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Saturday, June 29, 2013

Spread vs. Theme

Many of the best decks today are mix and match offenses and defenses with no clear thematic direction other than playing good cards. But why is this? For years, Redemption has been clearly strengthening thematic play. One could easily argue that the intention by the makers of the game is that each player plays one theme on defense and one on offense may the best theme win. So why haven’t players succumbed to this strategy?

As usual, economics can answer the question for us. Today, we are going to examine the concept of diminishing returns. Diminishing returns is the idea that as you buy more of one item or do more of one action, you receive less and less satisfaction from it. Think about eating a Pizza. Do you enjoy the first slice or the fifth slice more? As you eat more of the pizza, you lose the ability to enjoy it quite as much as you used to (because you aren't as hungry anymore). That’s diminishing returns.

But how does this apply to Redemption? Let’s look at two different deck lists. If you open a new tab and check out the deck section of this website, currently I have two decks posted. One is a spread offense similar to “The Deck” that was great last format, and one is a basic Disciples offense, focused on thematic elements of the Disciple offense.

Both have some really powerful cards. In fact, if you list the top 5-7 offensive cards of each deck, they are probably pretty similar in power level. But then, around cards 8-10, something happens. Suddenly, the spread offense is still playing relatively powerful cards, but the Disciples deck is forced to play relatively less powerful cards in order to stick with the heavy Disciple theme. The Disciples offense is now experiencing harsher diminishing returns on each additional card of offense it chooses to add.

The reason for this is simple. As Redemption has developed, care has been taken to attempt to give each brigade somewhat of a balance of power – while it is certainly not true that each brigade is equal, it is true that each brigade has some very powerful cards to use. When you play thematically, you are making the decision to only use one of these brigades. For a while, this is a really good decision, as you have presumably picked one of the stronger brigades, like purple. But at some point, there aren't enough powerful cards in purple anymore, and because you have chosen to structure your deck to take advantage of that theme and brigade, you don’t really have a ton of options to branch out from that theme. Because of this, many disciples offenses play bad cards in the overall scheme of the game, such as Fall like Lightning or Sons of Thunder, or play cards such as Simon the Zealot who, ideally, is never going to do anything but sit in a territory and be a disciple.

Meanwhile, an offense with no specific theme designed to blend several brigades together gets to the end of the best cards in a brigade, and then simply moves to a different brigade to capitalize on the good cards in that brigade. While some diminishing returns exist within a spread offense, they are not as drastic, and rather than having to do with the power level of the cards, the diminishing returns in a spread offense are typically due to the structure of the deck – because not every hero can play every enhancement, your deck is somewhat less efficient, but because each enhancement and hero is somewhat more powerful, you tend to gain in the long run of the game by playing a spread offense.

When you are building your decks, how do you combat the diminishing returns of continuing to use the same brigade? Even small splashes into decks can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of the deck. When combined with my prior discussion on synergy, you should be able to find many different combinations that work. Make sure to venture outside the norm - you never know what is good if you don't try it out!

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Complimentary Deck Building: Speed, Aggro, Turtle, and Standard.


Redemption is unique among popular TCGs because it’s a two-sided game.  There is good, and there is evil.  This has been a big issue with rating decks, as two decks may have the same good, but the evil makes them vastly different.  For example, the 2012 Redemption National Tournament winning deck utilized FBTNB good alignment with a Pharisee evil alignment.  I often simply say an FBTNB deck won nationals, but in actuality it was FBTNB/Pharisees deck, which is a significant difference from, say, an FBTNB/Babylonian deck.  You’ll notice I’ve avoided the use of terms like “offense” or “defense”, because those terms generally bring a sense of “rescuing” and “blocking”, respectively, simply because that is their forced role.  However, that’s not actually the case.  It’s here that the terms “speed”, “aggro”, “turtle”, and “standard” come into the picture and help us more clearly define the good and evil counterparts.

Speed is by far the most common term Redemption players tend to use, and it’s for good reason.  Justin Alstad quickly discovered that a deck that is extremely fast is the most consistent deck.  This is done through both searching and drawing, and can be done on both offense and defense.  Going back to the original FBTNB/Pharisees example, Pharisees are a speed defense: it uses Proud Pharisee, Pretension, Sabbath Breaker, and Emperor Vitellius, to draw lots of cards.

