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. Some considerable renovations have been made among several secondary card types, including Artifacts, Fortresses and Lost Souls. This article will focus on some of the new cards in these areas, and explain the brand new card type, known as Curses, introduced in The Priests.

Follow up:

Curses, in fact, seem like the best place to start. Curses are the evil counterpart to Covenants; they bear a serpent icon and a skull icon, and can be played either as an Artifact or as an evil Enhancement. Each of the seven evil brigades (including the new orange brigade, explained in this article), has two Curses in this expansion. One of those Curses has 0/6 numbers, and the other has 1/5, so evil brigades benefit immediately from the great defense these cards provide. Moreover, many Curses have special abilities that enhance some of the key strategies associated with their respective brigades. Crimson, for example, is strong in banding and capture cards, and in keeping with that, Besieged says banding on human Evil Characters cannot be negated, and Go Into Captivity is a powerful capture card. Oppressed and Robbed says abilities that discard from draw piles cannot be negated, which supports gold brigade's strength in targeting a draw pile. Blindness is an orange Curse that makes your demons immune to Heroes with cards placed on them, and orange has several "placing" cards available to them. Incurable is a pale green Curse that protects against healing, and Plagued With Diseases is a brown Curse that reduces Hero numbers. All of these Curses, when used as Artifacts, can of course be used in conjunction with any brigade, but they work particularly well with the natural strengths of their own brigades.

Other Curses are a little more general in their application, and are loosely based around blunting some of Redmeption's more powerful strategies and combos. Rain Becomes Dust forces your opponent to discard cards that he would otherwise draw because of his special abilities. Along with a Lost Soul described below, this is a nice defense against speed decks. Flee From Enemies can wipe out good banding combos. Confusion of Mind negates all special abilities on opponent's Heroes, which is beneficial in many different circumstances, but is a particularly welcome relief for people hammered by Fight-by-Numbers characters. Unsuccessful negates a good Enhancement, just as Covenant of Noah negates an evil Enhancement. Wasting Disease prevents "play next Enhancement" abilities, one of a handful of cards designed with the trauma inflicted by Ethiopian Treasurer / Authority of Christ combos fresh in the players' minds. So Curses are immediately useful, both with specific brigade strategies and in the general defense of many decks.

A number of new Fortresses have emerged in The Priests that not only enhance gameplay but also shore up the cultural themes of several evil brigades. Assyrian Camp, for example, protects Assyrian Evil Characters in territory from discard, conversion and capture, which gives a boost to the Assyrians featured in pale green. Headquarters at Riblah not only protects Babylonians in territory from discard, but can be discarded to discard all the captured Heroes in your Land of Bondage. That beefs up the Babylonian characters in crimson brigade, and it works well with crimson's strong collection of capture cards. High Priest's Palace protects Pharisees and Sadducees in territory from discard, which gives a mild boost to gray but a huge boost to black, as several Sadducees were reprinted and moved from gray to black (see future article). Pharaoh's Throne Room protects Egyptians in territory from discard and conversion, and negates certain ignore abilities if you have a Pharaoh or Egyptian king in play, propping up the gold brigade. Temple of Dagon protects Philistines in territory from capture, which is helpful for giant banding combos, but it can also hold Altar of Dagon to protect them from conversion.

Other Forts in the game have a variety of different effects. City of Refuge can hold human characters that your opponent tries to remove from the game, and eventually get them back for you. The Trap of the Devil is a good card to stop large fight-by-number combos, since your evil cards cannot be prevented by good cards if their total strength is 14 or more. With big bruisers like The Strong Angel or Captain of the Host, it doesn't take much effort to get up to 14 strength. Probably the most significant addition to this batch of Forts, however, is The Tabernacle. It works much like Solomon's Temple, even so far as to be protected by Glory of the Lord. But you can't have both Forts in play; Solomon's Temple will boot The Tabernacle. Several new Artifacts have sprung up that can be placed in either Fort. In fact, many Temple and Tabernacle Artifacts are interchangeable between the two. So do you use one, or the other, or both? It's really a matter of preference; there are many cards in the game that target one or the other with their special abilities, so you can build an offense that focuses on either one. But there's not much benefit to having both unless you expect to have one of them blown up by your opponent.

