Ok, so it’s come to my attention that there is a decent amount of people coming to this game from outside of the card gaming community. For me, deck building is something that I thoroughly enjoy and find very rewarding since I come from a diverse card gaming background . This often makes me unaware of the fact that so many players are intimidated by it or just flat out refuse to do it. I’d like to change all that, and while I realize it may be something that you never come to enjoy the way I do, I truly hope this article can help even 1 person take that leap to start deck building.
Honestly deck building at this point in the game’s life is really pretty limiting. The card pool is relatively low overall and for 2 of the aspects there’s barely any to choose from. On top of that, there’s a limited number of heroes to choose from and each of them will come with 15 cards that must be included in your main deck.
Let’s start at the beginning. Choose a hero and an aspect. Ok great! You now have 15 cards to start with, and have limited your pool to choose from to 1 aspect and the neutral cards. Now I would strongly recommend only selecting 40 cards for your decks so that you get to see your best cards more often (these are usually the signature cards tied to your hero). This means we need 25 more cards and that’s all you have to worry about.
Well, let’s start cutting that number down. There are 3 generic resource cards in the form of Strength, Energy, and Genuis that I include in every deck I build unless I’m doing something extremely specialized. In addition to that there are the “Power of X” cards that I also include in just about every deck. So that takes us down to just 20 cards left to really build a deck. How hard could 20 be?
Next up we have allies. Now allies are some of the strongest cards you can include in any deck simply because they do whatever they were designed to do and then, they jump in front of a metaphorical bullet for you. This is extremely valuable for keeping you and the rest of your team alive. I would advise players to run between 4 and 5 allies in any given deck and probably a few more in a Leadership deck. Also keep in mind that these allies are a great way to put that “Power of X” resource card to good use. Your signature hero set will come with 1 ally so selecting 4 more will give you 16 more cards to fill your deck.
With just 16 spots left in our deck we come to another phase of deck building where we look at cards that are commonly good in almost any deck and determine if it’s a card we want or not for whatever reason. For me these are cards like Avenger’s Mansion, Helicarrier, and Endurance. I wouldn’t limit this phase to just 3 cards but these are 3 cards that I find myself at least looking at for all of my decks. I tend to cut the Carrier if I don’t think resources are going to be an issue. Good examples of this would be in a Captain America deck where you have access to his Super Soldier Serum. This one is a judgment call that you will have to make for yourself though. It’s really gonna depend what hero you selected and what cards come in their 15 from here on out.
That leaves us with 13ish cards left. These cards will be the cards that you find yourself liking in the aspect you selected for the most part (aside from allies). A few things to keep in mind while you go through this process are how much each of these cards cost to play as well as what type of resource they possess. Varying the costs of cards in your deck can really help you play out your hand each round which will likely increases the efficiency of your turns. The resource type isn’t always relevant but in some cases, like with the Hulk or the Vision it can impact your decisions on what cards to include. I would also encourage you to take into consideration what stipulations or requirements a card has for it to be played. Examples could include Relentless Assult requiring a minion to be in play. Having some of these cards is great because they have lots of value but it’s always good to include cards that you can play in almost any situation as well.
Well that about does it for Deck Building 101. I hope you found this useful in some way and I’m so grateful you read it! As always, if you are interested in more content please stay tuned here for more articles, as well as checking out The Side Scheme on FB, YouTube, Twitch, Patreon, and wherever you listen to Podcasts. I’m Tommy of Titan ominously drifting into the shadows.