Dangerous curves ahead…..
What is a Resource Curve?
A Resource Curve is essentially a tally of the cards in your deck sorted by casting cost. This allows you to get a very holistic view of your deck and gives you a quick overview of your core turns and when you can expect your plays to happen. It is also especially important in initial deck construction when working toward your intended strategy (e.g. you won’t put all >4cc cards in a rush deck, just like most control decks won’t run the majority of cards <3cc).
If your resource curve isn’t balanced and/or focused in the direction you want you’ll find that your deck will get more dead draws (i.e cards that are of no use at that time) than a more balanced and tuned deck. As a result it’s an exceptionally important part of deckbuilding.
As an example, I’ve broken down the curve on my Elementalis Breeding Pit deck:
Decklist:
Elementalis
3 x Ironhide Karash (2cc)
4 x Harbinger of the Lost (2cc)
4 x Rampant Krygon (3cc)
4 x Brimstone Devourer (3cc)
4 x Reactorary (3cc)
4 x Falseblood Cultist (4cc)
2 x Stardust Ampliflyer (5cc)
4 x Mind Control (5cc)
4 x Antimatter (2cc)
3 x Dagger of Fate (3cc)
3 x Living Armor (6cc)
Resource Curve:
1cc – 0
2cc – 11
3cc – 15
4cc – 4
5cc – 6
6cc – 3
7cc+ - 0
As you can see the deck is very heavily geared toward a strong opening. This is an aggro deck and that’s the sort of curve you’re looking for, ensuring you come out of the gates hard and that you can maintain tempo with few resources.
Rush vs Control
As I alluded to earlier, different deck archetypes have different resource curves by design. Rush tends to be a very low resource curve while a control deck tends to sit higher up. Midrange decks (most SE decks) tend to have a very standard sort of “bell curve” when their resource curve is graphed (majority of their cards sit around the 3-4cc costing).
Here is a standard sort of curve for the most notorious of rush decks, the Eladwen rush:
1cc – 4 (Kris)
2cc – 11 (Puwen, ToK, Bad Santa)
3cc – 12 (Aldon, PotL, Fireball)
4cc – 8 (Tainted Oracle, Lightning Strike)
5cc – 4 (Supernova)
6cc – 0
7cc+ - 0
As you can see it’s very heavy on the front end and nothing with a casting cost >5 (in fact the only 5cc card in this situation is Supernova).
This is opposed to a control deck, which has its resource curve sit on the higher end of the scale. I’m using iClipse’s WC2012 Zhanna deck as an example here. I know it’s old but it’s a great example of a control deck curve:
1cc – 0
2cc – 4 (Retreat)
3cc – 16 (Aldon, Jasmine, Healing Touch, Focused Prayer, Resurrection)
4cc – 8 (Tainted Oracle, Wizent’s Staff)
5cc – 8 (Raven, Tidal Wave)
6cc – 3 (Aeon)
7cc+ - 2 (King’s Pride)
As you can see it’s a lot more top heavy, even more so when you consider the allies don’t start until 3cc. Which leads me into my next point…
Resource Curves by Card Type
Having an overall Resource Curve is nice, but more often than not I find myself looking at curve by card type, which means I’m looking at the resource curve of my allies, my draw, my control, my weapons etc. Really you don’t often need to go that far but you can break it down into two things, your curve for allies and your curve for items/abilities.
Once again for a rush/aggro style deck you are going to want to have a lot of cheaper allies, whereas a control deck with a slower start can afford to have more higher cost allies. One thing in Shadow Era is that the 3cc ally spot reigns supreme in almost every deck, and without a doubt it is the most important point for allies in the game (you can see this in all the examples I’ve used thus far).
Here is a rough guide that I use when determining a curve for allies and it’s generally a good starting point for deckbuilding:
Allies
1cc – 0-4
2cc – 4-6
3cc – 7-10
4cc – 0-4 (This is generally your core point for items so it’s not used for allies as much)
5cc – 3-4
6cc+ - 0-2
Obviously that’s a very broad range and you’re not going to max out the numbers in all the slots (if you did there’d be no room for anything else!). Rush decks will push the ally curve towards the bottom and control decks will push it a bit higher, but this is pretty standard for a solid deck within Shadow Era.
An item/ability (a.k.a everything else) curve is generally a bit more top heavy in most classes, but for some like Warriors and Wulven it can be very low. The shape of the curve is very dependent on the class you’re playing and helps to determine what allies are needed to balance it all out. It’s one reason why Zaladar decks run so many cheap allies, because three of their core items/abiltiies are Shadow Font (4cc), Mind Control (5cc) and Living Armor (6cc) so they need cheaper allies to maintain a balance. This is why you need to consider both in tandem. The ally curve example above is a great baseline but to really make your deck shine you need to balance it against your core items to ensure you are never stuck for a meaningful play.
Conclusion
So that’s a basic overview of the idea behind resource curves and why they’re so important to your game. They determine not only your decks consistency but the very nature in which it is played.
So go and tame those curves
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