This next term is a bit more complicated than speed.  Simply defined, an aggro style is an offensive, or aggressive, orientated style.  This has often been referred to as “speed”, but that’s not necessarily the case, as you can have a powerhouse offense that doesn’t draw a lot of cards.  Going back to my original example once again, FBTNB is not really a speed offense.  They have a total of two draw cards and one search: Ishmaiah the Gibeonite, A Soldier’s Prayer, and Mustering for War.  It is a mix-and-match (no, this is not an official term) offense though, so it is often seen as one since it gets going quickly, but it certainly doesn’t help you get to your Son of God and New Jerusalem, so I wouldn’t define it as speed. However, it is definitely aggro, as it hits hard and fast.  Speed also has a notion of good-heavy, whereas aggro can also be a balanced deck, as it is in the case of Martin’s aforementioned deck.  However, these two terms do go side-by-side in Redemption, so it’s not wrong to mix up the terms, but don’t be surprised when aggro pops up in conversation.

Next on the list is turtle, a term which is often used to describe defensive-heavy.  This is actually pretty accurate, but again doesn’t fully express a deck.  A turtle is slow, just as it sounds, but even more prominent in the term is that it relies on an endgame strategy.  This isn’t necessarily defensive heavy, as you can have a balanced (as far as alignment goes) Abomination of Desolation deck that relies on your offense to trigger A-Bomb, but the strategy of it is to wait out your opponent until you’ve discarded all of their characters.  A turtle style more of a deck style than an individual alignment, as you can’t have a aggro offense and a turtle defense—the defense will never set up before the game is over!  A speed defense and turtle offense wouldn’t work either, as you would quickly lose before you can get your offense set up.  Now, every deck needs a little bit of speed, but these terms describe the main focus of the deck, not all of their individual elements.

Standard is for the players who want their decks to follow Rob’s divine purpose for it—good is used to rescue souls and evil is used to defend souls.  I use the term standard, but the fact of the matter is there’s no technical term that defines this style, but it is pretty clearly a style, so I included it in the list.  Babylonians are a pretty good example of this.  Iron Pan may aid the offense, but the best help they offer is time by blocking the opponent.  Standard is very good if your offense can support itself.

At this point, you’re probably just saying “too long; didn’t read; doesn’t apply”, but the fact of the matter is knowing these styles inside and out is crucial to deck building.  Because Redemption is a two-sided game, selecting an offense and defense that goes together is crucial.  One of the reasons I love Canaanites is because of how aggro it is: it uses Gibeonite Delegates to generate lost souls and Fortify Site to get rid of any pesky artifacts, such as Darius’ Decree.  However, in some of my decks I need a faster defense, so I use gray or pale green.  Examine the good or evil you want to use, identify it's weak points, and for the counterpart choose a style that compliments it.  This is why Martin’s 2012 Nationals Winning deck was so perfect.  He used the full deck for one purpose: to redeem lost souls.  Follow his example by streamlining your deck, and I can almost guarantee your success.

-Westy

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Seven: A treatise on dominant selection

In Redemption, even if two players play the same offensive and defensive themes and/or concepts, there's few areas of card selection that can create vast differences in deck performance. One of the most crucial areas this occurs in dominant selection. There are 15 playable dominants in Redemption. You may play as many of them in your deck as you'd like, but you can't play more dominants than lost souls in your deck. For most decks, that means you get to play 7 dominants.

The question then hearkens back to the last article I wrote - what costs and benefits does each dominant bring? That's what this article is here to discuss! I'm going to assume you are playing a 50-56 card (which most people will. I will discuss each dominant starting with the weakest (spoiler alert: It's Doubt). The rating number is somewhat subjective, except that 10 is good and means you should play it in every deck.

