There has been a lot of discussion lately in the Redemption community about deck building rules, mostly revolving around 100 card decks and potential solutions for the big, mean decks. I love seeing the community discuss the meta, discuss their opinions on rules and what could, should and should not change.
Today I wanted to talk about a different deck building rule in type 1. Unique characters being in territory, or in battle, in the same turn. For the record, I do not see that rule changing, but I did want to show some cool design concepts if the same Hero with a different title could enter battle more than once in a turn. Double for the record, I don’t think that rule should change at all, and a unique Hero can only enter battle once per turn.
While reading in Genesis I was reminded not just of Abram’s name change, but for how long his name was Abram before God changed his name to Abraham. There’s also Abram’s wife, Sarai who also had her name changed. Shortly after Abraham was Jacob, who was also renamed by God to Israel. There are others in the Bible who had their name change. If this was a Mirror of Galadriel article, I imagine Kurt would prompt people to create versions of them! I love his articles by the way and encourage people to read them and create card ideas for his prompts, it’s a lot of fun.
For this article I designed 2 versions of 3 Heroes, Abram, Sarai and Jacob and did a version of them with their new name. I tried to find unique ways to bring their new named version into battle. This design further reinforced our rule of unique Heroes not being able to enter battle more than once per turn. It wouldn’t be fair to expect people to know Abram & Abraham, Sarai & Sarah, and Jacob & Israel are different people. It’s tough enough playing Gospel white with all the Mary’s!
First card up is Abram, the Exalted. Although God is the most highly exalted, Abram was called the exalted, which simply means he was placed at a high or powerful level, or held in high regard. Abram can exchange himself for a patriarch which signifies him being father of nations and his bloodline. However, if you exchange him for Abraham, you get a potentially large draw. I wanted to tie in the brigades of Heroes you control to signify “Father” Abraham. The idea behind it was that different brigades meant different themes, aka nations.
I love this card, and I would not be surprised if we saw something like this in a future set. Needing a Genesis female is in play to take a Genesis human from deck is to show the patience of childbirth Abraham and Sarah had to have, but also to show that the both of them were not patient and Abraham had children with Hagar before Sarah. However, I tied in the Isaac portion (Abraham and Sarah’s son), so you could go to deck and get Isaac and band to him. We rarely do abilities like this where you search deck for a character and then band, however, when it is something thematic and singular, we think it’s good design. My favorite part of Abraham’s ability is the tie-in to his name. Whenever you play a good Genesis Enhancement it gains repeat. Gaining repeat is to signify the multitude of children that eventually came from Abraham’s lineage.
Next up is Abraham’s wife, Sarai. I pulled from the Cloud of Witnesses verses of Abraham to protect Heroes in those same scriptures. I love it when we really pull from the scripture and make people think or look into why certain scriptures are mentioned. I think that’s a huge concept of the game that we need more of, but it also adds a little bit more complexity, so I want to use it sparingly on cards that make sense. Use nativity for example, cards from chapter 1 verses 18-25, or chapter 2 of Matthew, plus chapters 1-2 of Luke. Those verses deal exclusively with the nativity, which is why those parameters are used, but it is difficult to remember.
Sarai stats are 0/1 to show she was Sarai before Sarah and that she was Abraham’s first wife. Sarai has an “if defeated” clause because she died while Abraham was still alive. Although it’s weird for her to be defeated and then add Sarah to battle, this was a way for me to show she was first Sarai and then God changed her name to Sarah. You’ll see each scripture reference I used for all the cards are the verses where God changes their name and I used the same verse for each respective Hero.
Sarah can be added to battle by Sarai and if so, she can underdeck an evil card. Similar to Isaac from Cloud of Witnesses getting to topdeck an evil card but tying in the underdecking theme from Sons of Jacob, due to the lineage of Abraham. I gave her a broad exchange to deck or discard pile for a blue Enhancement. I thought this was a great combination with Abraham, her husband, who gives Enhancements repeat. You can essentially get the best Genesis Enhancements from your deck and play them over and over with repeat. I could change her ability to say, “If opposed” instead of saying, “If added to battle”.
Forgive the pixelated art, I could not find a great version and would not use this for an actual card. Jacob’s story is fascinating to me. His name change story has their own sermons and the ones I heard are amazing. He represents what Israel is and struggles with, while also showing human struggles with God. His name change to Israel is symbolic and foreshadowing of his lineage. He is also referred to as Jacob consistently after his name change. I think this further shows our struggle with who we are and who we are called to be. I love Jacob’s title and I would expect to see that title used one day, or at least, I hope.
Since Jacob wrestled with God, which means so many things (if you have not heard sermons about this I encourage you to go find some, or message me and I can send some over), I designed Jacob to search (we now use take, but I chose this word with intent deck for a good O.T. Dominant, because ultimately that is what Jacob was doing. He was struggling and searching for God. God named him Israel twice, both of which happened after they wrestled. Playing the good O.T. Dominant is symbolic of God intervening and changing Jacob’s name.
Israel protects all Genesis Heroes in territory from harm which is thematic and gets a draw 1 for when any of your Heroes enters battle. This is to show Israel helping all future nations. Here’s where card design gets really fun, if a good O.T. Dominant is played while Jacob is in battle, you may exchange him for Israel. Now Israel can come into battle, and he gets a play ability. I love his, “if alone and opposed” clause. I know, it’s not as fun because I can’t band him into battle with other Heroes and get a CBN play ability. Israel the country was opposed throughout the Old Testament and at times the country was alone as a nation but had God on their side.
I had a lot of fun designing these cards. I have talked before about designing cards outside of current sets for me to work on card design, look for ways to create fresh and unique abilities, and work on bringing out thematic elements into cards from scripture. I have made all sorts of cards lately and knew that these cards with the name change would never make it in this design space. Maybe there’s other ways to do that, but I figured I might as well share these, and I hope you enjoy them! I do want to note the art on Abram and Abraham are not public domain to my knowledge and would not be used and was only used for this article.
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