Shadowfist Deckbuilding 101 for New Players

Home > Shadowfist Newbie Help > Deckbuilding 101
[posted 13 Oct 2003; faction symbols added 5 Mar 2004]

So you've played with the preconstructed decks for a while now, and you're ready to take the next step: making your own deck. Here are some basic hints and examples to get you started. After you absorb this and try a few decks, move on to the more complicated articles and examples (once they're written :) Apologies for the table formatting, I'll work on improving it...

Deckbuilding 101: general info and advice
Example 1: Ascended multiplayer deck
Example 2: Ascended dueling deck
Example 3: Ascended / Architect multiplayer deck

Deckbuilding 101

There's only one hard rule for Shadowfist deck building: you may have no more than five copies of a card of the same title in your deck. That's it. No minimum or maximum total number of cards. No limits or minimums of any type of card. No cards have been banned from tournament play, although if you have Daedalus-edition cards, keep in mind that some of them have errata. (which is pretty similar to banning when you think about it, but it doesn't seem to upset people as much as the B-word :)

Before you build your deck, you need to decide if you'll use it in dueling or multiplayer. It's possible to design a deck that works regardless of the number of players, but you'll lose more often than you win unless everyone else is doing the same :) Dueling-specific decks tend to be small and very focused, to maximize your ability to hit hard early in the game. Multiplayer decks tend to be larger, with more longevity and a wider selection of cards to deal with more of what opponents might throw at you. Some people draw a further distinction between 3-player, 4-player, and 5+ player decks, but you'll have to decide for yourself after you get more experience.

I'm assuming you already have a preconstructed deck that you like. Obviously you'll need more cards if you want to tune it much. If you're just starting with the game, don't run out and buy a lot of boosters, since that will give you a very shallow selection of cards for any particular faction—in other words, you won't get much that's immediately useful to improve your particular preconstructed deck. The easiest thing to do is buy a second starter deck of the same faction, since you know you'll be getting cards you can use right now.

If you want to tune the deck on your own, one easy way to get started is to identify the "key" cards that consistently worked well for you in games (for example, Final Brawl, if you play the Dragons deck), add maybe 10-12 of those to your original starter deck, then go kick some butt. If you'd like a bit more in-depth advice before you tweak, read on!

The Recipe: 1 Cup Friends, 1 Cup Whup-Ass, Stir

There's no such thing as a generic deck recipe, and there are so many ways to look at deck construction that it's difficult to come up with truly usable guidelines. That doesn't stop anyone, of course :) You may have heard folks talk about the "rule of fives" for Shadowfist decks, and that's a reasonable way to start making your own decks. The guidelines I use break it down a little differently, but still in five main segments:

20% Foundation Characters
20% Feng Shui Sites
15-25% Hitters (stuff to inflict combat damage)
10-15% Power generation
15-20% Stuff to screw with your opponents

20% Foundation Characters

Foundation Characters provide 1 or more resources but don't require any. Your deck needs a bunch of them to make sure you draw one on the first turn; without them you won't be doing anything much.

The 1-cost foundation Characters are the most efficient in terms of power-per-resource (especially those that provide a talent as well, like Sinister Priest or Test Subjects), allowing you to build up your resources quickly. This is especially useful if you are playing more than one faction, where you need to build up two or more different kinds of resources simultaneously.

If you're playing a single faction, you can get away with fewer foundations. If you are playing more than one faction, then you definitely want to stay with the cheap foundations, and you might find you need more than 20% to guarantee drawing one of each faction early. And the ideal split is rarely even; you need to slant the mix according to the rest of the cards in the deck. For example, in a two-faction deck, the ideal split isn't 10% of each faction. If in the example deck, many of your Hand cards require 2 resources, but your Dragon cards require only 1, you should pack a few more Hand than Dragon foundations.

