HOLDER'S HEROES

Redemption© Type 2 play is a world of infinite possibilities and micro-strategy! Where else can you take that perfect combo and use it at least 5 times? Take the combo below. Just put 5 King Zedekiah cards and 5 Dungeon of Malchiah cards in your deck. Then, add King Jeroboam I (thrown in the Discard Pile) and King Nadab to go get Dungeon over and over again! All of that without having more than 4 different cards in your deck! There are, of course, some counters to this idea, but with a good knowledge of the game, this can be mastered by even the newest Type 2 player!

Follow up:

Let’s look at what Type 2 is all about. The most obvious thing to remember in Type 2 is the two Advanced Rules used: Rescuer’s Choice and Experience Credit. Both are extremely fun to use and add a world of strategy to an already-incredible CCG. Rescuer’s Choice makes Burial that much better, because once a Lost Soul is chosen by the rescuing player, that choice can not change for that battle. If the defending player buries that Lost Soul, then the Rescue Attempt just became a Battle Challenge, regardless of access to other Lost Soul cards! Experience Credit builds characters that have successfully made or blocked a Rescue Attempt. Imagine your favorite, unbeatable banding chain winning one Rescue Attempt. If that chain included 6 characters, every one of your characters just increased 1/1, and the chain increased a total of 6/6. Believe me, those numbers add up very quickly.

The next thing that is unique to Type 2 is the deck building. Every Redemption© card can be classified as Neutral, Offensive or Defensive. In Type 2 decks, the number of Offensive cards has to equal the number of Defensive cards. This makes for great gameplay, because both players are guaranteed to have a strong offense and defense. Most “Attack” decks of Type 1 would be illegal in Type 2 even if they were 100-card decks due to the lack of Defensive cards.

The final thing to remember in Type 2 is that the game goes to 7 Lost Souls, not 5 as in Type 1. The race in Type 1 is really to 3 due to the speed of getting to Son of God and New Jerusalem. However, the race in Type 2 is to 5, and I’ve played many games in which I won all 7 with regular Rescue Attempts, because I never drew both Son of God and New Jerusalem. This basically allows you to set up your strategy. It is rare that a player does not have time to give up one or two Lost Souls before his Defense is ready to take on the other player. This makes it much easier to relax and play your game, not respond to your opponent’s game.

All in all, I think Type 2 is much more exciting than Type 1, and I am completely BIASED! I admit that Type 1 is much faster, but Type 2 can get extremely intense once both players reach 5 Redeemed Souls, and each player hopes to see Son of God and New Jerusalem very soon. For many of you reading this article, you have played Type 2 for some time now, and this has been a very basic article. Trust me, they will get much more interesting, but I wanted to start off this newsletter with a basic understanding of Type 2 before I dive in to the real strategies of playing Type 2. If you are interested in beginning Type 2 play, here are two suggestions on getting started:

1. Turn your Type 1 deck into a Type 2 deck. The way to do this is to start with your best combos and max them out in your deck and make sure your Offensive and Defensive card counts are equal.
2. Find your favorite Offensive and Defensive combos and build a Type 2 deck around those strategies. Sometimes you’ll stumble over a great strategy that no one is using, and you’ll take other players by surprise.

If you are interested in beginning Type 2, but you are still unsure how to make that happen, I’m willing to help you. Email me a list of your cards (by brigade) and let me know if there are any particular strategies you want to try. We’ll look at your cards via email and see what we can come up with.