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!