HOLDER'S HEROES

Fight by the Numbers... the very deck name brings chills down many players' spines. A deck that is almost as old as Redemption itself, and yet will not go away. Most new players build their decks and are never aware of what exactly FBTN is and what it can do. Well, for all of you out there that want to know, here is the lowdown.

Follow up:

If you get a chance, read the article that TheClock wrote on how to use a FBTN deck. Once you learn how to play a deck type, or understand how it works, you will know what you need to do to counteract it. In the case of FBTN, you are trying to stop Heroes that are negating your special abilities. While Artifacts are a key, there are a couple of other ways that you can directly attack this style of offense.

First of all, we must establish one thing, these types of offenses are all about numbers. Any ability, character, or Enhancement that gives you an edge in that area makes your game that much better. If we were to take 2005 National Champion Justin Sangillo's deck, you can see that there are a few select ways that this deck wins. The problems that this deck has are when you can either overwhelm their characters, or you can make your opponent use up his winning cards without making sucessful rescues.

Our first method is to hold off their Heroes by playing the right Evil Characters. There are three main types of Evil Characters that can help you out in this match: large "fat" EC's, first-strike EC's, and cannot-be-negated EC's. Every color has at least two Evil Characters that are 10/10 or larger. This is a very simple addition as the cards normally are not hard to come by, and work very well. Any character that your opponent rescues with aside from The Strong Angel and Captain of the Host must use one Enhancement just to be winning.

For example: If Moses (8/8) makes a rescue and you block with Goliath (10/10), your opponent must play one of his 3/4 Enhamcements just to be winning at (11/12). Adding just one Enhancement such as Foolish Advice or a Goliath's Spear makes rescuing a massive headache.

Secondly, we have four characters that fall into our first-strike EC category. King So, King Sennacherib, Abner and King Jehoash are quite amazing in holding off numbers Heroes. These characters can almost be better than the big guys as the Heroes' abilities are hampered even more. The basic understanding of first strike is this: If you are in a situation where the battle is mutual destruction by numbers and the Evil Character with first strike has power enough to defeat all the heroes in battle, then your Evil Character is successfully blocking the rescue and will not be discarded at the end of the fight. What makes these ECs better is that their abilities cannot be negated when certain conditions are met. King So and Jehoash need to have certain sites in play, where Abner and Sennacherib cannot be negated unless a certain character is in battle.

Thirdly, we have the CBN cards. There are a great many of these: Korah, Esau the Hunter, Simon the Magician, and King Rezin are characters, and Balaam's Disobedience, Intent to Kill, Ferocious Attack are Enhancements, that either cannot be negated or prevented. Remember, FBTN heroes have an ongoing prevent that they try to use to stop your abilities, so a card that cannot be prevented works just as well.

Something else to consider is your Artifact pile. There are three major Artifacts that can hamper your opponent's ability to use FBTN characters effectively. First you have the old standby, Holy of Holies. This card's one role in life is to shut sown any negate, prevent or interrupt abilities on characters. This allows you to play normally and opens up your defense to do what it needs to do. The second card is what I would call Holy of Holies #2, Golden Calf. Golden Calf is a very useful card against FBTN as all but one FBTN Hero (oddly enough, Strong Angel) is an Old Testament character. Keep in mind the fact that all of your Old Testament Heroes are prevented by Calf, so make sure you don't activate it when you need an important character's ability. The third is almost worse than both of these put together. Asherah Pole is just brutal against FBTN. This card essentially makes your opponent fight by numbers, while you gain the use of all your Enhancements. This Artifact also has the Old Testament Hero filter on it, so you must keep in mind that the last two will not work on The Strong Angel. One of the reasons that black is popular as a brigade is that Simon the Magician combined with Asherah Pole, makes all evil Enhancements non-negateable.

In the game of Redemption, keep in mind that you are trying to outplay your opponent, not rack up a differental. If you play every game to win 6-0, 6-1 or something like that, you are missing the point. A player that wins 10 rounds in a tournament will always be ranked higher that the player that went 9-1 and had a +35 LS differential. That being said, if you have to sacrifice one sucessful block, but your opponent plays out 3 of his 5 multicolored good Enhancements, you have a huge advantage over the next few turns. Your First Strike characters will become more powerfull, you will be able to keep your opponent out easier and have a better chance to win the game.