That brings us to Artifacts, as there are many in this expansion that can go into your Tabernacle or Temple. Tables of the Law, Holy of Holies, Priestly Breastplate, and Altar of Incense have been reprinted. Ram's Horn has also been reprinted, but its special ability has been upgraded from being one of the most useless of all time, to being one of the most useful, giving limited cannot-be-interrupted status to good Enhancements and discarding an opponent's Site if you win a rescue attempt. Urim and Thummin lets you look at your opponent's hand, and then activate a new Artifact if you wish. This is a great way to peek, and then get out an Artifact that will stop whatever cards your opponent might try to play on you in battle. The Bronze Laver lets you stick evil cards from your hand on the bottom of your draw pile, and draw new cards to replace them. Not only does this give you an opportunity to tuck away for later some cards you can't use right away, it can also be used in conjunction with some of the orange brigade cards (detailed in this article) that let you pull evil cards from the bottom of your draw pile. Table of Showbread will hold a good Old Testament Enhancement, and then a Priest can use it in battle regardless of brigade! Altar of Burnt Offering actually lets you play Offering Enhancements during the prep phase, instead of having to wait and play them in battle!

But the real show-stealers of the Artifacts have to be Altar of Ahaz and Lampstand of the Sanctuary. Altar of Ahaz protects Lost Souls from being rescued by Dominants, until a human Hero rescues a Lost Soul from you. Lampstand protects all cards not in battle from evil Dominants, putting a halt to Destruction of Nehushtan, Burial, Falling Away, and in some respects even Christian Martyr! A full stable of Dominants have traditionally been all but required in any deck that hopes to be competitive at tournaments. But these cards will make an opponent think twice about getting stuck with all these cards in his hand.

To wrap up, let's look at the remaining support cards found in The Priests. Teal got two Covenants to supplement its Heroes and Enhancements. Covenant with Levi gives Priests Site access and will also allow you to place an Evil Character or Enhancement under a draw pile if you rescue a Lost Soul from a Site. This is a good way to get rid of pesky "placed" cards, but again, can be used in conjunction with orange brigade demons that go for the bottom card of your draw pile. Covenant with Phinehas protects some of your Priests from discard, which when combined with Phinehas' protection from capture and conversion, and the name-on-name bonus he gets from his Spear, makes him an absolute pain for your opponents. Teal also has two nice Sites, Jericho and Mildewed House, which have special abilities that essentially penalize your opponent if they try to get access with non-teal Heroes. There is also the standard "protect evil cards placed here from Dragon Raid" Site for teal, and reprints of Roman Prison and Samaria, since certain other cards target these harder-to-find Sites. The lone new Dominant in this set is Doubt, which turns itself into a generic 0/12 Evil Character in your territory. This has many uses, it's a good way to get around certain protections (like Three Nails), it gives you a blocking option after an Ethiopian Treasurer / Authority of Christ type combo (along with the Curse Madness, and The Darkness), it's high toughness can potentially force a stalemate, it can't be converted since it's not human, and in fact it can't be affected by anything that targets humans, demons, beasts, animals, males or females.

The Lost Soul cards in Priests help make your Land of Bondage a part of your territory that can really be managed well against your opponent. Most notable is the "Speed Bump" Lost Soul, which protects all Lost Souls from rescue by a player with more than 10 cards in hand, stopping some speed decks cold. One Lost Soul will place another Lost Soul under your draw pile if it's rescued by an angel. One good way to manage your territory is to place that card into a silver Site, making it a lot easier to force your opponent to trigger that ability. This is also another small thorn in the side of the mighty silver brigade. The "Site Immunity", or "Color Guard" Lost Soul makes evil characters in your territory immune to the same color as the Site. So you can place this in a purple Site and save your territory from getting blasted by Authority of Christ, or perhaps in a red Site to protect you from Jephthah. It even stops those pesky choose-the-blocker and fight-each-other cards from grabbing Evil Characters from your territory. One of the more interesting abilities resides with the "Exchanger" or "Wanderer" Lost Soul. During your prep phase, you can swap it with another player's Lost Soul. The possibilities here are staggering. You could trade it for a Lost Soul your opponent can't access (e.g. female-only or New Testament-only). You could trade it for a half-rescued three-line Lost Souls so he can never rescue it. You could trade it for a Shuffler and have an extra chance to shuffle in all your Lost Souls. You could trade it for a Site-Immune Lost Soul and get extra protection. The list goes on. The only drawback is there's not really much to stop your opponent from swapping it right back, unless you rescue or bury it on your turn. In a multi-player game, this card has the potential to wander all over the table. However, it has a counterpart, the "Thorns" Lost Soul, which stops Lost Souls from being shuffled, exchanged, or placed under draw pile. So there is much more control over your Land of Bondage, but there are also cards like this, and cards that negate Lost Soul special abilities, that can also counteract that control.

The Priests have a lot of great characters and Enhancements, but don't let those distract you from all these other card types, the amazing things they do, and they way they interact with each other. The best Redemption decks pay attention to all different card types, and are built so that they all cooperate and complement each other's strengths.