WHERE TO START?

I get asked all the time from people who are brand new to card games “How do I even start to build a deck?” That’s a GREAT question.

My honest recommendation is to go to our card data base (https://speedrobogames.com/card-database/) sort to just the Caster Chronicles cards, and read through them. When one of them “clicks” with you, make note of it. Put it to the side. Use the collection system to “star” it for later. Once you have picked out all of the cards that you think are interesting; choose your favorite or a few favorites from those that you think will work well together. And there you go! That’s your starting point. Your “boss card”, if you will. Once you have your “boss”, build the rest of your strategy around it. Go back and look through the cards again and pick out cards that you think will combo or support your boss well. That’s the start of your deck!

FINISHING YOUR DECK

Now that you have the pile of cards that you want to build a deck with, including your “boss”, we have to refine this into a deck.

So, how do we do that?

First, let’s see how many elements you have picked out. The more elements (colors) you have in your pile, the harder time you’ll have. I recommend for beginners to only use one or two elements. So remove cards from your pile until you have just two.

Then, I like to make sure I have a good ratio of Casters to non-Casters. For mono-color decks I find that 12 to 14 is a good amount, while only having about 2 copies of each different Caster. For two color decks you may need up to 18 total casters to make sure you can produce the correct Aether.

Finally, it’s just cutting things down from there. For most non-casters in your deck, it’s generally best to play a full 4 copies of the card in your deck. A good way to think about it is consider how often you want to see the card while you play. 4 copies of a card means that you want to see the card every game and usually more than once per game. Three copies means that you want to see it most games, but just seeing one copy will be okay. Two copies means that you only want to see the card go into your hand in some of your games. One copy means you should probably just take the card out of your deck.

While it can be a hard choice to get your deck down to 50 cards, don’t forget that you can just include those cards in another deck or another version of this deck. No load-out is permanent and trying things is part of the fun!

REFINING THE DECK

Now that you have a full 50 card deck, you need to refine it! The most important part of this process is playing with the deck. (imagine that, a game where the most important part is play! hehe)

You can ask your friends to help you test, you can even “shadowbox” where you pilot two decks against each other to see what happens.

While doing this, ask yourself “What cards am I just putting face down as a Caster and not playing?” “What Casters do I never use the abilities of?” “If I am losing, what cards am I not using that could help me?”

Use the answers you find to refine your decks. That being said! Don’t let a single loss get you down. There’s a lot of luck in card games so make sure you test a lot before making any rash changes and judgements.

Another important thing to ask yourself while playing is “Do I think this deck is fun?” if you aren’t having a good time playing the deck, maybe it’s just not your style. And that’s okay! Give something else a try.