HOLDER'S HEROES

The Priests, Redemption’s new expansion for 2006, features a number of new wrinkles to spice up old gameplay, and this series of articles will highlight some of those wrinkles. Nowhere is this change more apparent than in the addition of two brand new brigades. The only other brigade introduced since the beginning of Redemption was the silver brigade in the 1999 Warriors expansion. And just as the silver brigade focused exclusively on angels, the new teal brigade is comprised entirely of priests and the new orange brigade is comprised entirely of demons. Though there have been both priests and demons in other brigades prior to this release, all priests from now on will be printed in teal, and all demons will be printed in orange. The focus for this article will be the demons in the orange brigade.

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Unlike the teal brigade (detailed in this article), the orange brigade is considerably small in its debut appearance, and requires much more work to use as a standalone defense. It works much better when mixed with a second brigade, particularly crimson or pale green. Having said that, orange has shown up to the party with 14 Evil Characters and 12 Enhancements. The characters are an even split of reprinted demons from other brigades, and all-new characters like Blinding Demon, Prince of the Air, and The Thief. The reprinted demons, like Evil Spawn, King of Tyrus and Prince of This World, have retained their stats and, in a roundabout way, their special abilities. Like the teal brigade, the orange demons have a broad range of offense (1-10) and defense (1-12), and most of them have numbers different from the other orange demons. The two obvious drawbacks to this brigade are that all the characters so far are male, and they are all demons, making them highly vulnerable to Three Nails and other cards that target demons. There are ways to combat these weaknesses, though, which will be covered in detail later. Another curiosity about the orange brigade is that there are no warrior- or weapon-class cards, but since the only warrior-class demons in the game at present are Morg/Morgan and Admiral, this is no great surprise.

While it's not impossible to build a single-color strategy around orange, it is much more difficult than with the teal Heroes because it is only about half the size. Great care must be taken to grab all of orange's best attributes, discussed below, and to try and cover up the holes in your defense the best you can. Orange is very strong, however, when combined with other brigades. Crimson has good supporting demons (Fallen Angel bands to a non-human, Cubus is one of two female demons in the game, and Red Dragon is a staple card), it has the only two "animal" characters in the game (Leviathan, The Serpent), Gomer can band to any male Evil Character, and Seven Sons of Sceva is specifically designed to enhance the orange brigade, making crimson an ideal choice for a second evil brigade. Pale Green also has strong supporting cards, especially when using Crippling Demon (see below) and some of its powerful Enhancements. Most of the other brigades are average in mixing with orange, but gray is a pretty weak second choice. Gray only has five demons (take out Panic Demon and Obsidian Minion and it's really only three), and their usage is so narrow that they don't blend well with the demons in orange. On top of that, gray has two cards that could backfire on a demon defense (Elymas Bar-Jesus and Banishment). The best argument for gray is Unaware (makes all demons immune to one Hero), and slightly-more-effective-than-normal banding Enhancements like Water Shaft and Gathering of Demons. Simply put, gray has traditionally been strong with humans and weak with demons, but the good news for gray is that it gets an advantage in the future as demons move over to orange and all the other brigades become human-focused.

So what does make orange tick? Well, there are a couple of key areas that set orange apart from the other brigades. One such area is the grudge the orange demons seem to hold against the angels. Evil Angel, Prince of the Air and Prince of Tyrus all target silver Heroes, and Prince of the Air even returns Chamber of Angels (and anything in it) to the bottom of the draw pile. The orange reprint of Fallen Angel has demon banding that cannot be prevented by a silver Hero. Some of the orange Enhancements that are placed on Heroes, while useful against just about anybody, seem particularly well-suited to taking out some of the mighty silver Heroes like Captain of the Host or The Strong Angel.