Doubt
Doubt is pretty terrible. It's designed to be able to give you an EC to block with that has big numbers (0/12) aka good against fight by the numbers, and that's hard to target (it doesn't have any identifiers). Unfortunately, the card is too balanced, and it got printed to have a terrible brigade (orange) to play enhancements with. Additionally, it's never even going to get initiative. It's pretty terrible and should never be played.
Rating: 1/10

Glory of the Lord
Glory of the Lord is probably the most situational dominant. It only works at protecting one card (Solomon's Temple) that's only recently become playable (with a reprint), but is still probably outclassed by other variants (specifically Herod's Temple). Probably the best thing it can do is protect your Lampstand of the Sanctuary from Fortify Site. Essentially, it's a terrible Guardian of Your Souls (spoiler: that's a dominant).
Rating: 1/10

Strife
One of the two new dominants got the short end of the stick as far as power creep goes. It can withdraw all but one hero from battle, so it's pretty good against banding decks (which is pretty much every deck these days), but if you have that much of an issue with multiple heroes, it seems like Household Idols would be a better counter. Strife can occasionally capture some stuff when comboed with Herod Agrippa II, but that's really reaching for playability.
Rating: 2/10

Guardian of Your Souls
Finally we are getting into dominants that get played! Unfortunately, Guardian probably shouldn't get played - contrary to populat belief, it's actually pretty bad. It counters exactly one card: Falling Away. It's entirely predicated are being drawn first. Overall, that's a recipe for bad things. Additionally, it's use is entirely replicated (but done better) by Lampstand of the Sanctuary. It's really lost its luster with time.
Rating: 3/10

Falling Away
Guardian's partner is in the same boat. It can do one thing, and it can't do that if your opponent has drawn the two commonly played counters. You can't afford that kind of inefficiency at your dominant slots. It's slightly better than Guardian of Your Souls simply because it actually helps you win - Guardian just theoretically helps you win. If you guarantee yourself to draw one of the two in the first hand, I'd want Falling Away every time.
Rating: 3/10

Harvest Time
This is going to be a little bit controversial of a choice. Harvest Time just got replicated by two huge enhancements, Fishers of Men and Gideon's Call, and it was already a cusp dominant. However, it can do something those two can't - counter a Death of Unrighteous. That alone gives it average playability. Harvest Time is basically an insurance policy. You don't need it, but when things go wrong, it can save you a lot of time getting back what you lost immediately.
Rating:4/10

Mayhem
Another controversial rating incoming: Mayhem just isn't actually that good. Without the ability to "first turn Mayhem", it turns out hand refresh is actually really lackluster in general in Redemption. Ironically enough, one of the things that should make it really good in Redemption (1 ofs for every card) actually makes it really bad - it's incredibly inconsistent at giving you what you want. Also, it's completely shut down offensively by Nazareth. It's going to get played a lot, but I'm not totally sure why.
Rating: 5/10

Burial
I actually like Burial a lot. I won't pretend it's super powerful - but it enables some really interesting lock out scenarios. It takes the 2/3-liner from average to great. But, not matter how many cool tricks you do, it's still just not overly powerful, and there's quite a few dominants still to go that are. Burial is basically the definition of a 50-50 playstyle/deckstyle choice (even though I gave it a 6 technically).
Rating: 6/10

Destruction of Nehushtan'
Artifacts are arguably the best card type in the game in terms of power, and Destruction of Nehushtan directly counters (and negates) them. In a meta filled with Magic Charms, Darius' Decree, Holy Grail, or even just a pesky Gifts of the Magi, that can be priceless. There's a few other effective artifact counters, but none of them are as effective as Destruction of Nehushtan.
Rating:7/10

Christian Martyr
While last meta, the super banding in the world made this card dead more often than not, the new set has brought this former staple back to prominence. It really helps a lot of defenses function by being that extra battle winner that isn't conditional and can't be negated. I'd probably play it in every deck, even though power wise, it can't keep up with the next 5 dominants.
Rating: 8/10

Grapes of Wrath
Grapes of Wrath is a really cool toolbox dominant. It can discard evil characters. It can get you blocks. It can do both at once if you banded to an opponent's character. It can delay that huge banding chain. All around, it's super versatile, and that makes it a lot more functional and better than it actually should be.
Rating: 9/10

Angel of the Lord
Hate your opponent's evil character? Ok, its discarded. Angel of the Lord is simply as that. Since less evil characters usually means more redeemed souls for you, you should probably be playing it.
Rating: 9/10