20% Feng Shui Sites

Unless you're doing something funky, you want a Feng Shui Site in your opening hand, and probably wouldn't mind seeing two so you can choose the best to start with. You may find you need a bit more or less than 20% to guarantee this, but you'll have to play your deck a few times to decide. When you're figuring the 20%, discount the FSS that require costs or resources, since you won't be able to play them on the first turn. (I usually consider them to be in the "power generating cards" category, rather than FSS, but you could count them as 1/2 FSS or something like that).

You should choose FSS that complement your other cards, or shore up your deck's weaknesses. For example, if you're aiming to keep a Character in play and build it up with States (ex. a Gun deck), you should pack sites that help you defend Characters, like Turtle Beach or Festival Circle. If you have Characters with attack-only abilities (like Ambush), you don't really want to intercept with them, so consider FSS that can take some punishment if you don't intercept, like Puzzle Garden or Temple of the Angry Spirits. And by now you've learned how annoying the "turn to..." sites can be, so you need a way to deal with them too ("suck it up" is a viable strategy, but if you want to be more reactive, consider finding some Whirlpools of Blood). This is critical in dueling decks because there are so many "turn to..." sites that can really mess you up if you can't deal with them, and there's no one else at the table to take the heat off you.

If you find you're at a total loss to decide which FSS are best for your deck, split them about half toward defensive abilities, and about half that can get extra power for you. Then post your deck to the Shadowfist forum and ask for advice :)

15-25% cards to inflict combat damage on your opponent's Characters and Sites.

This is what you need to actually win the game. Principally these are Characters with enough Fighting to grab a Site, but they might also be States that significantly increase Fighting or damage, etc. These are your "hitters," and you'll need them to seize or burn Feng Shui Sites. It's ok to use small Characters as long as you have some way to boost their damage or soften up the Sites first, and you can also make good use of medium-size Characters with punch-through abilities (Ambush, Superleap, Guts, etc.), but for beginners it's easier to go with the big Characters who also have good abilities. You can get janky later :)

A common deckbuilding mistake is to put in too few hitters or to rely too much on combos (small Characters + States, for example). Don't skimp on the hitters! The preconstructed decks are a little light on hitters, so don't use those decks as an example in this case. A common playing mistake is to hang on to powerful cards if they come up early in the game—you must be willing to discard a hitter if it comes up when you can't play it in the very near future (like in your opening hand). You'll be more willing to discard if you know that you have more hitters stocked in the deck.

10-15% cards that generate or reuse Power, such as non-Feng Shui Sites, Events that steal Power, etc.

This category also includes cards that let you play other cards at reduced cost (Dragon Throne), or cards that let you reuse other cards cheaply (Golden Comeback). This is a very important category; it's not always exciting, but you need to have alternate power generation for two reasons: (1) when you're being beaten, and need a way to get back into the game ("I spend 1 to play FSS. Done." is not getting back in the game :) and (2) to give you a sudden boost so you can grab one or two sites when no one expects you to.

15-20% interesting cards, like Events, States, support Characters with important abilities, or whatever you prefer to fit the theme of your deck.

"Stuff to screw with your opponent" is a good name for this category. Try to keep the cost of this stuff at the low end so you'll be able to play more of it, more often. Go with 0-cost and 1 resource requirement whenever you can.

Some cards may fit in more than one "slot" at a time—that's a good thing. The mark of a good card is that it can be used different ways depending on the situation. For example, Nine Dragon Temple is obviously in the Feng Shui Site category, but it can also generate extra Power for you. Don't get bogged down trying to push every card into a slot; this list is just a set of guidelines, and there are many other valid ways to break it down.

The preconstructed decks don't quite match this generic recipe—they were specifically constructed to be balanced against each other and to introduce new players to the game, so they have higher percentages of foundation Characters and Feng Shui Sites, and lower percentages of hitters and "other stuff." After you play with tuned decks, you may find that the games are getting faster or more lethal since you've got more cheap, effective stuff in there.

