Hey everyone, Reygon here once again with some more Alpha Clash content! Today we will be diving into deck building basics!
Deck building is simply the act of choosing which cards and how many of each card to include. Alpha Clash has some basic deck building rules that I will layout before we start. There is a full and more detailed list of rules in the rule book as well.
A deck Contains 60 cards. At the start of each game 10 cards are removed and is known as “pre boarding”. So in simple terms, your deck will contain 50 cards once you start a game and 10 cards you put into your sideboard.
Each deck will also have a contender that is not counted to your 60 card list. This card acts as the leader of your deck and usually sets the theme of cards you select.
The maximum number of copies of any one card allowed is 4.
A deck may only have 1 unrivaled card or up to 4 rivaled cards, but never both.
There are many concepts when deck building but I am going to focus on a few that I see as most important and fundamental to building a deck.
How many different colors should i play?
How many cards of each color should i play and how does specific resources affect this?
How many copies of each should i play?
Win conditions, card advantage, and Interaction requirements.
How many colors should I play?
Right now the simple answer is between 1 and 3. The more colors you play the less consistent your deck becomes, because if you do not have the right resources you cant play the cards in your hand. But on the other end, if you play more colors you have access to a larger card pool to build your deck from. Anything more than 3 in a 50 card deck will result in too much variability to support with the current resource system. Is it possible to play 4 or 5 colors? Of course it is, you will just be less consistent game in and game out resulting in a less than optimal win rate.
How many cards should I play of each color and how does specific resources affect this?
At a minimum, I suggest playing at least 12 cards of each color you are playing. Running 12 works when I am "splashing" a color, which simply means a minimum of amount of cards with low specific resource. So when looking at my Shadowblade list, I am running all blue cards except 4 copies of Denver and 4 copies of bombardment. Both Denver and Bombardment only have 1 black specific resource and I am only playing 8 cards that require that resource so I would firmly classify this as "splashing". But Reygon, you said you need a minimum of 12 of each color include don't you? Well yes, that's where dual color cards come in and why they are so powerful. I am also running 4 copies of the bound shadow blade, 1 copy of bound krung, and 1 copy of the legendary krung that produces both black and blue resources. So you add up my dual color cards and my 8 black cards and you get 4+4+4+1+1 = 14 black producing cards! A deck that utilize bound cards for both resource and playing have a distinct advantage over others that cant.
So then looking at a deck that is more balanced between two colors such as my Cadavros list, you will need to evaluate more specifically. Cadavros specifically care about running high specific cost cards to enable his contender ability which makes deck building a bit tricker. I am running both Green and Black but both colors are equally important to the decks ability to function. You need green resources to play your high green specific resource cards such as Vile Virtuoso and Deranged Alchemist but your Trugg, Rizlac, and Thragor all need 2 black specific resources to play. So here we are looking to be more balanced between the two colors to balance the ability to play both. This would not simply be splashing but a more balanced two color deck. But knowing I am playing green cards with 3 and 4 specific cost cards, It doesn't make sense to add 3+ specific cost black card as it will be too difficult to play consistently. Once again, Cavaros gets to utilize the green black bound cards and the legendary as both resources and effective tools to play in the deck.
One example of a mistake I used to see quite a bit was playing two different powerful 6 cost clash cards, such as Khagan, the Dragon and Death, the Endbringer. One has 4 specific green and the other has 4 specific black required to play. Imagine you drew both of these cards in your opening hand. You would have to make a decision as early as turn 1, what color am i going to resource to ensure I can play my card on turn 6. If i choose green, its likely that i wouldn't then have enough black resources to play the option until about turn 8 making these 2 cards functionally impossible to play with each other. So just be sure you pay attention to specific resource and not to choose ones that work against the game plan.
If you want to get technical, there are advanced mathematics done by the TCG community to tell you the amount optimal distribution needed. But I play this game for fun and I am not looking to do math homework to build my decks, so i prefer to just stick to my rules of thumb established over the years!
How Many Copies of Each Card Should I play?
In general you should try to play 4 of each card as often as possible. Once again the reason for this comes down to maximizing the consistency of your deck. The more copies of a card you have, the more likely you will be to draw it during a game. The ability of a deck to consistently perform its game plan each game is paramount to creating a powerful deck. One common mistake I see is a deck with a bunch of 1-3 copies of cards. The cards you have might be good and be what you need in a certain situation, but the odds of you drawing a card that you have only 2 of in your deck is fairly low and result in lower consistency. If you know you want to see a card in your starting hand or want to have multiple copies per game, you should always have 4 copies of that card in your deck. Think of Morac, the Devour in that Cadavros list. I know i want one every single game, and having 2 in not a bad thing, so i know i need to have all 4 copies in my deck. Now when it comes to higher costed cards, you can sometimes get away with only running 2 or 3 copies because you have more opportunities to draw cards through the game reducing the chance you don't draw it at all. So a card like Machina, Unstoppable force costs 7 resources. Which means i have roughly 7 turns to draw extra cards to see 1 of my 2 or 3 copies. But when it comes to a rule of thumb, you should try to have as many 4x copies of cards in your decks unless you can specifically justify running less.
