A thread set to collect experiences on sucessful deck building for PvP, meant to complement the already existing thread "How to Become a Better Player" that deals with your playstyle once you are on the board and cards are dealt. This thread however deals with the stage before you jump out of the plane, the time in your keep when you carefully fold your parachute. So share your insights, checklists and routines! I think its best we have a groundrule concerning specific builds - don't clog the thread here with full postings of teams. You may use builds to illustrate why the deckbuilding is thight, but either link to them if they got their own thread or use the spoiler tags to hide full listings. Respect that this thread is meant to collect thoughts and opinions, not to discuss them in lenghty essays. ► Here a few thoughts of mine to start things off: You usually would build your deck with two things in mind. Surprise, you have to work with the items you got. Secondarily, but not really an optional factor, your build has to take the environment into account.That also means you cant expect a finished build to withstand map changes, your own way up the elo ladder or even overall trends triggered by the daily deal (e.g. the Bloodchooper peak) or a incititing forum post (Nova Axe). There is a rythm to the PvP spread of builds. You can join, adapt to and counter popular mainstream builds and thereby work for them to move on as well. Or you can defy anticipations that are often triggered by team composition alone and toy with the expectations shaped by popularity. Don't confuse popular with unrivaled. Plenty of builds can compete, but you are a big part of what makes it work. You play for the matches, have fun.
My time in my keep is some of the most fun I have with the game. Thus, I'm thrilled to be able to share some of my tips/tricks! For someone who is just starting multiplayer, like Robauke stated above, the key is working well with what you have. I'd recommend sorting your items by rarity and finding some keystone items. Keystone items are items that make you say "Wow I would love to use that!", but also support the rest of your items as a keystone brick in an archway supports all the others. A prime example of this, and one I have first hand experience with, is Impenetrable Nimbus. I had a ton of Shielding Tokens early on and 2 Nimbus Blades. This allowed me to build a rare, well focused priest that could support other characters (albeit in the simplest of manners -- preventing damage). Once you have 1 solid build to work with, determine what it needs to be successful. For example, my nimbus priest has very little damage output, and so to compensate, and to take advantage of Nimbus, I ran 2 warriors with as much movement and damage as possible. With a burst wizard you might need a second wizard for board control. Think of each character as a puzzle piece that has to fit with the others. Once you have a team of 3 its time to play! Every game you win take note of why you won. More importantly, when you lose, note why you lost. As often as you like, take this information back to your keep and browse your items. If you find an item isn't carrying its weight, like maybe Smoke Pin on your burst wizard is doing nothing but destroying your line of sight, and you have a decent option to replace it, do so. In the Nimbus example, maybe you're losing because you have too many Nimbi, and your opponents are just saving up their attacks. In this case, you might swap a Shielding Token for a Bleneth's Frenzy Tome or Incense Of Roiled Air. These kinds of small tweaks lead me to my next point, which is the map rotations. When new maps come out there are only two mistakes you can make. The first is assuming your build will work just as well. The second is assuming that your build won't work at all. Use your team, just as it is, and explore the new maps nuances. In the newest map rotation I quickly realized how well a wizard would do and exchanged 1 of my warriors for a burst wizard. This made my Nimbus priest less effective. Also ineffective was my low powered bursts, which gave me a second reason to switch my priest to a Frenzy priest, who buffs my burst wizard and lets my warrior more quickly finish off those who get too close. In this way all my characters are working together again. Other smaller tweaks like these followed. Last, but certainly not least, I recommend everyone learn to utilize the "Store/Retrieve" button in the lower right corner of your Keep. It will keep you organized, remind you of past successful strategies, and allow you to quickly switch between your ranked team and your teams for leagues. Took me far too long to learn this one...
...And, to add to that last advice, remove everything from every single character and save the roster as absolutely empty. You'll thank me later.
Building with what you have available means exactly that. If it's the best you can make, play it and build toward better. Personal prejudice concerning cards used should not be a consideration. Just stay on topic, and contribute your ideas and experiences.
If you are getting beaten by a certain deck composition, adapt your deck to deal with it. Armor getting in your way? Penetrate or armor removal. Too much control? Immovable. Opponent has too many buffs? Purge. Everything has an answer, you just have to try to get it in your deck. Also, praying to the RNG may or may not help you get the rolls you want.