Don't be afraid to tinker with the mix, either. Play a few games and see what works, then tweak—add an extra Feng Shui Site if you never seemed to draw one when you needed it, or drop a foundation if you always had hands full of them. But don't tweak more than a few cards at a time, otherwise you'll be starting over on the learning curve.

back to top

Example 1: mono-faction Ascended multiplayer deck

I'm taking the easy road for this example, and starting with the Ascended deck from 10,000 Bullets. The Ascended's power cards from the original Limited Edition are still legendary, so much so that a large number of cards in Red Wedding seem specifically aimed to take them down another notch. Be aware that you may be accused of being cheesy if you play this deck, but using really good cards in a deck never bothered me :)

If you apply my guidelines to the starter deck, here's what it looks like:

24% Foundation
24% FSS
12% Hitters
8% Power
32% Stuff

There's plenty of room for argument in this (even assuming you agree with my guidelines in the first place :) since I put the guns and the little non-foundation guys in the "Stuff" category. You could count them in the hitter category, but the deck isn't optimized for a "little guy buffed up with States" approach, so I didn't. I also count Shadowy Mentor as a hitter, since that's what you use it for most of the time. The Power section is a bit light, although it is backed up by the dual-duty Feng Shui Sites like Nine Dragon Temple, Garden of Bronze, and Family Home that can get extra Power for you in the right circumstances.

Let's assume we have two copies of this deck to work with, and tune for multiplayer to start (later on we'll do a dueling tune). I like to start out aiming for 60 cards, for no reason other than 60 cards in sleeves happens to fit nicely in the little plastic boxes I have :) For a multiplayer deck, I usually end up between 50 and 70 cards after tuning. A deck smaller than 50 can work, but you have to win quickly or have lots of recycling to avoid decking. And decks much larger than 70 can work quite well too, I just don't like shuffling them :)

When I put together a deck, I usually start with a theme or with a few cards that I'd like to combo as the core, then add support cards and foundations. In this case, the card pool is very small so that's not easy. Looking at what we've got to work with, the classic Family Estate / Pledged combo jumps out (although diluted by Cops), so I'm going to use that as the core. It can't be the only thing going for us since we only have 2 Family Estates, but it's a start.

First, both Family Estates go in. They fall into a couple of "slots": they generate Power, provide resources, and let you play Pledged guys at reduced cost. It's a top-tier card. It's only drawback is that it takes damage when Lodge characters buy the farm, but that's usually easy enough to work around simply by avoiding Lodge characters (note that the Estate takes damage when any Lodge character goes down, not just yours, but we won't worry about that since we can't influence your opponents' decks). We may not be able to completely leave out the Lodge guys because of our limited card pool, but let's take a shot at it.

With this in mind, now walk through the categories and make a first attempt at slotting cards. First, the foundations we have to work with are:

For a 60 card deck, 20% foundations is 12 cards. Since this deck is mono-faction, and the Family Estate also provides resources, we won't need that many. I'm going to start at 11, you will likely find that you can go even less than that. I like to emphasize the cheap foundations so you can get started quickly, and with this pool of cards it's not hard to choose since the more expensive foundations don't have any whiz-bang abilities to offset their higher cost.

Start with 5 Student of the Bear. They're cheap, and Pledged. Fill in with 2 Liquidators; they're Pledged too, but their special ability won't be very useful in this deck since we're planning to avoid Lodge characters. Keep the number low because they cost 3 Power, so you don't really want them to come up early or before you have a Family Estate out. Add 4 SWAT Team to get to 11 foundations—not the best fit for a Family Estate/Pledged deck since they're not Pledged, but they are playable on your opening turn if you play a Feng Shui Site first, and you might get a wee boost from Captain Liu (that, and they're all we've got to choose from :)

Skip Feng Shui Sites until the end. I almost always choose the FSS last, after I see what my deck isn't otherwise doing well.

