Deck building advice for new players

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Hi guys! This is RS Seadog!

I have been playing Shadow Era for almost 10 years and would like to share some of my deck building ideas to new players.

If you look at the Strategy section, you may have probably seen some of my decks. I test a LOT of decks. Some work, some doesn’t. The idea is to keep trying, explore and be creative! I think that’s the fun part of the game that keeps me around for so long.

Being a new player, you would probably want to start with some existing decks. There are a lot of good decklists on the forum, particularly those from WC players. Most of them are very good lists that’s where you want to start from.

Another very good way is reverse-engineering. Check out the game of the top players in Quick Match and try to re-work their decks. They might switch cards from game to game but watching 10-20 games will get you the basic idea of their decks, and you can start to draft a list for the cards you want to buy.

After that, it’s tweaking. Keeping the core cards of the deck and start to add/drop cards to suit the meta. E.g. tech in item destruction if meta is full of weapon based hero or add removal cards if meta is ally-heavy.

If you play more games, you will start to understand the matchups of different hero too. Try to bring hero that has advantage against meta decks.

I have also noted down some basic deck building skills below. I will keep updating the list when I can think of something:

1. Consistency vs Versatility

This is the basic of every single deck, and the single most important rule of all.

Quick match: Consistency > Versatility
Tournament: Versatility > Consistency

Consistency means the how often you can play the games you planned in every game.

Versatility means how many solutions you have against every single deck.

I have seen a lot of new players tend to over-value versatility and add in 1 copy of every card, hoping that they could do everything. They probably affected by Yugioh too much lol.

In fact, this kind of play style lose more than often. The reason is that the deck has no focus, or core strategy.

To all new players: build a deck that maximize consistency

To maximize consistency, it’s very simple. Lower the total number of cards and maximize the number of copies of each card you pick.

i.e. build a 39 cards deck (4 copies of 9 cards and 3 copies of 1 card)

This will greatly improve your win rate if you follow this approach, because it helps you to deploy your game plan consistently.

Some players tend to blame bad luck for not drawing a specific card by X turn without realizing the low consistency of their decks. This is a sign of a bad deck building skill.

Once you master that, you can start to add tech cards to adjust to the meta. That’s where you bring in versatility.

You can increase you deck count slightly to 40-41 cards and cut some copies of cards you don’t play too often.

It is important to understand that consistency and versatility are 2 opposing concepts. When you have more answers to different decks means you are less probable to deploy your own strategy.

At this point, you should have get a solid decklist to start with.

2. Core strategy

When starting to build a deck, you need to plan what you want to build.

The easy way is to decide a hero with a tribe, e.g. undead banebow, wulven moonstalker etc.

There are also some popular archetypes, e.g. sticky majiya, wagon praxix etc.

The main idea is to find a core strategy that has synergy.

e.g. Praxix has a good synergy with a deck full of allies and meat wagon.

When planning the core strategy, I always use Gondorian’s deckbuilder. You can search keywords easily and found the cards that have synergy to put in a deck.

http://www.shadowera.com/deck/#/build

3. Pace

You also need to decide the pace of the deck at the planning stage.

The normal 3 paces are:
- Aggro
- Mid-range
- Control

The general rule of thumb is Aggro> Control > Mid-range > Aggro.

4. Resource Curve

The pace will decide your resource curve.

i.e. what are the resource cost of each card in your deck?

Generally, the most important card is 3cc cards. You want to have an abundance of 3cc cards to make sure you draw it on Turn 3. Missing your Turn 3 is a sign of bad deck building.

In aggro decks, you want a lot of 2-3 options. In control decks, you need some 2-3cc tech cards to answer aggro decks and more late game cards to win.

My normal count for a mid-range deck is:

2cc: 4-6 copies
3cc: 12+ copies
4cc: 4-6 copies

Sometimes you want 1cc for aggro decks, but usually it’s not needed as it drains your hand quickly.

5. Planning

You need to plan your play for the first 5 turns for both going first and second.

E.g. Eladwen:
Going first: Knight-Aldon-Tainted Oracle-Bad Santa + Fireball
Going second: Knight-Seductress-Tainted Oracle-Supernova

Now you want ALL 4 COPIES of the above cards in your deck to maximize consistency.

Note: it is important to build your hand when going second. Many players build decks based on the assumption that they have board control (going first) is wrong. You have to plan how to take back the board when you lose it.

To be continued..



Remarks: If you want to learn and improve, do not hesitate to apply to Rising Sun (RS).

To apply to RS, send a message to RS Randomguy (Telegram: @RS_RG) or RS Seadog (Telegram: @Seadog).

We are a fun guild with a lot of professional players. We welcome players of all levels.