In fact, Enhancements that are "placed" are another one of the orange brigade's strengths. While three Enhancements doesn't sound like a lot, it's out of a total of only twelve in the whole brigade, and their abilities are top-notch. When Built on Sand is on a Hero, orange Enhancements cannot be negated when you're battling that Hero. Lukewarm negates a Hero's special ability, plus all search and card drawing abilities he might try to use, a great way to slow down decks that depend on getting certain cards quickly. Poison of Dragons poisons a Hero by a whopping 0/3 per turn, and instead of discarding the Hero at 0 defense, it captures him, and your opponent is stuck with an extra Lost Soul. Not only that, but with Crippling Demon, these "place" cards cannot be negated, and he can use pale green Enhancements, which gives him five more "place" cards to use. Also, the orange Curse Madness says that when an evil card is on a Hero, your demons are immune to that Hero. So you start placing a lot of these cards, and your demons get some added defense against your opponent.

A new mechanic introduced into the orange brigade are Enhancements whose numbers are mysteriously stated as x/x. Normally, when numbers are defined by something conditional in the game (e.g. Silly Women), they are stated as */*, and * is defined in the special ability text as a descriptor. x/x cards are similar to that, but have two key distinctions. First of all, x is defined in the Identifier text below the card art, so it's easier to tell that this definition is not supposed to be a special ability. Second of all, "x" is not only used in the numbers, but is also a variable in the special ability on the card! For example, Pride in the Past says "discard up to X Heroes in opponent's territory", and Pride in the Flesh interrupts Kingdoms of the World and bands in "up to X demons" from an evil Fortress (notice it doesn't say it has to be your own). This sounds great, you say, but what exactly is "x"? Here's the real kicker: for all four of these Enhancements, x is the number of Redeemed Souls your opponent has. So if your opponent has one point, your Pride in the Past is 1/1 and discards one Hero. If your opponent has four points, your Pride in the Past is 4/4 and discards up to four Heroes! Imagine a Type II game where your opponent can have five or even six points while the game is ongoing! These cards grow more powerful as the game goes on, and can really ruin your opponent's day if he's opened up a big lead on you!

Another focus in the orange brigade is manipulating cards on the bottom of a draw pile, a stark contrast from cards that draw or discard from the top, or shuffle in. With cards like Prince of the Air or Pride in Position, you can send an opponent's cards to the bottom of his draw pile, and if he doesn't have a way to search or shuffle his deck, it could be a long time before he sees those cards again. Cards like Evil Spawn and Evil Armor have been reprinted to take evil cards from the bottom of your draw pile. Orange's 1/1 character Demon Behind the Idol recurs orange Enhancements, but places them on the bottom of your draw pile. Of course, once you start putting these pieces together, some wonderful combinations are going to come about. Say your opponent has four points and is on the verge of victory. You block his rescue attempt and play Pride Before Calamity (x/x, discard up to x Heroes in play). On his next rescue attempt, you block with Demon Behind the Idol, grab Pride Before Calamity and place it on the bottom of your draw pile, then play Evil Armor to reveal your bottom card. If it is an evil card (amazingly, you already know it is), you can take that into your hand, and then play the next Enhancement. Congratulations, you have just discarded eight of your opponent's Heroes in two turns.

As I said before, an all-demon brigade like orange is going to be highly vulnerable to cards that target demons, especially Three Nails. But there are some very creative ways to get around that issue. I played a deck where I deliberately cut Three Nails to the top, played an all-orange defense (except one card) with Three Nails up the whole time, without Son of God or New Jerusalem in my deck, and only lost 5-4. It can be done. The orange Curse Madness can be converted to an Evil Character and added to the battle. The orange Enhancement Deafening Spirit is treated as an Evil Character once it's been played in battle, for the rest of that battle. The new Dominant Doubt turns into a 0/12 Evil Character for one turn. What's important to note about these three cards is that none of them are classified as demons. Really, they're not classified as much of anything; they're not human, either, and they have no gender. Probably the best card in the orange defense is not an orange card at all. The crimson Evil Character Seven Sons of Sceva negates and discards Three Nails, then swaps itself for an orange demon from your discard pile. So not only does it kill Three Nails but it also brings back that Prince of This World or King of Tyrus that your opponent was so happy to be rid of.

There's much more that you can do with this new brigade than what has been covered here, but hopefully this will give you an idea of some of the high points and new gameplay concepts that orange brings to the table. And as more demons are reprinted in orange, it's only going to get better.