Ruthless
Sun Worship
Moses Kills an Egyptian
Mimicking Miracles
Hard Bondage

(protection)
Pharaoh's Throne Room

Summary

This deck is highly unconventional and wins through the war of attrition. It focuses on discarding cards (mostly random but not always) from the opponent’s deck and overwhelming the offense with a massive defensive effort. With 19 cards that discard from deck, many of which are reusable, there will be several turns in which you discard multiple cards from the opponent's deck.

Defense

Each time you enter battle you need to find the balance between the block that is most likely to win the battle and the one that will discard the most cards from the opponent's deck. You don't want to surrender souls, which should be obvious, but for the deck to work you also need to take away as many cards as possible via deck discard.

There are serval ways to help you accomplish this. You have potential Dom blocks with Martyr, R&D, Grapes and Falling Away. The ability to extend the battle with Unknown Nation and Magician's Staves is great! Magic Charms can also get you out of a tight spot. This allows you to make "chump blocks" with many of your deck discard Evil Characters that might not be able to win the battle otherwise.

Offense

Gabriel and Amasia are ideal in the early game to pick crucial Enhancements from the opponent's deck. The long game is all about Spy+Warrior's Spear to look, withdraw and discard 1 turn after turn. While both Third Seal (Famine) and Fourth Bowl of Wrath are primarily here for the defense, they can both be played on the Heroes if a good option presents itself. Jephthah and The Two Witnesses are finishers but can be used to take out crucial characters at any point in the game if you believe you have good options.

A converted Evil Character (via Holy Grail) can also double as a finisher. Speaking of which, the Huge Egyptian holding Egyptian Spear is one of my favorite rescues. If an opponent's defense has been picked apart enough he can survive multiple battles and net 2 cards off the top each time!

At the end of the game, between the random discard and focused removal, your able to walk in for free Lost Souls with almost any Hero. Besides the defense that gets randomly discarded you have opportunities for removal via AotL (twice), Jephthah (2) and Holy Grail (2) and anyone who blocks The Two Witnesses. Sometimes Sword of the Spirit can net you 1 or more Evil Characters. Both Grapes and R&D can be used this way but more often serve better on defense.

NOTE: Because of the way this offense works, this deck does not need the Son of God Dominant.

Reserve

Thanks for additions from The Fall of Man the reserve access is pretty awesome. It focuses almost entirely on helping the defense. Jannes, Egyptian Wise Men, Magician's Staves and Raamses (if played as a Fortress) are all going to get you things you want. Of course The Deceiver and Covenant of Prayer will too.  It's rare that you need to grab Watchful Servant from the reserve with CwP or Egyptian Wise Men but he's there as a backup plan.

Very excited to see this archetype be potentially viable! Mill is conventionally an organic counter to ultra speed decks and I have no doubt that if this type of deck is top tier it will cause a big shift in the meta.

This is one of the cards I used in this deck that I don't think we've shown yet.

Spoiler (hover to show)

Looks really funny!

What about putting Pagan Sacrifices in - either to getting it's effect or to use it as 3Ws bait or for some Gam's Speech or similar target?
Pagan Sacrifices:"Place in an opponent’s territory. During opponent’s upkeep phase, he must discard the top card of own draw pile. If that card is a Lost Soul, put it in play and discard this card instead."

And:
How much "slow down"/"hindering" for opponents do you consider when putting such kind of decks together?
Currently I always have HSR and CoM in my decks in order to either get some effect or have at least 3Ws baits out.

Since these cards (or similar ones) are not in this decklist (and aren't in any [most of] of the latest ones which have been listed from Nats the last 2 years) what is the reason? Why are these cards not considered being staple/competetive anymore?

Excellent questions!

Thanks! But need to attend a dumb one: What does D2 mean in this case? Draw2 by Egyptian Spear?

Pagan Sacrifices didn't make the cut in my old version back in 2010. It suffers from the need to be played in battle before it can be placed so you can end up holding it for a while before it gets a chance to do anything. And it stops working as soon as it hits a Lost Soul. It's just not reliable enough.

Yep, this I also considered. On the other hand it's also operating as kind of soul gen (a little) and it is reliably working during opponent's turn after it's placed. It could be played on Egyptian Spear when EC equipped with it would have ini anyway or High Places can help out here, but this would both be too expensive unfortunately.

Compared that with Given Over to Egypt which starts working as soon as you draw it and can be activated on Pithom to keep your artifact pile available.

Both together are even multiplier!

The new Sun Worship is usually going to be far more effective both being placed (because it's territory class) and in the discard effect (because it can hit for more than 1 per turn and doesn't discard itself when it hits a LS). But it's currently in my reserve waiting to be grabbed.

This is really a nice card - the ABom of decks!  Both together with Hur in Offense and maybe Love at first Sight keeps territories clean and draw piles small! 

I don't build card into my deck to soak up Woes or the class of Gam's Speech enhancements. I build them in to accomplish my goal and that gives my opponent plenty of targets. Sometimes it even gives me a couple good ways to deal with those. I know a lot of players that use HSR and it's quite effective! CoM is underrated but should see more play in combination with Balaam and the Moabites.

IC. For me I feel always the need to have both in deck since the strengthening of TC class characters beginning with PC/Cloud and the always massive usage of search and take abilities to accomplish goals. Without them I still feel somewhat disadvantaged from the beginning. The same goes for the always existing drawing engines out there which climaxed in the Kony-Deck.

Cards that slow the opponent down are excellent when your goal is to outrace the opponent. The goal of a deck like this is the opposite - to outlast the opponent. Every card focuses on dealing with the opponent's threats and/or discarding something from their deck. D2 tries to deal with the opponent's strategy, not by limiting their options through slowing them down, but by limiting their options by crippling their strategy through removing pieces.

Ok, maybe you can elaborate a little more in particular on this? What did you implement into this deck to deal with opponent's threads (I read all explanations but they focus on deck strategy)? And due to the limited Evil Gold Battle Winners - how are the tests so far in keeping defense up?
And another question: How do you deal with site access?

(Really nice, interesting shoptalk BTW!)

Quote from: Reth on April 15, 2018, 10:29:14 AM

And due to the limited Evil Gold Battle Winners - how are the tests so far in keeping defense up?
And another question: How do you deal with site access?

With five battle winners in the main deck (six, including Egyptian Treasures and not including the two to four Dom blocks) and two in the Reserve I feel like it probably does alright. The idea is really only to stall and hopefully mill enough of their key cards that battle-winners aren't as necessary.

From my personal experience of getting wrecked by this deck, it does more than alright. 

And which Dom blocks are meant next to Martyr, R&D, FA?

Grapes. You can discard your own evil character in battle to shuffle all the rescuing heroes.

Thanks!

And what about recursion? Is there anything to get e.g. an early DCed Given over to Egypt or Sun Worship back?

One way is to use Golgotha and Abraham's Descendant, but that doesn't really fit in this deck. That's why it uses so many discard options--if you lose one or two of them, you've got plenty more.

I agree some of the others. It is nice to see that with FoM some of the older cards are now usable again in some decent builds that will be fun to try.