We're at 13 cards so far. Next, look at the hitters and think about how you are planning to take sites from your opponents. Small guys with buffing from States? Events to soften up first? Big guys who can take sites by themselves? For hitters and cards that can inflict combat damage, the pool is:

We can't quite concentrate on small guys with buffing, or with big guys, so we'll have to do a little of both. Put in both copies of Captain Liu since he's the biggest Pledged guy we have. Both copies of Phillipe as well, but we'll need to include some of the guns to buff him up so he can take Sites on his own. Folks coming from other games may hesitate to put in more than one copy of a Unique guy like Phillipe or Liu, but in Shadowfist that's not usually a problem: these guys die. Often. And Unique only matters while they're in play. Plus if one comes up on an early turn, (say it with me) you'd like to be able to discard him and know that you have another coming later.

Four big-ish guys out of 60 isn't enough. I don't like Bleys in this deck, since he's only 6 Fighting, Lodge (potentially hurts our Family Estates), and his special ability is best used in a deck where you also have Superleapers or something to take real advantage of it. He's not useless, but we'll set him aside for now. On the other hand, Rachel definitely goes in, for two reasons: (1) her immunity ability is very useful to get past some of the popular defensive Sites and (2) she and Liu are the highest Fighting cards you have. We'll have to live with the fact that she's Lodge.

In the mid-range, the choice is easy: Jaded Cop. He has a useful immunity, and we don't have anyone else. He's on the small side, so normally you'd have something else to pump him up; we'll have to make do with the guns here. Start with 3 of him. Why 3, and not 4 or 2? We'd like the Cop to show up around the 3rd turn; earlier than that and he's discard bait. I like 3's for stuff that I'd like to draw kind of soon, but not too soon. I can discard one early if necessary, and know that I have a reasonable chance of seeing one of the remaining two in the near future. Your mileage may vary.

There is no one in the utility character class here (like a Swiss Banker), only the Gruff Lieutenants who might work as fast hitters. The Gruffs are best used in a deck with Explosives or something similar so you can play them very quickly and hit hard before your opponent has defenses in place. Arming them with guns is ok, but not nearly as effective. Still, they come out for free from the Estate, and they get a boost from Captain Liu, so we'll put 3 in.

We need the guns to help out the <5 Fighting guys, so both Shotguns go in (+3 damage is quite nice), and 2 of the Sub-Machine Guns. The SMGs aren't huge, but they work fairly well with the Stealthers in this deck, since the SMG can take out small interceptors, then our guy Stealths whoever is left. I'm not enamored of the new Sports Car, although it is better than the Limited Ed. version and we could use a bit more buffing. Put one in for now. We'll check again at the end when we look at the card count.

Now we're up to 30 cards, and we need to add some Stuff. The main problem with Ascended Stuff is that it's all so good, it's hard to choose from sometimes :)

Shadowy Mentor is huge. You gain a large character and your opponent loses a large character; the net change in Fighting is tremendous. It's the card 2nd-most likely to make you hated by your friends, if you play it often enough. We'll put in all 4 :) No, not just to piss off your friends. It's that good, plus it makes up for the fact that we're still a bit light on big hitters. Why bring your own when you can use your opponents' ?

Operation Killdeer is useful on offense (to push past an interceptor) or defense (to nullify a big guy coming in). It's another of the top-tier cards, and we'll use all 4. Don't make the mistake of hoarding these until someone big hits the board—use them to get a small guy through to take a Site, or to protect one of your Stealthers. Card flow, remember?

We still need some way to get more Power. We've only got two to choose from, so we'll use both. Mole Network's success depends on your metagame—if there are a lot of Hackers around, it's dangerous. But we'll put in two, because it can be very painful to your opponent if it works. Bull Market often gets passed over by new players, thinking "why would I want to give my opponent Power?" Answer: when you don't care if he has it, such as when he has few cards, or he already has a lot of Power, or you're going to play a Character that's immune to what he might throw at you. Usually you'll play this card during your turn, when you want to play a big Character and grab a site. But you might also use it as a defense in a multiplayer game, to let other people spend their ill-gotten gains to stop an attempt to win, and (ideally) leave you set up to take a shot at the win on your own turn. Put both in.

