Falling away changes things.

The dominant with the 3rd most raw power in the game which reduces your opponent’s score by one or potentially 2 drastically slows down games down. Not only because it moves the goalpost to end the game by 20 or 40%. But also because it itself takes up a dominant slot that used to be a rescue enabling dominant like Angel of the Lord.

Consider that for many decks we played in Limited the decks could struggle with finishing power in late game. Extending the game another one or two rescues potentially allows more defenses to win attrition wars against blitzing offenses.

What about Guardian of your souls?

But we have a solution to falling away you may say. A dominant that has 95% of its power in basically saying “Restrict opponent’s Falling away”. So if we all play Guardian does the speed stay the same?

Certainly not, even playing Guardian of your souls will slow your deck considerably by taking up a dominant slot.

In Unlimited you can conceivably play and spend 4 dominant slots on…

⁃   2 rescue dominants
⁃   An anti rescue dominant
⁃   An anti anti rescue dominant

That leaves 3 open dominant slots in our traditional 50 card meta heuristic, this is a huge drop from Limited’s 5 free dominant slots.

Now what if you skip the Unlimited dominant package? Is there some merit in that?

Don’t play falling away because they might have guardian of your souls?

Don’t play guardian of your souls hoping they don’t draw or play falling away?

While these have some merit to argue, I think the results will eventually tell us that we should playing one or both of Falling away and/or Guardian. The impact that happens when one of these two dominants do succeed will outweigh the times where they were unsuccessful.

So with our decks reduced in dominant slot size what changes? Games go longer, fewer fights by percentage and number are ended by dominants and more ended by characters and enhancements.

Is the natural solution to all of these issues playing 57 or 64 cards? Larger decks have slower starts and more awkward draws. If the format is slower I predict this will allow for more awkward draws caused by increasing deck size will have time to smooth out.

Increasing the deck size will allow for more gas in the tank of dominants enhancements and characters.

But don’t the Unlimited dominants want speed?

Yes, this is one consideration that strikes against my opinion here. You want to draw both Falling Away and Guardian early. Since a player that draws both early and uses them has blanked the opposite dominants in their opponent’s deck. (If you play Guardian early you blank their Falling Away and vice versa)

This fact is a real pull for 50 cards but I do not think that it will overcome the value 64 can generate.

In the final analysis we do not know what the meta will look like in 10 months as we prep for nationals. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 57 and 64 as meta standards by then.

Time will tell, as we embark on an exciting new frontier in Redemption - Unlimited

⁃   Jacob Antonetz