Cactus Game Design Message Boards

This deck is fun to play, but not top tier. Still, it wins games when played well, which can be tricky because it's complicated. The offense is here only to support the defense, and win a few souls at the end. It's very frustrating for your opponent when it works. It's probably a T2 strategy squeezed into a T1 deck.

Deck size 56

Dominants
Grapes of Wrath
Son of God
Burial
Christian Martyr
Destruction of Nehushtan
Falling Away
Mayhem

Artifacts
Chariot of Fire
Lampstand of the Sanctuary

Curses
Rain Becomes Dust

Fortresses
Herod's Temple
Storehouse

Sites
Hormah
Chorazin
Marketplace
Caesarea Philippi
Golgotha

Lost Souls
Lost Soul (deck discard)
Lost Soul (female only)
Lost Soul (N.T. only)
Lost Soul (site discard)
Lost Soul (site doubler)
Lost Soul (wanderer)
Lost Souls (3-line)

DAE
Seven Years of Plenty

Multi-Color Heroes
Joseph

Heroes
Judah
Jacob
Rachel
Asher
Zebulun

Enhancements
Abraham's Descendant
Obedience of Noah
Reuben’s Torn Clothes
Cup of Wrath

Multi-Color ECs
Self
Damsel with Spirit of Divination
Laban
Scribe

Gray ECs
Emperor Vitellius
The Entrapping Pharisees
Hard-Hearted Religious Leaders
Sabbath Breaker
Proud Pharisee
Pharisees (trio)
Pharisees (leader)

Multi-color EEs
Love of Money
Just a Hireling
Prisoner Transfer

Gray EEs
Night Raid
Pretension
False Peace
Fearfulness
Momentum Change

Orange EEs
Two Possessed by Demons

Pale Green EEs
Confusion

The idea is to survive until you can get the proper EEs to pull off your combo, either while blocking or in a side battle. The combo involves giving your opponent one of your Lost Souls with Prison Transfer, then shuffling their Lost Soul back into their deck with Just a Hireling. You have Momentum Change to get back Prison Transfer, Just a Hireling and any others you've played. Do this a few times and your opponent won't have any Lost Souls left to rescue!

Self or Love of Money allows you to use any brigade so you can use Two Possessed and Confusion. Fearfulness is there to set up Confusion (hopefully for SoG) and generate more card advantage. False Peace searches out the missing piece of the combo. Market Place is there to get back your 1/3 Pharisees so you have plenty to discard to Just a Hireling.

Scribes (with False Peace), Abraham's Descendant (with Golgotha) and Asher (to get back Abe's Descendant) get back Momentum Change.

As an added bonus you can CTB either Damsel or Sabbath Breaker with Rain Becomes Dust active. I wanted to fit a multi-color GE into the deck for maximum Damsel discard, but I haven't found anything that would be useful apart from that combo.

I toyed with using King Ahaz, Nebushasban and Death of the Unrighteous but felt like they made the deck less reliable. You really didn't want to shuffle your Sites. Great Image seems like an obvious inclusion, but I chose Two Possessed instead because it can hit their ECs and set aside is harder to get back than discard. Usually their SoG should have been played or discarded.

Besieging the City would be fun in here but I know what I would take out to make room. I'd also really like to have the CBP Lost Soul but don't feel like it would be more useful than any that are currently in here.

If your advanced enough to be able to play complex combo decks like this I'd appreciate any feedback you have to offer.

I toyed with using King Ahaz, Nebushasban and Death of the Unrighteous but felt like they made the deck less reliable. You really didn't want to shuffle your Sites.

Death of Unrighteous does not shuffle unoccupied Sites as they are not in the Land of Bondage.

I'd suggest Abel and visions.

If they have the shuffler they can return all your LS; why don't you use the Thorns LS to prevent it?  Is it not seen much these days?

DoU is fairly common, and would also reset your work.  Do you have a reliable way to counter it?

Maybe im missing something in my old age (ha) but how are you getting Momentum Change back to reliably pull this off?

- Prisoner Transfer, Just a Hireling, False Peace in hand. Block Scribe and put Momentum Change beneath deck and search out with Scribe.
- Or you don't need False Peace and use Abe's Kids each time to grab Momentum Change off Golgotha and attack with Asher to get back Abe's Kids

Kirk

Sorry, I meant FBTN LS, not Thorns - it would negate their Thorns and their Shuffler, relieving you of two problems while not giving you any major problems.

Gabe,

I played the deck as listed above. The only change I made was swapping in Holy of Holies for Chariot of Fire.

Had the combo including fearfulness from turn two, but the best part was the RBD I had to stop the mayhem I saw with my first fearfulness

Thanks for the game - it was fun trying to fight off this combo

I must say, though, I don't understand why you left out NJ. 

During our game, you didn't seem to be able to stop my enhancements if you didn't have initiative; iirc, you only played EEs 3 times, one of which was through Proud Pharisee.  Another was thanks to ignore initiative (should have seen that Confusion coming /facepalm ).  I think you could greatly benefit from Self-Righteous Prayer, Naaman's Chariot and Horses, or Begging for Grain.

Another issue was site access.  Priestly Crown would help greatly, since most of your characters are male (and all are OT).  Or, since you already have 5 colors of sites, adding Babylonian Banquet Hall (hoping to play off an opponent's Babylon sites) might help lock out others/provide access.

It seems that a deck based on discarding LSs with Evil Spawn would work much better now that SoG and NJ can only rescue opponents LS. Gold/Grey defense with Sidebattles/Ctb offense. That might be worth pursuing...

IMO, SoG/NJ rule switching does help it but not much. Chances are that you're opponent would play them on their own or they played them too early and then obviously you'd play them on your's. Which subtracts two from both sides which is what would happen now except that you wouldn't necessarily need to include NJ now.

I currently have an Evil Spawn T1 deck that I'm working on and I might post the list but I'm not sure.

Heeeeeey Gabe could I have your permission to try out this D. I won't copy and paste it (cause I don't find it very courteous at all) but I wanted to ask permission to try and make this idea work to the fullest.

Yes, anyone is welcome to use it. I know better than to post a deck I don't want people to copy. 

The problem with the idea is that there are too many ways to generate Lost Souls these days.