Cactus Game Design Message Boards

I've seen fairly decent 56 card Gates of Samaria decks. I think it could even get away with 5 or 6 Samarias if you included some others like Ends of the Earth or just needed the extra space since it's 56. With King Ahaziah and Shrine to Artemis, resetting the Samaria's is pretty easy and you search them back out with King Omri. I think the main issue with it these days is that there are more cards that negate evil cards rather than specifically evil Enhancements. Samuel's Edict, My Lord and My God, and Overcome all come to mind as commonly used negates.

Not to mention Three Woes...

I think it's a viable defense (a Brown defense with 3-4 Kings of Israel and 3-4 other strong Brown ECs should be decent), and then you just add 6 Samarias to a balanced 50 card deck. You can probably run a little lighter on EE since the Samarias will do some work, but again I don't think you can always count on Gates.

You can have multiple samarias in a standard deck?

Gates of Samaria needs a fast offense paired with it.  I'd run it at 57 for the extra Dom and Samaria site, probably paired with a Throne offense.

With Gates itself, King Ahab and Foreign Exile, that's three chances to get Gates early. Those aren't bad odds, especially if the deck is not entirely based around Gates, and has some other battle winners included as well.

Frog Demons probably fits in there too if you went that route.

I think the time for Gates was before Three Woes, but if you do run a Gates offense six is ridiculous. Four on the high end and two on the low end will be plenty. Just make sure you got that Shrine (recycle Woes when it's down and a Samaria when it's not) and Fire Foxes.