True Messiah strategies

[CraigStern]

What are some strategies you've discovered in True Messiah that you like to use? Share below!

I'll start us off: using Fruit of Knowledge for defense. Although Fruit of Knowledge is generally an offensive miracle (most often used for messing up enemy temples-in-progress), because nonbelievers cannot ever be on a holy space, it can also be used on your own followers to protect your holy spaces.

The next time an enemy moves up to one of your temples, try using Fruit of Knowledge to preempt the move: pray with a follower on that temple, then turn the praying follower into a nonbeliever and move it onto an adjacent space to block the attack!

[CraigStern]

Here's a fun little trick for Violet with Evangelize+:

Because Evangelize+ only costs 1 belief, it can effectively pay for itself! (Just stick the new follower it gives you onto a holy space, and that new follower can then pray for something else.) It's even better if the new follower is placed onto a holy space with 1 existing follower on it--then you'll get not only that new follower, but also a second new follower from recruitment on your next turn!

[ArtDrake]

So, I actually did the equivalent of that Fruit of Knowledge move just today, but with Indulgence instead, to a) block an avenue of attack I'd left open, b) get the three coins, and c) clear the last follower off the temple my messiah was on, to get two more followers the next turn! [I would've done it on my own turn, but there was no loss incurred by doing it reactively, and it kept my options open in case I needed to respond to a radically different enemy positioning or miracle.]

I've also been having fun with using Edict to pull last-second flanks, and to threaten/capture an ill-defended enemy temple that my low units were until that moment five tiles away from (two tiles of movement on enemy turn, then two tiles on my own turn, putting me adjacent).

[CraigStern]

Ha, nice!

And yeah, Edict is a great miracle for surprise maneuvers--I love just quietly keeping it in my hand until I see an opening, then dropping the proverbial hammer.

[ArtDrake]

Now that I feel like I understand the game a bit better, I've come to appreciate a deck that can get the cards I want into my hand quickly, since the actual turn-count of an average game (at least with two players) feels quite low, so having to sit around for three turns to exhaust your deck, then four more to actually get your newly purchased marketplace card into your hand after the deck reshuffles (to name a worst-case scenario) is pretty intolerable. To that end, I like:

- aggressively pruning low-utility cards with Memory Hole to keep my deck lean (looking at you, Pious Benefactor);
- cards that let you draw other cards (Confirmation Bias!);
- cards that let you root around in your deck for the cards you want;
- and cards with low belief cost (since the more cards you play past your third during your turn, the more you get to draw on your next turn!).

Also, I've come to realize that Edict has a lot of denial power, in addition to its aforementioned virtues as a tool for surprise maneuvers; you can use it to move targeted low units out of range of an enemy miracle, or move them into a destination tile (say, for Pilgrimage or Teleport) to block.

[CraigStern]

All good observations! Memory Hole, I think, is one that separates people who understand the game from those who don't. People start off being like "Why would I ever use this?" then eventually come around to "This card is essential."