Vain Philosophy
I was really wrong on this card. It's incredibly. It wins games. It has two main functions in my experience. IT can underdeck a Son of God or New Jerusalem to stop your opponent for a long time (super dirty with a Nazareth around) or it can underdeck a battle winning enhancement to get a block. Both directly help you win a game. Oh, and it also looks at your opponent's hand - the most broken ability in the game (in my opinion). I was so wrong.
Rating: 10/10

New Jerusalem
This dominant mainstay's power is simple: get closer to winning. While there are some decks in the world (even at 56 cards) that might not play it, you can't deny that power wise, it's the second best, purely because it can get your 20% closer to winning. That seems really broken.
Rating: 10/10

Son of God
Son of God can rescue any soul your opponent has in play (and now that it can negate it too, it really can!). I don't think that requires much explaining. It should be in your deck.
Rating: 10/10

To sum up, that means, in general, that I think the best 7 dominants in the game are:
Son of God
New Jerusalem
Vain Philosophy
Angel of the Lord
Grapes of Wrath
Christian Martyr
Destruction of Nehushtan

Realistically, almost any dominant is playable in a deck style suited for it - except Doubt. Don't be that guy playing Doubt.

-Alex

Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Economics of deck building

When you sit down to build a deck, what do you think about? Do you think about that cool combo you just found out about? Or that power banding chain that beats blockers into submission? Or maybe you think about how to use that lesser used card to its maximum potential? All of these thoughts are valid deck building options! That's the great thing about deck building - there's no "right" way to do it! (But there are "better" ways)

Today, I'm going to explore something that is not always explicitly though of when building a deck, but is often considered: the economics of deck building. To explain what I mean, I will first note where the name I chose for this concept came from.

Economics is the study of human behavior in the marketplace. It has two central assumptions that power its analysis; the idea that humans are rational and self-interested (which means they don't hurt themselves intentionally, and they tend to be most kind to those nearest to them). Moving from this baseline, Economists basically study the system of costs and benefits that people choose. Every choice you make has a cost (sometimes the "cost" is actually positive!) and a benefit (which is usually why you chose to do the action). Deck building is no different - there's lots of choice to make, and they all have costs and benefits. Here's some examples:

Covenant of Death can negate opponent's heroes at the cost of negating yours.
Iron Pan can do all kinds of stuff, but it forces you to use one (or more) Babylonian character.
The Garden Tomb can ignore many things, but only six characters can use it, so you have to use them (like I said, sometimes the "cost" is a benefit in some ways!).

Whenever you are building your deck, these sorts of cost-benefit relationships are things you should consider. They can form the basis for many different symbiotic relationships between your cards that will help enhance your deck. Using one of my examples above, when you put Covenant of Death into your deck, rather than simply paying the cost of negating your hero abilities most of the time when you activate it, what if you stuffed your deck full of heroes that can not be negated or don't have an ability at all? Suddenly only your opponent is paying the cost of Covenant of Death, making it work twice as well for you! This sort of relationship within a deck is commonly exploited and termed "synergy". For example, in general, its thought that a Judges offense has a lot of synergy with Covenant of Death because of its use of heroes like The Angel  under the Oak, Angel with a Secret Name, and Gideon. There's tons of different synergistic combinations out there when you look hard enough. Often times, synergy can help to pull average themes (like Assyrians) into competitive relevance (in Isaiah-Assyrians).

An even more basic cost (albeit a more abstract cost) of each card in your deck is the next best card you could have put in your deck. In Economics, this concept is known as opportunity cost - the idea that for each choice you make, you give up the next best option. In deck building terms, maybe that Covenant with Death cost you playing Darius' Decree. This more abstract costing builds the basis for why some cards and themes are simply unplayable in "competitive decks". There's many cards that, in a vacuum, have a really good ability. For example, Assyrian Siege Army has a great ability if you can activate it a lot - but to activate it a lot, you have to play Assyrians. When you play Assyrians, you give up the ability to play your next best option (perhaps its Canaanites). This might not sound too bad, but not all themes and cards are created equally, and some card and themes are simply better than other cards and themes. By choosing to use Assyrian Siege Army, you've made your deck inefficient because instead of Canaanites, the best option, you have to play Assyrians. Gross!

