HOLDER'S HEROES

Basic Principles: Rescue with a character that negates all special abilities on characters and Enhancements and get your numbers higher than the blocker to win the battle.

Fight By the Numbers is a common term used in the Redemption community. What does it mean, you may ask? Well, in Redemption there are a number of characters that have a special ability that goes something like this, “Negate all special abilities on character and Enhancement cards, battle is determined by the numbers.” The term comes from the last part of that sentence.

Follow up:

Fight by the Numbers (FBTN), is also known as Play by the Numbers and Battle by the Numbers. The main idea in a FBTN deck is to rescue with a character that negates all of your opponent’s character/Enhancement abilities, and then have higher numbers than they do. Since FBTN characters are spread out through different brigades, many people use multi-color Enhancements to boost their characters abilities (*/*). Most FBTN decks have 8 characters and 10 Enhancements for their offense.

The ten Enhancements usually consist of 7 multi-color Enhancements that have numbers of 3/4. Two of these Enhancements can be found in the E&F starter decks, while the rest are ultra-rares. The reason for 7 is so that in a 50 card deck, statistics say you will draw at least 1 on your first turn (technically, an 88.74% chance -Schaef). The other 3 Enhancements are ususally Brass Serpent, Authority of Christ (promo), and Provisions. Authority of Christ is used to wipe the board clean if your opponent gets a good anti-fbtn defense going. Provisions is used so that Moses, Hosea, and Amos have a chance at winning a non-fbtn battle. More about this later.

Brass Serpent is a vital card in a FBTN deck. This is because if you only have one green character and your opponent is playing green Sites, then you won’t have access if he gets discarded via Christian Martyr. Another reason is because there are a few “Can’t Be Negated” Evil Characters in the black brigade. This means that Wrath of Satan could wipe out your entire offense. However, if you’re prepared, you’ll love the look on your opponent's face when you drop Brass Serpent after they play Christian Martyr. Another popular healing card is “I Am Healing” Covenant from the Angel Wars set.

There is one big weakness to FBTN decks, and that’s Artifacts. If a FBTN deck isn’t prepared to discard two or more Artifacts, then you could possibly lose the game. If you don’t have enough Artifacts to stop little tricks your opponent might play on you, then you’ll probably lose. A FBTN deck’s worst enemy is Holy of Holies. Since it was printed in a starter deck, there are a bunch of copies in circulation. The most convenient way to take down HoH is to discard it with Destruction of Nehushtan.

Another way to discard it is with one of the many “Artifact discarders” on the defensive side of the game. Asherah Pole is also a threat to FBTN decks, but is discarded easier. There are 4 characters that can be splashed into a deck like this in order to discard it. The third harmful Artifact is Golden Calf. In the FBTN decks today, most include at least one of these combos:

• Hosea + Reach of Desperation + Authority of Christ promo
• Lydia + Blessings + Transfiguration + Moses
• Claudia + Abe’s Servant + Courage + Moses
• Amos + Provisions.

All of these combos allow you to win a battle with one of the characters needed to discard Golden Calf. Amos and Provisions fit particularly well because it's such a small combo, and because Provisions allows you to choose the Evil Character that blocks Amos.

Artifacts in this kind of deck should be used to hinder your opponent. One of the crucial Artifacts in a FBTN deck is Blue Tassels. Blue Tassels not only stops Unholy Writ, but it stops Esau, the Hunter/King Zedekiah/King Rezin and any capture cards that your opponent may have up his sleeve. Wool Fleece is another card that can come in handy for FBTN decks. There are some more “can’t be negated” evil banding cards. These can be used to directly combat FBTN, because the evil banding brings up numbers fast.

If you don’t happen to have Blue Tassels in play yet, then a good substitute is Covenant with Moses. Not only can it stop 4 Artifacts, it doubles as a great name-on-name bonus for Moses. Simply playing Covenant with Moses on Moses brings his numbers up to 22/14*.

Choosing a defense for any Redemption deck requires a lot of thinking, not only because defenses are hard to build, but because you have no idea what kind of decks you’ll be playing against in the future. Building a defense for a FBTN deck is just as hard. First, you should probably have an Artifact discarder to go along with Destruction of Nehushtan, like Lying Unto God. I like this one because it can go in any defense. Second, your defense needs to be small so that your deck can be small.

A large FBTN deck wouldn’t work very well because you wouldn’t draw your characters fast enough. If you don’t have your characters, then your opponent gets time to build his defense. That’s not good for a deck like this, because a FBTN deck is mainly about getting easy Lost Souls. Most FBTN decks are 50, 56, or 63 cards. The only reason that you would need 63 is if you have an extremely large defense, or use other cards in your offense besides the basic FBTN cards.

FBTN has been a dominant strategy throughout Redemption History. After the Warriors expansion came out, FBTN became a very popular strategy because there weren’t many decks that could combat it. Ever since, Cactus has been making counters to FBTN. FBTN is much harder to play now than it used to be, but it’s still not a difficult strategy. Many people don’t prepare to play a deck like this, even though they have done very well in the past tournament years.

*Note: Having big numbers on Moses will, in most cases, NOT help you win a non-fbtn battle.