Resurrection power! Designed by Derek Tirado, a National tournament top ranking player, and the founder & former owner of Your Turn Games, this Contender Deck features heroes who were associated with Jesus' resurrection at the empty tomb, as well as Lazarus and the events surrounding his resurrection at Bethany. Both themes compliment each other, are very powerful and fast, and provide unique benefits to each theme: the empty tomb heroes have an "if blocked from hand" strategy, while the three Bethany heroes are powerful when all are banded together. The defense is comprised of evil Sadducees, who condemned Jesus to death and tried to cover up His subsequent resurrection (they also didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead or in angels). These blockers utilize soul protection and hiding as their main strategy, while also disrupting your opponent's hand. You don't want to miss out on this powerful deck!
Not only does this deck serve as a legal Type 1 constructed deck, you can easily convert it to a GoC Only constructed deck to use in that format as well, since many of the cards are from the GoC expansion, thereby essentially giving you two decks for the price of one! See bottom of this page for recommended add-on cards to convert this deck to GoC only and to boost this deck's theme from other expansions!
Son of God (I/J)
New Jerusalem (I/J+)
Angel of the Lord (I)
Christian Martyr (I/J)
Burial (GoC)
Lost Souls
The First (I/J+)
Escape (PC)
(5) N.T. Meek Lost Souls (I/J)
Artifacts/Covenants/Curses
Book of the Law (LoC)
Gifts of the Magi (GoC)
Burial Shroud (GoC)
Unholy Writ (GoC)
Fortresses/Sites/Cities
The Empty Tomb (GoC)
High Priest's Palace (GoC)
Heroes
Mary, Mother of James (GoC)
Joanna, the Generous (GoC)
Mary, the Restored (GoC)
Salome, the Sorrowful (GoC)
Joseph of Arimathea (GoC)
Lazarus, the Called (GoC)
Martha, the Diligent (GoC)
Mary of Bethany (GoC)
Resurrection Revealer (GoC)
The Comforting Cherubs (GoC)
Good Enhancements
No Need for Spices (GoC)
Baptism of Jesus (GoC)
Untouchable (GoC)
Life in the Son (GoC)
Spirit as a Dove (GoC)
The Lord's Prayer (GoC)
Love Righteousness (CoW)
Evil Characters
Annas the Elder (GoC)
High Priest Ananias (RoJ)
Dubious Doubters (GoC)
Plotting Priests (GoC)
Supercilious Scribes (GoC)
The Chief Priests (RoJ)
The Brood of Vipers (GoC)
The Gate Keeper's Maid (GoC)
Malchus (GoC)
Evil Enhancements
False Accusations (GoC)
High Priest's Plot (GoC)
Betrayal (PoC)
Clinging to Power (GoC)
Surreptitious Scheme (GoC)
Withered Seed (GoC)
Reserve
Susanna (GoC LR)
"He Is Risen" (GoC LR)
Lost Child Found (GoC)
Stone Rolled Away (GoC)
The Ascension (GoC)
Love One Another (GoC)
Emphatic Incriminators (GoC)
Gathering the Sanhedrin (GoC)
Just a Hireling (GoC)
Tenants Kill the Son (GoC)
Deck strategy and tips:
- OVERVIEW:
- The offense mainly centers on the seven empty tomb (ET) heroes, with three Bethany heroes as a secondary offense (depending on your offensive goals, the Bethany heroes could be used as the primary attackers instead). The ET strategy is comprised of your opponent blocking from hand, which gives those heroes an extra benefit. They additionally benefit when they convert to meek. As such, there are several cards in the deck/Reserve that, when played at the right time, support the "if blocked from hand" strategy by ensuring your opponent must block from hand. The Bethany heroes primarily function the strongest when all three are banded into battle. This can be set up by using certain cards to tutor one or more of those heroes.
- The defense's primary strategy is to protect or hide Lost Souls (particularly meek Lost Souls) from rescue by your opponent. It accomplishes this by using your evil characters' special abilities, evil enhancements, and/or the evil dominant, Burial. An additional defensive strategy is using evil enhancements that remove certain good cards in your opponent's hand, territory, or in battle, which effectively disrupts and/or stalls your opponent from rescuing, giving your offense enough time to win as many souls as it can.
