HOLDER'S HEROES

Basic Principles: Discard as many cards from your opponent's hand as possible. The less they have to pick from, the more of an advantage you have.

Hand Control is a strategy used in many card games. Also known as Hand Disruption, this strategy is used to throw your opponent's game off. When it comes to Redemption, it is beneficial to have a small deck with almost no “fluff”. These sort of decks can get torn apart by a good hand control deck.

Follow up:

Some hand control is used in lots of different decks. I Am Holy is a great example of a versatile hand control card. I Am Holy is used in silver decks so that players can use/abuse the Chamber of Angels. The basic strategy behind this requires five cards; Chamber of Angels, three angels (not the card, 3 silver brigade Heroes that are angels), and I Am Holy. First, put Chamber of Angels in play. Second, activate I Am Holy. Use I Am Holy’s ability to “discard” one of your angels from your hand. Your opponent now has to discard an evil card from hand. Next turn, do this again. Now you have two angels in your Chamber of Angels. Next turn, the cycle really begins. Not only do you use I Am Holy again to discard another angel from you hand. You also get to put the first angel you “discarded” back on top of your deck via Chamber of Angels.

This can become an endless cycle of card discarding if your opponent doesn’t know how to stop it. Some other good hand control cards are Dove, Love at First Sight, Hur, Shoes of Peace, and Third Heaven. Love at First Sight and Hur aren’t your typical hand control cards. However, when you get into the meta-game your opponent's hand is the most powerful weapon he has. If you can shuffle back into his deck all the great combos he’s been saving, and make him start with a different hand of cards, you're ahead of the game. Why? Because your opponent normally doesn’t keep Heroes, Artifacts, Sites, or Fortresses in his hand. Now that he’s drawn eight new cards, he may have some of these “worthless” cards. They aren’t really worthless but won’t help him beat you in battle.

Hand control is a great strategy, however, it’s still very hard to use in Redemption because there haven’t really been “extraordinary” cards for this type of strategy yet. In other card games, the sacrificial strategy (like with Chamber of Angels and I Am Holy) is much more prevalent. If Redemption had more characters with special abilities like, “discard one card from your opponents hand for each demon you have in play” then hand-disruption would be much easier to use. However, as of now, most hand disruption cards have large numbers and only nail one card. Therefore, they are easily negated. In Angel Wars we saw some decent hand control cards come out for the defensive side of decks. Cards like Words of Discouragement, Demonic Mist, and Panic Demon (gray) come to mind. Right now, I wouldn’t personally recommend using this strategy if you plan on winning games because there are so many holes in it. However, in the future I could see this strategy evolving into something huge.

Maybe Priests will hold some good cards for hand control. I sure hope it does; Redemption needs some fresh strategies to see tournament play.

(Editorial note - There is a new demon in the works for Priests that I think will please anyone who favors this strategy. Stay tuned. -Schaef)