HOLDER'S HEROES

So you realized that BTN (Battle by The Numbers) strategies are fairly common nowadays, and you've decided to put Asherah Pole in your deck to deal with it. That should stop the problem right? Most BTN heroes are Old Testament, and so are the characters that band to them. But then they make a rescue attempt with King Josiah to pull out Solomon's Temple and your A-pole goes up in smoke. YOU decide to take out Asherah Pole for Golden Calf; the Heroes to take it out are much less common. But what happens when your opponent RA's with his Strong Angel banded (via Gathering of Angels) to Michael, and you have to block? TSA is New Testament and his Special Ability isn't prvented by Golden Calf! You decide to switch to Holy of Holies for the next tournament. The tournament comes, and they don't use BTN Heroes, they use BTN Enhancements! Your Holy of Holies does no good! What you needed was a contingency plan.

Follow up:

A contingency plan is a plan to take care of an emergency or contingency, hence the name. In the above example, the deckbuilder should have used two of the three Artifacts, namely Holy of Holies, and Asherah Pole; that way they would have another in case one doesn't work. This is because Holy of Holies stops BTN on all character cards, and Asherah Pole keeps your Enhancements form being negated. This is a good combination, because even if they get rid of or around one, the other should be able to do some good. Another solution is to put "Can't-be-IPN'ed (Interrupt/Prevent/Negate)" Enhancements in there, which Asherah Pole does.

When trying to come up with a contingency plan, it is a good idea to put together all of your options and find a combination that is the most likely to hurt/stop whatever is hurting/stopping you. Easy options for hurting BTN are Holy of Holies with or without Solomon's Temple/Glory of the Lord, Golden Calf, Asherah Pole, Giants Banding, Leviathan, and Can't-be-IPN'ed enhancements.

Asherah Pole and Can't-be-IPN'ed enhancements overlap, and Asherah Pole seems to be the best option because it stops all your Enhancements from being IPN'ed when fighting O.T. Heroes, which take up the majority of the BTN field. Holy of Holies and Golden Calf overlap, and I chose Holy of Holies because we don't need much help stopping O.T. Heroes in general, but BTN Hereos, which also includes three from the N.T. that Golden Calf wouldn't stop. I didn't choose Leviathan or Giants banding because the Giants take up four card slots, and wouldn't help against most Warriors BTN cards, and Leviathan wouldn't help against Kings BTN; though using them both could prove very effective.

When developing a contingency plan, it is important to know when your plan is redundant or covering another base. While Holy of Holies and Asherah Pole are covering two different bases, whereas using a slew of Can't-be-IPN'ed Enhancements and Asherah Pole is redundant, they both cover the same cards. While redundancy may often be good, ex. Emperor Nero and Prince of this World, it should only be used when one of your options is probably going to fail.

While this is only one example of using a contingency, or backup, plan, you can use the principles discussed here to help any problems:

• 1. Identify the problem.
• 2. Find possible solutions to the problem.
• 3. Identify which solutions would take up to much space.
• 4. Group solutions that are redundant so you can
  a. Use multiple solutions form a group in case one fails, or
  
  b. Use one solution from one or more groups to cover your bases.
  
  c. Use a combination of 'a' and 'b'.
• 5. Pick out your solution(s) and play away.

6. If your pick doesn't work, try something else. Nobody got it all right their first try. (except Justin...)