I hope this has got you thinking about what you give up to play the cards you play in your deck. I realize that you might not agree with some my thoughts about certain cards (like Assyrians), but the concepts remain. Choosing to play one theme or card costs you the ability to play other themes and cards - the question you must answer if the trade off you made is worth it!

-Alex

The Right Tech for your Deck

I was talking with Chris Ericson today, and he asked me what the four best tech cards in the game are.  The answer to such a broad question got me thinking about all of the different possibilities for techs and I thought it'd be a perfect subject for my first blog post.

To begin, I'd like to explain what I mean by a tech card.  Simply defined, techs are key cards that cripple certain strategies that are dominant in the metagame.  Having a problem with Fight By The Numbers (such as Moses)? Tech a Holy of Holies into your deck. It may not compliment the rest of your deck specifically, but it shuts down your opponent. Generally, the best tech cards hit a large portion of the metagame.  In this example, Holy of Holies is great against Fight By The Numbers decks, but is a completely useless card (or dead card) against a deck based around The Garden Tomb, which prefers pre-block ignore to negation.

So what sort of abilities are in a large portion of the metagame?  As you may know, speed decks tend to overrun other decks, and as such they are very popular at the top tables.  Speed comes in a two different forms: drawing and searching.  However, speed doesn't win games, and so there also has to be a main strategy for rescuing souls in every deck.  There are of course the basic four ways to get rid of evil characters: discard, capture, conversion, and removal from the game.  Of these four, we primarily see discard and conversion, with a touch of capture.  These are most powerful when your evil is taken out before you can even block, through cards such as Jephthah.  Perhaps even more prevalent than getting rid of evil characters is ignore and protection, which uses cards like The Garden Tomb or Birth Foretold and Samson.  It's hard to block a rescue attempt when you can't harm your opponent, and in the case of ignore you can't even put an evil character into battle!  There is of course the aforementioned Fight By The Numbers, which uses characters that negate all characters and enhancements so you can't use your abilities.  Finally, there's also banding, which overwhelms you with too many characters to defend against.  Okay, so the abilities we're primarily concerned with here are: draw, search, discard, convert, ignore, protect, negate, and band.  Quite the list, and it's hard to prepare against so many different abilities, but with the right techs you'll be able to prepare for what you need.

Nazareth is really growing in popularity lately, and it's no wonder why.  With the popularity of "The Deck" at last year's national tournament, it was clear that search was extremely powerful, and Nazareth is just the right card to shut search down.  In addition to that, it protects your hand from your opponent's Mayhem, which can be really key when you have Son of God in your hand and you're just waiting on New Jerusalem.  Finally, Nazareth is a site, and can not only be used to block a soul, but it's also really difficult to discard.  The only drawback is that it protects ALL decks from search, so you have to be careful about which deck you use it in.  If you use less than two search cards, I highly recommend using Nazareth.

Golden Cherubim isn't really what most people consider a tech card, but I certainly think it deserves to make this list.  The reason for that is it generally stops your opponent generally doesn't want to let you search for any card, and so they're not going to want to draw at all.  This not only slows your opponent down, but if they do decide to go ahead and draw, you benefit!  It's a win-win situation.  Unfortunately, this does use up an artifact slot, and it's good to run a temple beside it so you can use other artifacts as well.  Furthermore, it's rendered completely useless by the first card I mentioned, Nazareth.  Still, you can search it out with Temple Dedication for early game, and it can give you the boost you need in the first couple turns of the game.

Darius' Decree is a card that I first used at nationals last year, and this new set has made it really valuable.  It can slow your opponent down by not letting him play set aside or territory enhancements out of battle, but even better is the second ability.  I've been able to discard up to 8 heroes when my opponent thought he was safe playing Pentecost.  I think this card will see an increase in popularity, especially because it doesn't need to be always active like Golden Cherubim.  Flip it up once and you can nuke your opponent's entire offense.  If your opponent knows you use Darius' Decree, you can laugh as your opponent discards Pentecost from hand in fear of the Decree.

