Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Cards in deck: 56
Lost Souls: 7
   Lost Soul (can't be prevented)
   Lost Soul (Female Only)
   Lost Soul (N.T. only)
   Lost Soul (punisher)
   Lost Soul (site guard)
   Lost Soul (withdraw)
   Lost Souls (2-line)

Lamb Dominants: 2
   Grapes of Wrath
   Son of God

Grim Reaper Dominants: 5
   Burial
   Christian Martyr
   Destruction of Nehushtan
   Falling Away
   Mayhem

Fortresses: 4
   High Places
   Philistine Outpost
   The Gates of Hell
   Zerubbabel's Temple

Multi-Color Sites: 1
   The Ends of the Earth

Green Sites: 1
   Nazareth

Artifacts: 5
   Chariot of Fire
   Hezekiah's Signet Ring
   Household Idols
   Lampstand of the Sanctuary
   Magic Charms

White Covenant Cards: 2
   Covenant With Death (Brown/Pale Green)
   Rain Becomes Dust (Gray)

Gold Covenant Cards: 2
   I am Healing
   I am Redemption

Multi-Color Heroes: 1
   Joiada, Son of Eliashib (Teal)

Silver Heroes: 1
   The Angel Under the Oak

Gold Heroes: 4
   Moses
   Simeon
   The Generous Widow
   Watchful Servant

Multi-Color Hero Enhancements: 1
   Feast of Trumpets

Gold Hero Enhancements: 1
   Meeting the Messiah

Gold Evil Characters: 1
   Herod Agrippa II

Black Evil Characters: 8
   Damsel with Spirit of Divination
   Fallen Warrior
   Gibeonite Delegates
   Goliath
   Herod the Great
   Philistine Armor Bearer
   Simon the Magician
   The Twelve-Fingered Giant

Multi-Color Evil Characters: 3
    Antiochus Epiphanes IV
    The Goat with Horn
    The Winged Leopard

Multi-Color Evil Enhancements: 1
   Herod's Treachery

Black Evil Enhancements: 6
   Abomination of Desolation
   Bringing Fear
    Joseph in Prison
   Land Dispute
   Pride of Simon
   Wrath of Satan
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So the focus of this deck is simply to slow down your opponent with Naz/HSR/RBD/HHI/CWD and then Bringing Fear/Wrath away all their heroes. I have an A-Bomb focus in there to take out pesky heroes like Joseph/Asher or Gideon/King Hezzy, who are problems, but it's also nice for getting rid of CWD and the like. Comboing it with Mayhem gives loads of control over the game, allowing you to discard something the very turn they put it down/activate it.

The reason I didn't up it to 57 is because I don't need an eighth dominant. Nothing really helps me.

I am very character heavy because the characters are needed for specific strategies. I have two Herods and a Treachery, two magicians and a Charms, two demons and a Gates. These fit in nicely, for the most part, because I can still use black with them. The main thing is that most meta decks don't include an abundance of enhancements, and these, as well as various dominants and the site guard lost soul, will result in them inevitably running out of resources. This is the main core of the defense: stall with these until I can Bringing Fear/Wrath them. Antiochus and Goliath make it very difficult for my opponent to do what they want to do. Overall, it's remarkably effective.

The offense seems very Watchful Servantish, but you'd be surprised how many souls Simeon/Moses can get, and Simeon can also band to a majority of people's offenses. Generous Widow and Joiada allow me to use A-Bomb, which can slowly take out their defense as well.

Overall, this deck has served as a pretty effective anti-meta deck, though I recently dropped some offense to bolster the defense. I've considered dropping Delegates and Fallen Warrior, and I would like to add a Foolish Advice, Devourer, or Overwhelmed by Philistines. Maybe drop TGW for Martha, but I like the CBN advantage, and I can potentially get rid of unneeded herods/magicians.

Thoughts? Questions? Suggestions?

With 6 counters, I'm pretty likely to get one in the first 8 cards, successfully slowing down my opponent. My offense serves as my primary speed, but for the most part, I just slow down my opponent. So yeah, I could get screwed and not get any of the 6, but that'd be like not drawing dominants for an entire game.

I forgot to mention why I include both Naz and Outpost, which most people think is counter-productive, but it recurs Goliath, and that's all it needs to do. Also, over half of the time I'll draw it before Naz, so I can hold on to Naz if I need to and instead use Outpost.

Decks like this are the evolution of turtles.

When I heard Westy was running an ABOMB deck I was curious to the build. Have you been playtesting any new cards in it?

Also maybe Bronze Laver?

I think he means stuff thats about to come out.

With 6 counters, I'm pretty likely to get one in the first 8 cards

My experience is that this will happen more often than you think.  I've had decks with twice that many ECs and more often than you would expect, I'll draw my first 8 cards and NOT have an EC.

A. How big was the deck?
B. How fast was the offense?
C. ECs versus counter cards are different. If I get either it's mission accomplished.
D. That hasn't been my experience
E. Shuffle better.
F. Play around it. If you don't have evil characters and you don't have counters, then use your offense.

A = 63 or 57 cards
B = Extremely slow
C = not really, if you don't get the counters, then you don't really slow your opponent down
D = I'm glad for you
E = I shuffle a lot
F = Again, I didn't really have much of an offense, but this deck doesn't have much of one either.

For the record, I generally beat Westy in speed v. speed games, but he beats me nine times out of ten when he's using this deck and I'm using the Deck. Even if it doesn't look perfect on paper, it does indeed get the job done, especially because the Deck isn't battle-winner heavy at all.

Question what would you do against a deck with Golgatha and Caeseria Phillipia together??? (something like that)

KingLeo

Any deck using that is going to be defense-heavy, which means it might come out to a stalemate. The advantage Westy has here is that all of his characters are big, so he can use Generous Widow to rid his opponent of enhancements, then block using characters, meaning he should effectively be able to lock his opponent out. A fast offense will help him get set up faster than most alternative defense-heavy decks, and if all else fails, a well-timed Abom should net him a win every time.

OK, I want to try test this deck out.  Let's meet Tue night and play online.  You use this deck and I'll use the deck that I've been using lately, and we'll see what happens

I'll do you one better. You load up this deck, and I'll play my other deck.

I actually wasn't planning on playing a turtle this time, since I agree that turtle-vs.-turtle isn't very fun.  But how about if we do it both ways.  I'll play my non-turtle against this, then I'll play this against your non-turtle, and we'll see what happens