Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Where's Genesis and why isn't Judges up farther?

I beleive the most current tier list is at the top of the 12th page, however, I do not see Judges listed at all in it.   

I propose to eliminate Samuel from the tier list. There's just too much diversity there. It would also solve the problem of there being two S tiers, and would move Red/Purple up considerably.

I half agree with you. Rather than a blanket "Samuel" tier list, I propose we come up with the three (I believe there are only three) "main themes" that are backed by Samuel (i.e. Purple Royalty, Red Warrior Class, and Rainbow Sam). The themes have been drastically explored and fleshed out since I originally posted that tier list, so it definitely needs updated. Also, I don't believe that there's anything wrong with having more than one "S tier" theme, as long as we don't get carried away with it. There are people who will say Sam is stronger and people who will say Gen is stronger, placing one or the other on top, even in an unofficial tier list, seems unfair. Frankly, with the set being relatively balanced this year (bunch of different decks featuring Sam, Genesis; and Disciples is still quite strong), it might be better to do away with "S tier" entirely and just have five tiers: A, B, C, D, and E. I'll work on this idea, if people can give me ideas for the fundamental Sam decks out there (not "I just made up this offense last week"; stuff that is relatively commonly seen).

Yeah judges could take disciples place at the bottom of the A tier.

Judges should be added but they aren't stronger than Disciples, by a long shot.

*GASPSHOCK*
TGT isn't the very first?!?!

Cool, do what you can to spread that idea

My TGT deck is still boss. And it's pretty much just as fast as everything else. And I trust its rescues against your small 'D' more than I trust your's against mine. At least against you I actually get to put EC's into battle.

TGT is still very much good, alive and top tier. And it can be combined with Disciples, making it faster.

The meta has started to settle down, and I'd like to start this again. Here's what I've seen (TGT might drop, and the whole defensive tier list is iffy)

Offense
A Tier
Samuel (Red/Purple)
TGT
Samuel (Teal/Green/Gold)
Genesis
Gardenciples
Disciples

B Tier
Prophets (Silver/Green)
Mono Red
Judges

C Tier
Royalty
Silver

Defense
A Tier
Egyptian
Pharisee
Babylonian
Standalone

B Tier
Pale Green (Assyrian, primarily)
Israelite Kings
Canaanite
Philistine

C Tier
Heretics
Saducees
Other unique ideas (they're probably bad ones)

I agree. Dropped.

Are they sorted within their own brigades?

I haven't seen a teal/gold/green Samuel deck yet. Even so red/purple has to be better.

I haven't seen a teal/gold/green Samuel deck yet. Even so red/purple has to be better.

I personally believe that Teal/Green/Gold is the best deck. It's kinda like this, with less Silver and blue, but more teal and Moses. Silver is a very viable add instead of teal though. Still the same category, but I was unsure of how to put it. The searches make it much faster, and Isaiah pretty much counters everything meta. Samuel has better back up as well with the green. The Teal set asides help a lot too, and not much can stop Aaron/Moses

I don't follow all the different Sam decks because they're all the same to me, so I can't comment on the different forms, however, I think we can all agree that any well-constructed ones are A Tier. I've been using Gardensciples a lot lately, and frankly, I don't think anything else available (at least that falls into established deck archetypes) can beat Gardensciples, both on a strong draw and an average draw. They're almost inarguably faster (4DC, Pentecost, First Fruits [admittedly a Sam deck can use both of these], Reach of Desperation, Words of Encouragement, Fishing Boat, Susie, and Matthew), have strong battle winners (AoCp, MLaMG, He is Risen, Passover Hymn), have banding that is at the very least, almost as strong as any Sam band, natural protection from capture along with an indirect protection from discard via Fishing Boat, and that's not even to mention TGT itself, which in this meta is absolutely killer. I would argue that a well-constructed Gardensciples deck (throwing 10 Disciples in to abuse Thad is not "well-constructed"), is simply the best thing available right now.

Regarding Genesis, I'm not so sure that it can sit up there with Sam, Disciples, and Gardensciples. Genesis, to me, isn't fast enough to compete with this sorts of decks. Now, I would go so far as to say that, among those of us who play a lot online (including ROOT and just casual play on RTS), nobody has more experience playing Genesis than I do. I have perhaps 60-70 games playing my own Genesis deck, not to mention playing other peoples, and I just don't think it's fast enough, even if it does have the power. It has everything that should make it work: speed on defense, a lot of searching, Dan, but I want to deconstruct that a little bit. First off, the speed on defense is largely unreliable. Yes, Pharaoh's Baker is an almost guaranteed D3 as long as it's not in the first turn or two of the game.  However, The Dreaming Pharaoh is extremely unreliable for drawing, and generally won't manage more than two, unless you get lucky (or very unlucky) and you have the vast majority of your defense out at one time. Now some Genesis decks also use Swift Horses or Egyptian Horses, and these can add some speed, however, not enough to call the defense fast in my opinion, since a well-constructed Standalone will get roughly the same amount of speed (maybe a bit less) as a Genyptians deck of the same amount of cards, and Standalone will do it with more to hit with regarding actual defense (KoT, Gomer, and Haman's Plot [my Genesis deck has Uzzah, Gomer, A Slave, and Plot splashed into the Genyptians defense]).

The searching is pretty straight-forward, however, there are two cards, both of which work well in many decks if used properly, that absolutely shut down Genesis: Nazareth and Hezekiah's Signet Ring. The main thing that Genesis has going for it is the ability to get it's star hero, Joseph, out quickly. There are several cards that search for him, and in general, he can be tough to beat (the CBN addition is just crazy). That said though, if the searching gets shut down quickly enough, Genesis becomes a remarkably slow deck type, even with 7 Years of Plenty. While other decks' speed can be shut down by things like RBD, and arguably Genesis could use Captured Ark to shuffle a HSR, they still can't do anything about Nazareth if it gets out early, and other decks have better ways to deal with cards that combat their meta (Passover Hymn for Disciples and Gardensciples again RBD for instance). Thus, even though I would argue that when fully set up, Genesis is the strongest, they are too iffy, and not consistently fast enough, to justify being in the same tier as the other big deck types.

Finally, can someone please explain what the big deal about regular TGT (mostly white, with Peter and John splashed in) is? It's not that fast, they only have three viable battle winners (four when you recur He is Risen via Consider the Lilies), and I just don't see what puts it on the same level as Sam, Gardensciples, Disciples, or even Genesis. This could just be by own ignorance and I'm not getting something here, so please enlighten me.

Congrats on 4444, sauce.