Covenant with Death is a card I considered a staple up until the release of this new set.  The number of things it counters is incredible.  Negating heroes is key to allowing your defense to work, whether stopping banding, negation, playing first, discard, Covenant with Death is sure to hurt your opponent. It also stops territory class and set aside enhancements outside of battle, which can really slow your opponent down.

Household Idols is a card I would equate with Nazareth in some ways--it would have been incredible last year, if only there was an offense that it didn't cripple that you could play it with.  It hits The Deck and Fight By The Numbers Banding really hard.  Unfortunately, this year they aren't as popular, and we're seeing things like Disciples and Judges become mainstream, and while they have banding cards, they aren't built around banding.  However, Household Idols did gain Foreign Wives in the new set, so you shouldn't have much fear of it being discarded anymore because you can get it right back!

Hezekiah's Signet Ring is a really underrated card. While it seems redundant to Nazareth, and even worse because it takes up an artifact slot and doesn't protect from Mayhem. However, Hezekiah's Signet Ring allows you to use whatever search cards you like, and also stops recursion from the discard pile.  This can be extremely important in a more balanced to defensive heavy deck, as it stops your opponent from recycling resources. It's not easy to find room for, but it is well worth it.

Seven Years of Famine is truly an incredible card. It can really slow your opponent down, get rid of his resources, and potentially completely shut down his offense, even hitting The Garden Tomb.  Unfortunately, it's often overlooked by it's brother, Seven Years of Plenty, but I prefer Seven Years of Famine because you don't have to keep a Genesis character in play - you just have to play it. Unfortunately, it does have a brigade and so you can't play it in any deck, but if you play just a couple Genesis characters, it's a very solid addition.

Iron Pan is somewhat like Seven Years of Famine in that it needs a specific deck to be used in.  Whenever you should build a deck, you should keep in mind what techs can be used in it, and Iron Pan is such a powerful tech that it might actually make the vastly overlooked Babylonians playable.  It is, however, difficult to find an offense that goes well with it, but only because it's such a powerful tech.  It shuts down all of the best ways to win battles other than fight by the numbers banding--which Babylonians shouldn't have too much of a problem with anyway, seeing as they can also pack a Leviathan.

Burial Shroud is often forgotten these days. Too many ways to get around it. However, with dominant cap we've seen a massive decline in using Destruction of Nehushtan, and nobody plays Covenant with Moses anymore.  Burial Shroud can buy you the time to get exactly what you need.  While some don't consider it a tech, it does stop your opponent from attacking, which can really hurt decks that rely on things like Angel Under the Oak drawing.

Rain Becomes Dust was a very popular card last year, as it hits drawing really hard, particularly in the case of First Fruits.  It started to see a decline in play due to the popularity of cards like Live Coal, but it is definitely still worth the add.

Now, all cards have counters, and even techs have counter-techs to cause problems.  While you should consider how difficult a tech is to discard, you shouldn't forgo using them just because you know many decks play counters.  Often times they come too late in the game and your tech has already done it's damage.

There is also teching for specific matchups, which is generally done through picking evil characters or enhancements.  I did this at 2011 nationals when I used Goliath's Armor due to so many Disciples decks running around.   Other tech enhancements are Image of Jealousy and Destructive Sin to stop The Garden Tomb.

I'm sure I haven't yet exhausted the list of tech cards, but if I missed any of your favorites, be sure to leave a comment and let everybody know!

-Westy

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Welcome

Welcome to the home of Redemption MetaGaming. Because of the increasing difficulty with creating video content, Westy and I have decided to create a blog in order to better facilitate producing content. With a blog, we can write in our spare time, rather than trying to schedule times we both have free to do videos. With myself starting an internship at the National Treasury tomorrow and taking six credits of coursework and Westy working nights, it will be tough for us to match schedules, but we don't want to stop producing quality Redemption discussion. This blog is the next stop in the evolution of Redemption MetaGaming. In addition to writing, this blog will hopefully begin to evolve in a central website to go in order to find all kinds of Redemption content as well as Redemption MetaGaming news. We will continue using the forum topic to announce streams and articles for now, but at some point, I'd hope for this blog to take over that function. As we continue to evolve and adapt to the needs of the community, feel free to email us with any suggestions at redemptionmetagaming@gmail.com.

Thanks for your support!

-Alex