The other cards are more special-purpose. Faked Death helps us out by replaying one of our few hitters, so include one just in case. Realpolitik gets rid of pesky States and Edges; I usually stock one in all my Ascended decks, so we'll put one in here too.

Suicide Mission is another card that's tough for newbies to get a handle on. The card's apparent use is a last-ditch defense, by taking out a large attacking character. The less obvious use is to play it on yourself—you can smoke the target of the attack (automatically causing the attack to fail), and since the other part of the effect is "may" you can choose not to smoke a second card you control. How generous of you :) Put both in, and spend some time learning how to play this card well. Trust me, it's worth it.

Security is last on the list, and it doesn't make the cut. 1 Power for an extra 4 Body isn't worth it unless you've built your deck to take advantage of it (big sites, lots of healing, etc.), and that's not this deck. You're better off saving your Power, or using it to pay for a Suicide Mission to nail your weak Site before someone else can take it (you can do that by surprise, after all, and ruin a perfectly good attack).

That brings us up to 46 cards. Now that the rest of the deck is more or less set, let's choose the most appropriate FSS to back it up. We'll aim for 12 (20% of the original 60-card target) to begin.

The 10,000 Bullets Ascended deck didn't get any of the classic power FSS (Fox Pass, Kinoshita House, etc.) so you're going to be light on defense, but there's still some good stuff in here.

Start with a selection of power-gaining cards: both Nine Dragon Temples make a good start, plus one each Jade Valley and Golden Mile. Garden of Bronze never seems to pay off for me (usually it's the Garden getting burned, not an FSS in front of it), so let's go with one Family Home to round out this block. It's low Body, but that extra Power can help a lot. Just remember to use it!

Defense-wise, the two City Parks are a must. It's an amazing card, even after the errata. I'm not a big fan of Curio Shop since it works best against weenie decks and I don't run into many of those, so let's go with one Fireworks Factory instead, as punishment for taking our sites. Stone Garden isn't hideous, but let's leave it out for now because the Body is low.

We could use some help with our Characters, so let's pack both Nightclubs (damage to interceptors helps to get the Stealthers through, like SMG) and both City Hospitals. I'm leaving out Birdhouse Cafe for now; it's not a bad card but I think the Nightclubs and Hospitals may work better in this deck.

That's a total of 58 cards, not bad for a start but it means our FSS is a bit over the 20% mark. You could drop one FSS, but I'd say play the deck a couple of times before you do that. Here's the list:

20,000 Bullets of Pure Cheese

Where this deck could use more improvement:

That could be an entire article on its own :) Building a deck from a small pool of cards isn't likely to get you a top-tier deck, although this deck isn't crap. Two things would immediately improve the deck, by improving its focus: 1 or 2 more Family Estates, and more Pledged hitters and foundations. Adrienne Hart (Ltd., CWOS) and/or Shinobu Yashida (NW, SS) are the two best & biggest hitters that aren't in here already. The deck will run much faster if the SWAT Teams and Liquidators are swapped out for cheap Pledged foundations like The Pledged or Student of the Shark. The Suits work better than Liquidators in this deck as well.

The Gruffs and Jaded Cops need some help, too. Either add more powerful damage-increasers (Explosives, etc.), or swap them out for beefier mid-range Characters (but then you'll run into the fact that the Ascended don't have a lot of mid-range Characters to choose from; Blue Cardinal's Guards are probably the best non-Lodge option).

back to top

Example 2: mono-faction Ascended dueling deck

You've seen how to put two 10,000 Bullets starters together to make a better multiplayer deck. What happens if we start with the same mix but tune for dueling instead?

