Deck red/white "Act of War": the worst available deck.

[Mad]

The deck can't handle artifacts and echantments, can't kill or neutralise any big creature, it's quite slow and have big costs for it's colors, require multiple cards or huge investment of mana to have any kind of damage. In short, it's a steaming pile of crap.

About any other deck can offer you.. something. Act of war is a garanty that you'll be losing your time.

[dh50]

It's a weak deck to be sure, but it's very fun to play (I think Rogue's Gallery is worse, however).

Faith's Fetters can deal with artifacts / enchantments that have an activation ability (ie Panoptic Mirror); as well as neutralize a big creature.

Rise of the Hobgoblins is the easiest way to deal with big creatures (give your units mass first strike). First strike + a direct damage spell is another way. Sunblast Angel can also get the job done.

It's definitely one of the hardest decks to play however.

[Yosiel]

I still reming fondly, the game you and I played with AoW, Dh50 :)

[Mad]

Faith fetters is a terrible solution. It cost 4 mana, have to stay on the card it enchant (thus can be removed) and do not block "world" effects.

You only have one way to play the deck: put creature and rush straight forward. If the player answer with anything (lightning bolt, counter spell, quick mass token or a big creature etc) you lose your momentum and you lose the game. There is no way around this and that's why the deck sucks big time.

Rise of the hobgoblins won't allow you to attack against big creatures, only defend. And the deck is build for rush, not defending.

I've seen plenty of players managing to get something out of the blue/black deck, myself included. You have to be smart to get something out of it. Not the case with aow.

[dh50]

Faith's Fetters is by no means terrible in this format. As far as artifact/enchantment removal goes, it's weak, but it's certainly better than what exists in several other decks. It's useless against most enchantments but does lock down most artifacts. And it's flexible enough that it both gives you life and can lock down a big creature if the board requires it.

The deck actually defends quite well. A pure aggro build of AoW is probably the worst build for it in my opinion. It's not fast enough and its creatures aren't reliable enough. Playing it a little more defensively is more successful overall, in my experience. Cards like Rise of the Hobgoblins allow you do to do that - to stall until you have a better board position or a combat trick ready. And it can be useful on attack, giving your creatures first strike + a combat trick can end a big creature.

I've gotten plenty out of Rogue's Gallery too; I like playing it a lot, and I can win with it, but I still think it's substantially worse than Act of War. Both decks share the same weaknesses - poor enchantment/artifact removal (though AoW is better), poor removal (AoW is also better), and weak creatures. If the discard element of RG gets going then it can be great but it really only gets going if RG gets to play one of 2 5cc enchantments, or if you're playing against a deck with weak removal, since all of the discard is creature-based. I'm not saying Act of War is a good deck by any means but I'd pick it over Rogue's Gallery or Dream Puppets without hesitation.

[Mad]

I think the deck is a piece of ♥♥♥♥ be it on offense or defense but you are entitled to your opinion.

No resistance to hold off your ennemy, no punch without costly cards that need to stay on the table. Everything is easily predictable about this deck which doesn't help at all. Simply put you have no control and it kill the white part of the deck. The fact that the red cards don't allow you to make much damage or quickly overwhelm you opponements just make it so much worst.

And yes only a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ could come up with the idea of putting only 1 faith fetters in this already very slow deck. How the hell can you find that acceptable? The rest of the cards don't compensate at all compared to others decks!

As such they where dumb enought to repeat the process in other decks while putting infinite combo cards like mirror and extra turn. It's not very inviting to buy other dotp.