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. The new teal and orange brigades are the 800-lb. gorillas in this expansion, but all the brigades got a boost of some sort. Each of the other six evil brigades has five to seven new Evil Characters and five or six new Enhancements, a mixture of reprinted cards and new cards that mesh with the new strategies introduced. In particular, the cultural themes of each brigade are significantly enhanced.

Follow up:

The black brigade got a big boost in Sadducees. The high priests Ananias, Annas and Caiaphas are now all together in the black brigade. Black also has Amaziah the Ungodly Priest to protect your evil Israelite kings and Philistine Priests to boost your Philistine defense (in conjunction with Temple of Dagon). Amaziah's Order repels good prophets and Blemished Sacrifices repels good priests, so you have powerful battle-winners against many of the new cards in this set. High Priest's Plot, when used by a Sadducee, allows you to look and discard a good card from an opponent's hand, which can wreak havoc on good Dominants an opponent might be holding on to. What's especially brutal is bringing the card back with Pride of Simon and playing it again. Black also has Reckless Endangerment and Useless Fires to help defend it against Artifacts and Covenants.

Gray brigade is a mixed bag of abilities, giving minor support to its numerous brigade specialities. False Priests, for example, plays a False Peace straight out of your discard pile. This means you can play False Peace four times in the same game now (play and pick it up with Momentum Change, play a second time, retrieve with a demon and Twice Afflicted, and retrieve it again with False Priests). Deadly Snare strengthens gray's capture defense and gives Shadow another card to play immediately. Strange Fire continues the gray theme of sacrificing your own cards to affect your opponent, this time to discard an Artifact. And Worshipper of False Gods contributes to gray's strong hand-discard theme. There is more to this brigade which will be covered shortly.

Crimson brigade adds to its Babylonian theme with Babylonian Forces, King Evil-merodach, and King Merodach-baladan. As mentioned in this article, Seven Sons of Sceva provides support for orange defense. The powerful new reprint of Judas Iscariot protects himself form conversion and discard by opponents, not only in battle, but while he remains in play. Joel, son of Samuel can band to Abijah, son of Samuel, who draws a card every time your opponent plays an Enhancement, a handy buffer against speed decks. Carried into Exile enhances crimson's strong capture defense, and Merodach Worship sets aside evil Babylonians to give them protection from capture and conversion. Destructive Decay finally gives crimson the Artifact discarder they have been lacking for so long. More features of crimson brigade will follow.

Gold brigade has had a strong Egyptian theme going all the way back to the first edition of Redemption, and things only get better for them with this expansion. There is a lot of banding, with Jambres and Jannes and Pharaoh's Magicians, and with Potiphar and Potiphar's Wife. Building Egypt lets you dig for Egyptian Sites to hold your Lost Souls, which also helps out numerous other abilities that benefit from having an Egyptian Site in play. And Wicked Community helps gold's strong deck-discard theme, by pulling out all the Lost Souls you might have discarded during your discard spree and placing them in that player's territory. Again, gold has additional features to be addressed below.

Pale Green's culture, the Assyrians, get a hand up in this new set as well. However, the bulk of the pale green cards are reserved for discussion below. In the meantime, Infectious Diseases adds to pale green's paralysis defense, and Doeg's Slaughter discards all priests from the house of Ithamar that are in play or set-aside, a powerful response to the new teal brigade.

Brown brigade has a variety of interesting new cards. Job's Three Friends decreases Hero numbers, like many brown cards, but it only decreases 0/1. The difference is, that decrease remains as long as that Hero is in play. So potentially, this card can keep picking and picking and picking at you and wear you down over time. Sanballat negates good search abilities and adds to the minor Samarian culture in the brown brigade. Zeresh can band to Haman, then dig an evil card out of your top six, while protecting both characters from conversion. Ahab's Armor is a weapon-class Enhancement that you can "stick" on Ahab, much the way Goliath's weapons can stay with Goliath. Desolate Gateways has an x/x value, decreasing opponent's Heroes by the number of unoccupied Sites in play. And if you're down in cards, Wickedness Abounds lets you draw four and play next, another small weapon in the arsenal against speed decks.

Several powerful new abilities have appeared in many cards across multiple brigades. For example, Moths (gray), Wonders Forgotten (gold), Forgotten History (pale green), and Rust (brown) all take Enhancements (any cards, in the case of Forgotten History) from a discard pile and remove them from the game, attacking decks that rely on card recursion. There are certain chracters that band together to have a nasty added effect in battle. Hophni, son of Eli (pale green) can band to Phinehas, son of Eli, and when both are in battle, Phinehas discards all cards in battle. Nadab and Abihu have a similar setup, but Abihu's ability removes the cards from the game.

There are "Boasting" cards that are placed on Heroes, negating their special ability and having an added effect helpful to their brigade. Boasting of Strength (crimson) can discard a Site, aiding crimson Site lockout defenses. Boasting of Riches discards a card from draw pile if the Hero is captured (two things gold does very well). And Boasting of Wisdom allows you to discard it to discard all Enhancements used by that Hero, which is helpful to a pale green brigade vulnerable to fight-by-numbers.

With all these new Fortresses coming out that support cultures, it's only right to have characters that grab them from your draw pile. Philistine Priests has already been mentioned. Babylonian Forces grabs Headquarters at Riblah, Jannes grabs Pharaoh's Throne Room, King Sargon II grabs Assyrian Camp, and High Priest Caiaphas gabs High Priest's Palace. So each of your cultures has a way to get out the support cards it needs rather quickly.

But probably the coolest new ability to stretch across brigades involves placing cards in your opponent's territory and having a negative effect on their cards. Reckless Endangerment has already been mentioned. Deceptive Sin makes the opponent discard a card from hand each upkeep phase, giving gray another hand-discard boost. Gold has Pagan Sacrifices to discard a card from the draw pile every upkeep phase. And Sin in the Camp makes a player place a card from hand under draw pile each upkeep phase. Each of these cards has a small caveat that allows the opponent to get rid of the card if they meet certain conditions (a recent errata to Sin in the Camp discards ALL copies of Sin in the Camp when its condition is met). These cards are great additions to decks that utilize these strategies.

So orange may be the new kid in town, and have twice as many cards any of these other brigades, but make no mistake, there is plenty here to make every defense happy.