For a dueling tune, the small card pool we're starting with is really going to hurt. We don't have access to some of the Ascended's best cards, notably Bite of the Jellyfish and the practically-mandatory-for-dueling Covert Operation. The focus of the deck will be weak, which is workable in multiplayer but a killer in dueling. That's not to say that the deck will be really bad, just that it will not hold up against a well-tuned dueling deck. If the other folks in your playgroup are all using decks built from small card pools, you'll be fine, but don't take it to GenCon and expect to kick butt and take names, you won't do either :)

A dueling deck gets built the same way as a multifaction deck, except it's more important to have a clear, consistent focus in the deck. You are not so concerned with being able to handle anything that might be thrown at you; you are more concerned with doing one (or maybe two) things well, and doing them quickly. Supplement that with counters for a few effects that could really shut down the deck, and you're ready.

I aim for 45-50 cards for the first cut at a dueling deck. I've gone as low as 25 in a fast hitting or highly recursive deck (TurboCHAR and TurboCorpse are the classics in this category [link to deck listing, eventually] ), but most of the time I like to have a bit more flexibility and be out of easy reach of a discard deck. Now, I'm also not a really good dueler, so keep that in mind :)

Because we're starting with the same card pool, the decisions we make and the cards we end up with are going to look a lot like the multiplayer deck, so I'll concentrate on the differences.

Keep both Family Estates since that's our focus (too weak for dueling, really, but it's all we have...). Assuming 45 cards, that means we're aiming for 9 foundations to get 20%. I'll go with 8 because the Estates help out. You really don't want to stall on the first turn in a duel, so you might find that you need 9, but try it a few times before you bump it up. Stick with the cheap foundations to make sure you can play them quickly: 5 Student of the Bear and 3 SWAT Team.

The big hitters stay the same, since we don't have any choices. For the little guys, drop one of each, and also drop a Sub-Machine Gun and the Sports Car. Drop one Shadowy Mentor too; the smaller deck size means we'll almost always see one too early if we stay with 4.

Drop the Faked Death (our hitter/deck size ratio is better now) and one of the Suicide Missions (you're only using it for last-ditch defense anyway, so we don't need a lot of them). If you find a lot of Hackers in your playgroup, put these two back in and drop the two Mole Networks instead.

For FSS, we want to drop 3. Get rid of Family Home (small Body) and both City Hospitals (the payback FSS are more important for us than healing, I think, but feel free to swap them if you find that the payback isn't working for you).

That gets us down to 45 cards. The problem this deck will have is that it can't hit particularly hard in the early game, so you need to hold opponents off (Operation Killdeer is great for that) until you can use Shadowy Mentor to grab their big character, or play one of your own big guys. Let the payback FSS work for you—don't be afraid to let a Nine Dragon Temple go if you'll get the payoff, especially if you have a City Park in your hand that you can drop in response to a burn.

NGBT (Not Good, But Tolerable) Dueling Deck

Where this deck could use more improvement:

Pretty much the same stuff as the multiplayer deck, although the most important card to add would be Covert Operation, followed by Bite of the Jellyfish. The Coverts are very powerful in dueling—use them early to make sure your opponent stalls (toss a foundation character or FSS), use them later to toss cards that can ruin your deck, or a big hitter you can't deal with. (it's a good card in multiplayer too, but you run the risk of destabilizing the table if you induce a stall in one player only). You may not actually need to add the Bite, just the presence of Ascended resources in your pool makes experienced opponents assume you have one. But I like to have at least one to punish the risk-takers who burn anyway :)

back to top

Example 3: dual faction Ascended/Architect multiplayer deck

Next let's build a dual-faction deck, aimed at multiplayer. I won't bother with dueling, since a dual-duel deck needs to be really well focused, and that's just not going to happen if we're using preconstructed starters for source material.

