Cactus Game Design Message Boards

I like starting these posts a month or so before nationals after the majority of tournaments have been played. Last year it was all silver/judges, some Isaiah mixes, and some Foreign Sword. My experience this year tells me stop speed, search, and banding. Now you have to make a defense to stop those three things while your offense still works. Majority of offenses have negates, interrupts, and battle winners that are interrupts or negates. Seems like some sort of silver mix is top deck, mostly with Isaiah and second place being judges and silver. Silver prophets are bigger CBN bands, CBN battler winners, and quick to set up, and hard to get rid of. Judges are more initiative oriented with CBN battle winners and a lot of CBN protection. Defenses can not seem to set up fast enough to counter these offenses. With that being said, is there anything that you think are top tier that I missed? How to you counter these offenses? What do you think will win this year, and why?

I haven't seen a lot of vanilla judges just silver/gold/red. Isaiah is pretty risky now with Golden Cheribim if you don't draw your naz.  Judges gets slapped around by a lot of defenses so I am not to worried about them.

Look out for mono teal or Teal Purple with Kidron Valley and Solomon's Temple. Temple Priests rocks assyrians, creeper, and canaanites.

Temple Priest's ability shuts down creeping deciever,dou, magic charms, and unholy writ. So bye bye assyrians and creepers. Solomon's temple allows you to instead a cbn Stone of Thebez so you can wear down Canes pretty easily.

Your offense was more hand control and CTB then anything, its wasn't really stereotypical judges. I was referring to a more ground pound style of Judges like Sinclair was running.

Ruth + Solomon's Temple + Book of the Covenant + I am Love + I am Truth + Devotion of Ruth (Pa) is going to kill every defense. Because every defense is gray.

Sadly, I am Love and I am Truth don't work with each other. One says "ignores" the other says "ignore." Also, Devotion of Ruth is not found in Patriarchs, only in the Original set (A/B/L/UL) and C/D.

But otherwise I kind of agree with you. Every T1 defense is (or at least probably should be, in part) gray.