I'm actually against the advice given by chaosmagez. It is important to understand and accept that some deck compositions tend to have higher win rates against a specific set of decks, and lower against others. This is where the meta comes in. How well will your deck do in the context of the metagame on the current set of maps, in contrast to a vacuum? It is important to know whether you should change your deck entirely or adapt some aspects of it to/against the meta. In the first month EttSC was released, the original Bejeweled elves deck did poorly. So people switched to Double-Edged Swords and Nova Axes to deal with the dominance of Cushioning Armor. Now that Cushioning Armor isn't as popular anymore, people created intermediate builds like Magic Elves's. As a side note, my fire deck did very well when people ran Cushioning Armor instead of Reliable Mail. If you can catch onto things like that you could become a trendsetter.
I overlooked this gem in the wiki, thx to @Phaselock for his visually well made perspective on Deck Building centered around 3 predominant types. http://wiki.cardhuntria.com/wiki/A_Guide_to_Character_Builds Doesnt appear to be dated besides mentioning obliterating melee attacks and stone wall.
I've found that in Cardhunter, there's two main kinds of plays, offensive and counter-offensive. Offensive plays are when you're in control, and counter-offensive plays are when you're trying to regain control. When I build decks, I try to keep in mind that my deck should both be able to fight well on it's own terms (offensive), and also be able to regain control if the opponent is fighting in a manner that I either can't fight in or fighting in a manner that they're superior at (defensive). When building decks, I always try to keep in mind that you need both ways to have an advantage and ways to regain that advantage if it is ever lost. For instance, take my aforementioned intermediate deck. The deck's main offensive tactic is dancing around the opponent, inflicting damage while taking as little as possible. Against opponents that are ranged, the counter-offensive tactic is to, of course, charge them as quickly as possible to be able to get in range while trying to mitigate ranged damage. To function properly, a deck needs to contain a balance of cards that should allow counterplays with a minimal amount of preparation, yet still consistently draws cards for it's main assault. Nearly all decks do this, from vampire decks with cards that allow them to stay close (but not TOO close), to burst decks with ways to create range or capitalize on range that was already there, to 1/1/1 decks that are able to exploit the opponent's weaknesses as much as they possible can.
It may have taken some players around 500 games to realise this, (not naming anyone in particular, ahem Grimmace), and i fear that many of the new players will make the same mistake, 'Don't be afraid to include drawback cards in your build!' When i first started playing this game around 2 years ago or whenever and my brother used to play as well, he would immediately disregard any item that had one of those so called black cards on it. It was seen that surely it is best to avoid any disadvantage you might acquire by avoiding them at all costs. This is simply not the case. It might not ever happen, and i dont necessarily encourage it, but if you find yourself with a wizard playing bursts, control, volcanos, or even deadly/potent sparks, cards that have squeamish like runestone or blood locket only increase your chances of getting you those cards. Thats right, they cost you nothing! And in return you get a winds of war with a wall of fire or path of knives to boot. That example aside, to move up the ranks and i mean if it is your desire to get above the 1600 elo sort of range, (even average players like myself have managed it a few times) you do need that extra special something to set you apart. Apart from honing your skills as a player, which normally means playing the percentages, taking into account map, opponent, items, your party what cards have already been played etc. You need to be able to optimise your draw in a way that you have your enemy covered. Prepare for the worst basically. Sometimes it is safer to assume he's got a defenders block, volcano, or team movement up his sleeve. For example:: On a small map, you can pack your dwarf warrior with blind rage and he becomes a near unstoppable force, provided he has some support and enough movement to cause some havoc. There are staples for a wizard like armorbane pendant, which being a tokenless item with armor and card removal is near indispensable. Combustible is a good example of one which can easily slip into your deck there. I pick it nearly every time in quick draw unless im up against 2 wizards cause it aint gonna hurt you. And rather than have a weak strike or arcane feedback, youve got another chance and drawing one of your good cards.
Until I've read this post, I've thought that having a card like that would actually be useless to me but apparently I overlooked the free draw advantage of it. Now granted if your opponet comes at your with fire spells/attacks and hits you then yes this can very much hurt your chances. Is it a risk worth taking? I think so! I mean I have a wizard with 2 trip cards in his deck but it's also given me an advantage at times too now that I think about it. I've drawn cards like obilterating spark and nailed down a priest for 14 damage which of couse came from 2 arcane auras, a mass frenzy and I believe I had one of my electric buffs attached but having that trip card gave me a range advantage anyway.