I picked the Architects deck from 10,000 Bullets to complement the Ascended we've already been messing with. The Ascended are great at screwing with their opponents, and the Architects are great at killing their opponent's Characters, plus they bring a truly excellent mid-range hitter to the table (CHAR). It's a match made in heaven (and in more well-tuned versions, has won major tournaments).

A dual-faction deck starts out the same way as a mono-faction deck: you need a focus of some kind. In this case, we'll keep the Pledged engine and good cheap events from the Ascended deck, and use the good Architects hitters and powerful events to back that up. (this is multiplayer, remember? It doesn't have to be a very well focussed focus :) Last time we started to build the deck with foundation characters, but in a dual-faction deck you need to see what else you'll be packing before you decide on how to split the foundations between the two factions. We'll aim for 60 cards again, which means we'll leave 12 slots aside for foundations.

If I don't have a specific combo in mind, I start building the deck by identifying the big hitters. I've added one more piece of information to the tables—the number of resources required by each card. For a dual faction deck, try to keep the resource requirements at a minimum. I usually try to keep one faction at one resource, and the other at two or less resources. Depending on the faction, you may be able to handle more resource requirements (ex., Dragons, who have cards like Dirk Wisely's Gambit to help get resources quickly), but let's keep it simple to start.

There are a lot of Characters that require a lot of resources :) There is no obvious split here, but if we limit ourselves to Characters requiring 2 or fewer resources we'll only have four hitters. We could use the Ascended as the resource-heavy half of the split since we'll have Family Estate helping us out, but we've already done that in the first example, so this time the Architects will be the resource-heavies, and we'll limit the Ascended to a support role.

Put all the Architects hitters in to start. Magog will be borderline because he's expensive and requires a lot of resources, but he'll be the deck's big truck. If he comes up early, discard him without even thinking about it. From the Ascended side, put in Phillipe. He takes two resources, but his Stealth will come in handy if we can get him into play. Leave out the 3-resource Ascended guys. We're at 7 cards so far.

Next let's look at the support characters, and hopefully they'll work with the Architects bias we just decided on.

Not a whole lot to choose from. The Vivisectors go in, since they'll give us some power-reuse (attack with a big guy, sacrifice him, use the power to play another big guy and attack again). They can also serve to stop attempts to take control of your characters—if Viv is unturned, you can turn him in response to the Mentor or Tortured Memories to sacrifice the guy with the wavering loyalties. They're much better in a deck that has a lot of recycling, but they'll still be useful here. For mid-range Characters, it's Jaded Cop vs. Blood Reaver in the big cage match. The Reaver's ability is good, but with steep resource requirements they don't come out early, and that's when we want to see the mid-range guys. Go with Jaded Cop. The Gruff Lieutenants may be more useful in this deck than the pure Ascended deck since the Architect side of the house brings more States to the mix. Plus they're free with Family Estate, so go with 2 for now. That brings us up to 13 cards, which still leaves us a lot of room for more.

Now let's look at power generation. It's going to be a bit on the bleak side...

Put in the Family Estate to help with the Ascended resources, and for the occasional free Pledged guy. I like to have at least 2 non-Feng Shui Sites in a 60 card deck, so put in the Abominable Lab as well. It's ability probably won't help much, but it will generate power. Bull Market and Dangerous Experiment are both likely to be out of reach because of the resource requirements. It's possible to play them in multifaction decks if the decks are tuned well, but with only one copy in our deck, we won't get consistent results from game to game. Leave them both out. On the other hand, the Helix Rethreads can work quite well, and the Moles too (depending on the metagame), so put all of those in. That's 20 cards now; we have room for 16 more in our 60 card deck (12 for foundation plus 12 for FSS leaves us 36 for the rest, for those too lazy to do the math :)

Stuff is up next. The Architects don't have a lot of variety, but what they do have is pretty good.