- THE OFFENSE:
- To maximize the "if blocked from hand" strategy, set it up with cards like Book of the Law, Gifts of the Magi, Lost Child Found, Joseph of Arimathea, The Empty Tomb and other cards, all of which bounce your opponent's evil characters.
- Generally, the offense functions the best when you convert your heroes to meek. Additionally, most of the good enhancements in your deck are clay, in order to better support the clay meek side.
- Try and play Resurrection Revealer (RR) early (make sure you have Comforting Cherubs in play as well) so you can negate your opponent's neutral cards. RR is also a great way to tutor one of your empty tomb humans.
- Need soul gen? Use The Comforting Cherubs or Malchus to generate a lost soul for you to rescue.
- Keep the battle going by using Burial Shroud to add your human Hero to battle from Reserve or discard pile. Also, you can activate Burial Shroud on The Empty Tomb, allowing you to use your artifact pile to activate a different artifact on.
- Get to your good dominants quickly by using cards like Spirit as a Dove, Gifts of the Magi, Book of the Law (which allows you to take a good card from your deck if you're blocked from hand), and Mary the Restored.
- Speaking of Mary the Restored, when you convert her to meek you can negate characters (except empty tomb heroes) and enhancements. If you time it right, you can have a couple of CBN enhancements that you'll still be able to play on her.
- Time it right and use Susanna to rescue and "He Is Risen" as a potential battle winner with her (or another white hero). Just make sure you have as many of your NT female heroes in play as you can in order to maximize those cards' benefits!
- Use Love Righteousness to tutor just the right white hero from your deck (or recur from your discard pile) to plan your attack. Joseph of Arimathea is a great choice as you can play him early and use his territory class ability to bounce a character in a territory if your opponent uses a search ability. You can also use Love Righteousness to take the third Bethany hero (if you have two already) to complete the powerful trio!
- Use Love One Another to get past your opponent's protected blockers, such as Foreign Wives, Red Dragon, and others.
- THE DEFENSE:
- A strong play is to use Supercilious Scribes (SS) to exchange a good card in hand for any card in the Reserve (generally, you'll want Just a Hireling). Just a Hireling is a great play to discard SS to shuffle all of your meek souls back into the deck (or 3 non-meek souls).
- Annas is a powerful blocker, particularly when your opponent used a search ability on his turn, which modifies Annas' ability and other Sadduccees' abilities to be CBN. And with his soul hiding ability, and band ability, he makes for a formidable defender!
- High Priest Ananias is an excellent blocker (particularly when Annas bands to him, CBN) as Ananias restricts your opponent from playing enhancements of a brigade that're not already in battle. With so many multi-brigade enhancements that are in use, this will tend to stop your opponent in his tracks!
- Use High Priest Plot, Betrayal, and Withered Seed in an offensive and defensive way by looking at your opponent's hand pre-rescue, so you know can plan your rescue accordingly, and so you can get rid of a targeted good card that he may need for his next rescue.
- Keep the battle going when your Sadducee is removed from battle by an opponent by adding another Sadducee to battle with High Priest's Palace (HPP). Additionally, HPP can hold one of this deck's four artifacts, Unholy Writ, allowing you to free-up your artfiact pile to activate a different artifact on.
YTG recommends the below cards as other viable options for this deck’s theme for Type 1 and/or GoC Only constructed play. You can view and purchase them by clicking on each one, or search for them here!
To convert this deck to a GoC Only constructed deck, remove all cards that do not have GoC or GoC LR after each card title from the deck and Reserve. You can then add any number of GoC or GoC LR cards from the Reserve to the main deck, in order to make the main deck a minimum of 50 cards. You'll also need GoC or GoC LR lost souls to replace any non-GoC cards (purchase separately). Another option is to purchase GoC cards separately to replace the non-GoC cards in the deck / Reserve (see below list of recommended GoC cards).
GoC cards
Rotation cards