HOLDER'S HEROES

In the last few years, decks have been moving away from "rogue", that is, one color for each defense and offense. They've been using three, four, sometimes even five colors. My deck has nine (Multi and Teal) on offense, and seven on defense. My other deck has only six on offense and five on defense. They've lost ten games ever, put together. If you try to get by nowadays with one color, other than red or gold, brother, you're toast like your mother.

You've tried all the colors
that you've seen
in between
(and some you haven't)
man
uh-huh

~The Roc

It's time to splash.--AND YES, YOU MAY BOB YOUR HEAD--

Follow up:

A complete splash deck is not based on brigade. Rather, it's based on a specific strategy or combo. For example, my deck uses cartain cards to make them run out of Enhancements and high-numbered characters so they can't defeat my Heroes. This isn't the only strategy you can use, though. The main strategy in splash decks is contingency planning. If they stop one thing, you have a thing to stop that. If they have another thing to stop your second thing, you have a third thing to stop their second thing. Like point-counterpoint (or for you older players out there, Spy vs. Spy). My example is this:

• You have Moses.
• They have Ashera Pole.
• You have King Josiah.
• They have Golden Calf.
• You have The Strong Angel.
• They have Simon the Magician.
• You have Peter.
• They have Esau, the Hunter.
• You have Blue Tassles.
• They have Destruction of Nehushtan.
• You have Holy Grail.
• They have King Zedekiah.
• You have Jepthah.
• They have nothing.
• You have five Lost Souls.

As you can see, it's fairly easy to understand how it works. But building a deck that can do this is actually incredibly hard. You see, If i hadn't gotten King Josiah when I had, I would have lost. A lot of people turn to speed decks at this point, but don't do it. Instead of only using King Josiah, I also use King Asa. That way I have two cards that can serve the same purpose; but King Josiah can take out my Solomon's Temple, and King Asa can get Site access. I took care of three problems with two cards. Instead of Jepthah and Holy Grail, you could also use Israelite Archer, I Am Patiance, or Elon. That way, you would be able to get rid of characters in territory in a variety of ways. I chose Jephthah and Holy Grail to use in this example because they are so common. But a deck using banding would use Israelite Archer, or a deck with retreat or self-capture characters - like Servant Girl or Ahimaaz - might want to use I Am Patiance instead. It all depends on what your base is; and we're going to talk about your base now.

Your base is the most important part of your deck. It's the body of your actual strategy, and your primary way to win Lost Souls. The easiest base to use is Fight By The Numbers, Banding, or a combination of the two. The most common is a banding base with some FBTN Banding, FBTN Characters, and some numbers to help them out. These bases work well because your opponent needs high numbers and cannot-be-negated Enhancements, which are hard to get together. Thus, bases like this work exceptionally well, except when your opponent is ready for it with Holy of Holies, Golden Calf, Household Idols, and/or Asherah Pole. Sometimes you'll encounter a recursion base using cards like Transfiguration and Authority of Christ (Promo), and those work well too. I'll even give some examples in the next section.

The next part of your deck is your contingency plan. The FBTN/Banding base works fine, except when they activate Holy of Holies, Golden Calf, Household Idols, or Asherah Pole. Then nothing you have works. That's why you have the backup plan. You can get rid of Golden Calf and Ashera Pole easily with just characters. King Josiah, Gideon, King Asa, and King Hezekiah can take out Asherah Pole, and Moses, Amos, and Habbakuk can take out Golden Calf. For Household Idols, you'd need Acts of Uzziah, Covenant with David, of Covenant of Moses. That leaves Destruction of Nehushtan to take out Holy of Holies. Whatever your strategy is, it's good to find out what cards hurt it badly --like these Artifacts did to FBTN/Banding-- and implement solutions against them. A good strategy will only have three or four cards that can really do it damage, and will have ways to take out those cards. The recursion offense doesn't have many problems. First, that is because you have many options on which Enhancement to take back (they can't block against Transfiguration and Authority of Christ Promo) and since the base is so small, you can have lots of backup. It's also good to use Artifacts (and Sites and Fortresses) that support your base as well as your other support cards.

I should have covered everything in that article, but I you find anything missing, don't hesitate to tell me. And here's the summary:

• 1. Select a combo to use as your base
• 2. Add cards to support that combo
• 3. Determine weakness(es) of combo and add cards to supplement them
• 4. Add cards to support those cards
• 5. Determine any overall weaknesses and patch
• 6. Try and find cards that work for two or more of the above uses.