The good news here is that this stuff is all low on resources. We'll start with the no-brainer power cards: both Shadowy Mentors, both Operation Killdeers, all 3 Nerve Gasses and Neutron Bomb. The Ascended cards you already know about from the first example. Nerve Gas is a great Character-removal card (I like Imprisoned better, but since we don't have that in the mix...), and the ability to clear the entire table with The Bomb offsets its high cost. Just remember to Bomb first, then play a hitter, not the other way around :)

We have 8 more to choose from. The Buro Godhammer is the best small gun in the game, so put both of those in (great with the Stealth guys, and CHAR). The Arcanotanks are good but expensive, so they won't make an early game combo with our Stealthers. Since we're a bit light on beefy Characters, put two in. Leave out the Tank Warfare; we don't have enough tanks to make it matter often. I've already mentioned my fondness for 1 Realpolitik in a deck, so put it in. Throw in the Faked Death since we're light on hitters (and if you have a Vivisector out, you can attack, sac, Faked Death, then play the same guy and attack again.). Round out the mix with the Shotgun and one SMG. I would also put in the Suicide Mission, even though it takes two resources, because it's such a good win-denial card.

Now we're at 37 cards, one over the target. That's not worth adjusting the foundation and FSS counts for, so let's press on to foundations.

We need to keep the foundations as cheap as possible; ideally you'll play one each on the first turn and get most of the resources you need for the deck. Since we biased the hitters toward Architects, put in a few more of their foundations: split the 12 cards 7 and 5. The Ascended are easy; put in all 5 Student of the Bear. For the Architects, the 5 Test Subjects go in because they're cheap, and the two other slots get filled with the CDCA Scientist because they provide Tech. That's a better card in high multiples, but we can't afford the slowdown due to the 2-cost. Assault Squad doesn't make the cut, we don't get Tech, nor does their ability seem to kick in very often.

And last but not least, the FSS. I merged the FSS from the two decks to make it easier to see the multiples.

Looking first at cards to help us with power, put in both Nine Dragon Temples, 1 Jade Valley, and 1 Golden Mile. I like Night Market better than Family Home or Garden of Bronze; it always more than pays for itself for me, although several talented players I know scoff at it (it pays off very well for me in games with them :) If you hate it, swap it.

Looking at defense, there's still none of the traditional high-caliber turning Sites, but City Park is nothing to sneeze at. Put both in. Add one Fireworks Factory for payback.

Since we're packing a lot of denial events (Nerve Gas, Operation Killdeer, etc.) that may not be immediately playable but we'd like to hold on to until they are useful, add Temple of Celestial Mercy to boost hand size.

Put in two Nightclubs to help punch through interceptors, and one City Hospital to heal our own guys. If your metagame has a lot of events (i.e., lots of other Ascended and Architect players :) consider Floating Restaurant instead of City Hospital.

Ok, that puts us at 61 cards. Don't tweak it further until you've had a chance to play it a couple of times. Here's the list:

GM (Genetically Modified) Cheese

Where this deck could use more improvement:

More CHAR. Any deck with a little CHAR can benefit from more CHAR :) Dumping Magog for cheaper, less resource-intensive hitters would speed the deck up.

The deck needs a bit more power than it can reliably generate. More alternate power generation would be helpful (Mobius Garden or Monkey House could help), but you'd get a better boost from Proving Ground to reduce the cost of your characters (of course, then you might be obligated to put in Whirlpool of Blood, to cancel your opponents' Whirlpools when they try to cancel your Proving Ground).

If the deck plays inconsistently or too slowly, you can drop all the Ascended guys except for the foundations (and you could probably drop a FSS too). You lose the Stealth guys but still keep all the juicy Events.

back to top

After you've mastered the art of two-starter-deck deckbuilding, you're ready to move on to free-form deckbuilding. I'll get that article written eventually, but for now, use the guidelines above and don't be afraid to make some mistakes :)

<< Why play Shadowfist? | Sample Games | Hints for Newbies >>

back to top

Legal Stuff | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | About Me | Contact Me