Joshua Heroes / Giants & Canaanite Warriors

Regular price: $117.75
Sale price: $90.00

This powerful Contender Deck features Joshua heroes and other O.T. warrior heroes who conquered the land of Canaan and fought epic battles with Canaanite warriors and giants. Use strong banding heroes to attack, while blocking your opponents with beefy Canaanite and Philistine giants and Canaanite warriors to repel your opponent’s rescue attempts! This deck is chock-full of draws and searches, which makes it a very fast! This, combined with the power of the characters and enhancements, makes this deck a powerhouse and hard to stop!

See bottom for recommended cards you can purchase separately to help boost this deck’s theme, some of which are Classic cards to modify this deck to that format!

Dominants
Son of God (I/J)
New Jerusalem (I/J+)
Angel of the Lord (I/J)
Christian Martyr (I/J)

Lost Souls
Unfaithful (LoC)
Fool (RoA)
Resurrection (I)
Open Hand (CoW)
Lost Boy (PoC)
Darkness (RoJ)
Distressed (PoC)

Artifacts/Covenants/Curses
Stalks of Flax (LR)
Oath of Purity (LoC)
Besieged (PoC)

Fortresses/Sites/Cities
Jericho (CoW)
Hebron (FoM)

Dual-Alignment Cards
Goliath’s Sword (LoC)
Prisoner at Gaza (FoM)

Heroes
Joshua, Son of Nun (CoW)
Caleb (FoM)
Rahab (CoW)
Captain of the Host (PoC)
Spy (LR)
Matthan, the Defender (LoC)
Phinehas, son of Eleazar (LoC)
Ahimaaz (FoM)
Captive Priest (FoM)

Good Enhancements
Builder’s Sword (LoC)
Jordan Interrupted (PoC)
Hailstones (FoM)
Shields (LoC)
Helmet (LoC)
Feast of Unleavened Bread (LoC)
Faith of Joshua (CoW)

Evil Characters
Sheshai, Son of Anak (FoM)
Ahiman, Son of Anak (FoM)
Talmai, Son of Anak (FoM)
Og, King of Bashan (FoM)
Emim (FoM)
Army of Jericho (CoW)
Saph (I)
Goliath (LR)
Philistine Armor Bearer (LoC)
Aliens (Black/PG) (LoC)

Evil Enhancements
Baal Worship (FoM)
Stricken (PoC)
Abraham’s Deceit (LoC)
Goliath’s Armor (LoC)
Lahmi’s Spear (I)
Ishbibenob’s Spear (I)

Reserve
Eleazar, the Potentate (LoC)
Joshua’s Spear (FoM)
Temple Spears & Shields (LoC)
By My Spirit (LoC)
Death of Firstborn (PoC)
Gibeonite Treaty (FoM)
Go Away! (LoC)
Foreign Spears (LoC)
Ishbibenob (I)
Sisera’s Army (CoW)

Deck strategy and tips:

OVERVIEW
The offense is designed to overwhelm your opponent’s defense with high numbers as a result of your banded heroes. There are several enhancements that negate opponent's enhancements, so this will help keep you in the battle longer. The offense also has other strategies to fall back on that do not rely on Joshua Heroes banding together, such as your warrior priests and/or O.T. Postexilic Heroes and support enhancements.
The defense has powerful, high-numbered giants and other warriors that act as a wall against your opponent’s attacks. Like your offense, you have several negate/interrupt options to help keep your giants in the battle as you will most likely be giving up initiative.
THE OFFENSE
The Joshua-Captain of the Host band is a powerful band that can get you at least a draw 2 off of Captain, and allow you to negate some evil card in your opponent's territory/set-aside area. He can also continue the Joshua Heroes band by banding to either Spy, Rahab, or Caleb. It is highly recommended that you equip Shields to Joshua prior to banding to Captain as it will help protect the both of them from nasty anti-banding evil enhancements, making the band even stronger!
A nice combo is to equip Helmet to Spy. That way, Spy can see your opponent's hand, and you can use Helmet to snag a good O.T. enhancement from Reserve, instead of deciding whether you want to use Helmet to hand look or obtain the good enhancement from Reserve.
Oath of Purity has a lot of versatility with this deck: you can use the enhancement side on any of your priests or gold Heroes. The artifact side can be used to bounce up to 2 humans. This is good for either disrupting your opponent's strategy (such as if he has a nuisance territory class character, such as Jonah, or a placed enhancement on one of his characters), or to bounce your own heroes or evil characters that have weapons (which this deck is full of!) equipped to them. That way, you can equip the weapon to a different character!
There's plenty of soul-gen in this deck so you shouldn't run into a problem with being soul droughted: Prisoner at Gaza, Captive Priest, Rahab/Spy combo, Matthan, and Aliens.
Prisoner at Gaza can be used as good or evil. If played as good, use him to begin a battle challenge so you can rescue him as a lost soul that turn. You can either snag Eleazar from Reserve and add him to battle and begin a band chain with him (or attack with him alone), or one of your gold enhancements from Reserve to help you win the battle. The same options go for the evil side if Prisoner at Gaza is used as a blocker.
Need to speed up your offense, or need a blocker for next turn? Consider equipping an evil weapon to one of your evil characters in territory. Then, play Baal Worship to discard that character to get a potential draw. Then, use Feast of Unleavened Bread to banish the character and weapon you just discarded to snag a couple of good OT cards from Reserve, such as a Hero and/or good enhancements.
If you attack solely with Captain of the Host, or your opponent removes the other heroes in battle, leaving Captain alone in battle, you still have ways to help him with the battle. Death of Firstborn is an interrupt that can be used on him (it can be used as a potential battle-winner on Rahab and/or one of your gold heroes, too), Hailstones as a big battle-winner, and/or Angel of the Lord.
Use Go Away! in territory to bounce any of your Heroes (this won't work, however, if Rahab is in territory as she will protect them from the card's ability) to unequip your weapons from your heroes so you can either use the weapons later in the battle, or place them on different heroes.
THE DEFENSE
Activate Besieged in Jericho so your artifact pile can be freed-up to activate a second artifact on the artifact pile. You can even activate a third artifact (Stalks of Flax) on Rahab!
It's recommended that Hebron is played as a fortress, as you will benefit more from the draw ability on the fortress than playing the card as a Site. Don't forget to play at least 3 giants to territory, in order to maximize the draw ability!
Defensively, the tri-band of the Sons of Anak is very strong. However, Goliath can be a powerhouse of a lone blocker at the right time. Also, Emim is great to help win the battle outright against lone rescuers.
Use Baal Worship in combination with the Resurrection Lost Soul: discard one of your heroes in territory, then, if you happen to lose a future battle, you can resurrect that Hero by giving up the Resurrection Lost Soul to your opponent. However, this isn't the best play. A better play would be to discard one of your Philistines, then recur him with Philistine Armor Bearer.
The Fool Lost Soul's discard ability is very potent with this deck as it requires you to play an evil enhancement during battle, which you will more than likely do with all of your evil weapons equipped and activating once the blocker enters battle.
A nice combo is to equip one of your weapons to Saph in territory. Since he prevents the next enhancement opponent plays, it will be hard for your opponent to stop the weapon’s hero removing ability!

YTG recommends the below cards as other viable options for this deck’s theme. You can view and purchase them by clicking on each one, or search for them here!

Classic cards