Sometimes you will see decks running only 1 copy of a card and these can usually be accounted to things called "silver bullets" A silver bullet is simply 1 copy of a card that you like to have 1 of but usually dont need more than that. A good example is Clarity, From the shadows or Clarity, Bad Omen. Where one is really good but two is unnecessary or impossible due to exclusive tag. But almost always, silver bullet cards are located within a deck that allows you to search your deck get it to your hand if needed. Morac and Grant park are the best examples here. I can use my morac trigger enter at any point in the game to find my 1 copy of Clarity to take out their big machina! Your win condition often correlates to style of play your deck is built around.
Win Condition
A win condition is simply your “plan” to win the game. It can be as simple as playing clash cards and attacking each turn or as complicated as a one turn kill combo with non clash damage or even reaching enough backpack counters with Haven. You just need to have a plan on how you want to win and cards that best enable that strategy. Aggro decks like to win fast but control decks can look to just out value your opponent until their win condition closes out the game in a slow, safe and calculated manner. Each has their benefits and draw backs. If you don't have a clear path to victory, your deck can become inconsistent with too many or too few paths to victory. You usually want to stick with a main game plan then maybe 1 backup plan if it can fit neatly into your main plan. Cadavros' main win plan includes getting as many lord krungs into play as quickly as possible and attacking with a big army of discarded. But it also has the backup plan of relying on the Thragor legendary to attack for big chunks to win the game out of nowhere just in case they are able to consistently kill your army and keep it off the field of play. If they are consistently removing clash cards from play and Cadavros is consistently discarding cards, the amount of cards in your oblivion results in a perfect big attack with Thragor. So knowing those factors, Thragor fits seamlessly into the main plan so using it as a backup win condition makes sense for this deck.
Another thing to note is that just because a win condition is good one one deck doesnt mean its good in another. So once again back to the Cadavros list. He can rely on using morac and krung beucase he can both repeatedly play each card to get get them back from interaction and get the 4x into play to put in pressure quickly. A deck like death, while also being a black based deck and can use some reanmiation style cards, cant utilize morac and krung as effectively. But she can use a better use death cards to act as both the win conditions and card advantage engine at the same time.
Card Advantage
Decks also need to ensure they have card advantage or a card advantage engine, sometimes just called engine for short. This is just simply a way to draw extra cards to ensure you have a card or “action” to take each turn. If no way to get access to more cards you can easily get stuck top decks and just hoping you draw the perfect card at the start of your turn which is rare. Card engines are not just drawing cards but ways you can access more cards. Torque can doe this simply by drawing a card each time he takes non clash damage but someone like Genesis accomplishes this by having access to cards in their resource zone giving them a wider array of cards to access without actually have to draw more cards. At the end of the day, if you cant keep up in card advantage it usually results into more losses than wins. Most card advantage engines are tied to your contender but not always the case. Cadavros utilizes cards like morac and the bound cadavros to get card advantage by repeatedly playing the same cards over and over but a contender like death gets to draw cards from their own death cards getting defeated or sent to oblivion encouraging her to play plenty of Death cards. A contender like Haven, Binding time has not card draw, but has access to the blue clash buffs that allow her to draw 2 cards! Also, her second ability allows her to reduce the cards in her opponents hand giving her effective card advantage as well.
Interaction
Interaction is simply finding ways to disrupt your opponent from executing their game plan while you try to execute yours. You need enough cards to make sure you deal with your opponents threats while not having so much interaction that you slows your plan down so much that you cant win. Interaction can be as simple as using Solar Smash to kill their Lord Krung, Ruthless Warlord before they get to many in play. It could be running Magnate’s plan to take out their Heavy Power Armor they snuck out with suit up. A good deck builder needs to understand what the “meta” might be and try to position their interaction suite to best deal with decks or cards they might encounter the most. I generally like to have at least one way to deal with a clash card, an accessory, and a clash ground. There are exceptions to the rule for interaction, such as you are playing a deck where your main interaction is winning so fast and efficient that you dont care what your opponent is doing. Some aggro and combo lists take this approach and just force your opponents to stop you before its too late. Remember beating a player removes all their cards from play haha! Having a diversity of interaction for clash cards can be important as well. If you only play Non clash damage interaction, cards such as torque, the uncontrollable or high defense clash cards can be immune or resistant to your interaction. In general control decks run lots of interaction and less win condition cards, aggro decks run more win conditions and less interactions that cheap and efficient, where mid range decks run somewhere in the middle.
In summary, deck building is a personal experience where you can express your creativity and play style. If you stick to the basics noted you can usually count on your deck being at least fairly competitive with most other decks. When it comes to making a deck being tournament viable, you need to to take optimization to another level and evaluate every single card and interaction. There are so many builds out there to be explored. Just because the deck you play currently isn't "meta" doesn't mean your build couldn't warp the format! Get out there, brew your decks, and share with the community!
Thanks for reading! :)
Reygon