Post by Fadril Adren on Oct 16, 2017 18:16:28 GMT -5
In Shadespire, customising your deck is as important as choosing your army in other Warhammer games. We caught up with writer and ardent Shadespire player Rhuairidh for his top tips on constructing a powerful deck:
Rhu: Building your first Shadespire decks can be daunting, but in practice, it’s not much different from writing an army list. Just as in an army, you’ll have a specific balance of units, so too will a deck have a balance of cards. While there’s no one “correct” way to design your deck, these general pointers should ensure that your first decks are balanced, useful and powerful, while giving you a lot of scope for customisation.
Key Restrictions
1. You can only have 12 Objectives in a deck – choose wisely, as this is your theoretical ceiling of Glory you can score.
2. You can have 20 or more cards in your Power deck. I’d recommend taking only 20 – additional cards simply reduce the chance you’ll draw something you want.
3. No more of half of your Power cards can be ploys. I’d recommend 10 ploys in every deck as they’re very useful and have an immediate impact on the game.
Your objective deck is the key to victory. When building mine, I try to follow three steps to make sure I’m capable of scoring points versus a variety of warbands in a variety of situations.
Step 1: Easy-to-score Objectives
Every deck needs a quick source of glory in the early turns – this is absolutely essential for gaining momentum and winning the game. At least half of your objective deck should be made up of low value, easily scored cards.
TOP TIP: “Score this immediately” cards
These are categorically the most useful objectives in the game as they allow you to score glory mid-turn – this can allow you to upgrade your fighters early and claim a key lead. What’s more, once scored, you’ll be able to draw another objective, allowing you to move through your Objectives deck even faster.
I like to include the “Capture Objective X” cards in each of my decks. They may not be very exciting, but they’re a consistent source of points and can allow you to overcome an upgrade disadvantage against your enemy.
Step 2: Trump Objectives
Next, you’re going to want to pick your big objectives that are based on how your deck plays. These cards – like Annihilation, or Khorne’s Champion – are designed to push you into a comfortable lead and are absolutely essential in Warbands with lots of members, like Garrek’s Reavers and the Sepulchral Guard, as you’ll be likely to concede a decent number of kill points to your foe.
Step 3: Recovery Objectives
Finally, for your last 2 or 3 objectives, you’re going to want to put some recovery objectives in your deck. These cards, like Conquest, Fearless in Death or Khorne Cares Not can be scored even in a game where you’re losing and in fact are easier to score when you’re doing badly. Just in case.
TOP TIP: Combing
In Shadespire, you can choose to discard and draw an objective instead of making another kind of activation. It’s in this way that defeated warbands can reduce the sting of a loss or even potentially pull a win or a draw out of the bag! Remember not to concede until the very end of play – even if your entire warband is dead, you can spend your activations hunting through your deck for your recovery objectives.
Your Power deck is going to define how your Warband plays. If your objectives are the “why”, powers are the “how” – they’re the tools that’ll help you beat your enemy and define the tactics you use to achieve objectives. To reiterate, each Power deck is made up of at least 20 cards, of which no more than half can be ploys – the other half will be made up of upgrades, and you can only have any card once in a deck.
Upgrades
Generally speaking, your upgrades deck has two purposes:
1 – Making your strong fighters even stronger and thus providing you with momentum.
2 – Making your weaker fighters more useful and helping you recover from the loss of a strong fighter.
It’s tempting to take a load of upgrades with the aim of putting them on one particularly beloved fighter, while ignoring the options that focus on the weaker members of your warband. Don’t fall into this trap. Cards like Wicked Blade turn fighters like Arnulf into deadly forces in their own right and force your enemies to divide their efforts more evenly across your Warband. The exception to this rule is the Sepulchral Guard – thanks to the resurrection mechanic, you’re free to super-charge one fighter, safe in the knowledge they won’t stay dead for long.
Ploys
With 10 ploys, each one is going to count. There are loads of ways to choose your ploys, so I’ll keep my advice here general, but as a rule, I’d recommend asking yourself three key questions before adding a ploy to your deck:
1. Does this fit my playstyle? Don’t take a card that’s going to let you move faster if you’re intending on playing a static game.
2. When will I be able to use this? Be wary of adding highly situation-specific reactions to your deck. And if you do, be prepared to put the work in to arrange circumstances in your favour.
3. Is this going to be useful in every turn? Remember that you won’t always be able to guarantee who’s alive in the third part of the game, and you’ll need your deck to work in a bad situation as well as a good one.
TOP TIP – Sidestep, Confusion, Distraction
Cards that allow you to reposition fighters are absolutely essential and I would strongly recommend taking at least Sidestep in your deck. For low fighter count warbands like the Ironjawz or Stormcast Eternals, you’ll be wanting to make Attack actions rather than Charge actions where possible so not to waste your activations, which means finding a way to close the distance on the enemy (or bring them to you) by other means. Conversely, the Khorne Bloodbound and Deathrattle rely on surrounding enemy fighters to make use of offensive and defensive supports – being able to pull key fighters out of position helps with this.
Objective Ploys
One of the interesting additions to the game in the Ironskull’s Boyz and Sepulchral Guard boosters is ploys that score you glory, like Daylight Robbery, Anticipation, and Scavenge. These are great, with Daylight Robbery being a particular favourite of mine, allowing you to capture momentum from your enemy. Bear in mind that these cards won’t directly improve the power of your warband, and so are a risky choice in an aggressive deck.
Draw Ploys
Ploys that let you draw cards are an interesting choice. On the one hand, they’ll make your deck more reliable, allowing you to comb through your power deck and “fish” for particular cards more effectively. On the other, every card that lets you draw other cards is not directly providing momentum for your warband. I’d personally opt for Duel of Wits in most decks, as a reliable way of working through your cards.
Using your Do-over
Be ruthless when considering when to use your Do-over. It can be heartbreaking seeing a particularly valuable objective or powerful upgrade come up in your opening hand, but the first couple of turns in Shadespire are key. As a general principle, if two-thirds or more of either opening hand can’t be used in your first turn, Do-over. While this harms the maximum number of points you’ll be able to score in the game, if you’ve built your deck correctly, your next draw is statistically much more likely to contain cards that are directly useful.
To Ploy, or not to Ploy?
Opinions differ, but personally, I think you should play as many ploys and upgrades each turn as possible. With your hand getting a free refresh at the end of every turn, there’s little benefit in holding back, and it’s better to comb through – and play – your entire deck and get a little use out of every ploy card than to plan around finding the perfect moment for one or two of them.
Like I said, there are no hard and fast rules for building your deck, and just as I’d recommend following these steps, I’d also encourage you to experiment as much as possible with new combinations of objectives, ploys and upgrades. One of the joys of Shadespire is that games are fast, and building a deck can be accomplished quite quickly once you become familiar with the cards. I’m looking forward to seeing what decks the community comes up with, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to play against some at Blood & Glory!
Want to start constructing your own decks? The Shadespire Core Set is available to pre-order right now! If you’re looking for even more tips and tricks, check out our interviews with our expert players and designers on their advice for deck construction: