How to build a good deck?

Welcome, champions! Today I would like to tackle the topic that's a critical factor in your path to victory. It's also one of the areas that players - especially those less experienced - are struggling with. Deckbuilding.

If you've played at least a few matches, you'll know how important the cards are. Your power deck is a deciding factor whether you'll win or lose - it defines how much glory you can earn during the game. It will also dictate how you play the game. On the other hand, your power deck will be a crucial part of executing your game plan. But how to build a really tight and successful deck?

Step 1 - choose the playstyle.

There are two ways to approach this topic. You can either choose a warband that you would like to play and then analyze what playstyles are viable for it. Or alternatively, you can choose what kind of game you would like to play and then see who could support this approach. Most often, though, you'll have your mind set on a warband, and you'll be looking at the options available for it.

This is a critical first step of deckbuilding. Having a deep understanding of your warband's strengths and weaknesses will help you identify preferred ways of playing. 

For example: if you have a warband consisting of a bunch of solid fighters (good damage and accuracy) with a decent speed, you might want to consider going for an aggro build. They can reach enemy fighters, fighting well, so it might be worth capitalizing on this. Similarly - if you have an elite warband made of 3-4 models, you might now want to go for heavy hold objective build relying on the “hold 3 objectives” type of cards. While it's possible for your warband to score those cards, you'll not have a lot of room for errors or for doing anything other than trying to cling to those 3 objective tokens. And should you lose one of your fighters - while playing a three-man warband - you're losing the ability to score those objectives permanently. Losing a fighter is not an uncommon thing in the Warhammer Underworlds, so you have to account for this happening - and rather sooner than later in the game. So if you wanted to score Temporary Victory or Supremacy with your Steelheart Champions - all power to you, but odds of this happening will be relatively low. 

To switch this around - your Sepulchral Guard will not enjoy a deck constructed with hard aggro in mind. They don't have the speed or damage to reach enemy fighters or harm them well enough if they do get to attack. What they do have are numbers and the ability to bring defeated models back to play. They also have tools to move the models on the board in quite an efficient way. This allows them to look at the hold objective play a lot more favorably - they can deliver many models onto objectives within 4 activations. Losing even 2-3 fighters still allows them to score even higher scoring things like Supremacy. The power of the horde.

Some warbands don't have a clearly defined power or require a certain level of upgrades to reach their full potential. Or have such a mix of fighter types that they could potentially benefit from more than one playstyle. Good examples here are the Dread Pageant or Thorns of the Briar Queen. Those warbands could focus on one way of playing (aggro or hold objective, for example) but can also go with a more flexible approach. Something called a flex playstyle. Dread Pageant has excellent objectives that they can score by holding more objectives than their opponents. They also have options to control enemy fighters and really decent fighters who can be pretty deadly with a few upgrades attached.

Similarly, Thorns have the numbers and an incredible option to deliver chainrasps onto the objective tokens allowing them to score many cards based on holding the objectives. Scoring Temporary Victory or Hidden Purpose is a matter of spending a single activation. That's highly efficient and hard to skip. But at the same time, they've got a powerful fighter - the Queen herself. And it feels to be counterproductive to not use her power to kill your opponent's fighters while your chainrasps are earning glory from holding the objectives.

The last example is Morgwaeth's Blade Coven witches - initially, they're relatively weak. Yet they scale with offensive upgrades really well. So ideally, you'd like to use a bit of a passive playstyle to earn a bit of glory to kickstart the engine. And once you've got the first critical upgrades on your key fighters, you can switch the aggression up. This is an essence of a flex playstyle - a blend of two other playstyles that created an explosive mix your warband can abuse. 

What's very important is to understand which play style makes sense for you. Because only then can you proceed to build an effective deck. If your warband is a flex monster, but you'd focus only on a control element in your deck, you might actually be able to achieve victories if you've managed to find enough strong cards. But you're wasting a lot of your warband's potential. Alternatively, you could build for full aggression and struggle because you're missing those few more manageable objectives to get your damage online. All of the things you'll be doing will require some help from your cards - and it's your job to understand this and provide that help.

If you've gone the second route by choosing the preferred playstyle first, your job is similar to the steps described above. You just have to reverse it a bit. For example, you've decided that you would like to play old fashioned hold objective deck, try to hold at least 3 tokens, and get big payouts out of it. But you don't have a preference on which warband to choose. In this case, you'll be looking for a Warband with 5+ fighters who have good support for moving your models around at a low cost. The ability to bring back your fighters is a plus, as is their faction card support. By narrowing your options down, you might land with Thorns, The Grymwatch, Spiteclaw Swarm, or Sepulchral Guard. Then it's mostly a matter of the flavor - which team has the tricks and aesthetics that suit you best.

Once you know which warband you would like to play and how you would like to play them, you can proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Building your Objective Deck

As I've mentioned before - your objective deck will have a massive impact on how you'll play your game. Often it will define what your playstyle is and what moves you will make on the board. Objectives earn you glory, and so to win, you have to fulfill their conditions to score them and earn much-needed glory.

You'll need precisely twelve objective cards. You cannot change that number. Half of your objective deck can be used to put surge objectives in it. This gives us 6 of them. Surges are the lifeblood of any good objective deck. They'll provide you an inflow of glory during the round, allowing you to equip upgrades but also add much-needed draw power to your objective deck. Without the surges, you'd be able to score only 9 objectives per game - 3 during each end phase. And that's assuming a perfect scenario, which often doesn't happen. With surges, you can gain quick glory and draw new objectives - this allows you to go through your objective deck in a much more smooth fashion. The more surges you have, the more likely it is to score your more significant end phase objectives because you will have the glory to help to do so, but also because you'll have higher chances of drawing them in the first place.

Later we will be adding end phase objectives. Those, in general, are either simply ones you can score during and end phase of the round or the ones you can only achieve during the third end phase of the game - so essentially at the very end of the game. Those 3rd end phase objectives are, in general, tricky - if you draw one early in the game, it will be blocking a slot on your hand for a long time. This, in turn, will force you to either discard it or work with only two other objectives at the time for the majority of the game. In general, you should avoid taking more than one such card. If possible, don't take them at all - it will make your deck work better. Those 3rd end phase objectives are that they can be game-defining and worth a lot of glory. So often, if you'll take one, it will mean your entire deck is dedicated to scoring it. A good example was an Acolyte of Katophranes, where at the end of the game, you could get 5-6 glory out of it, but your entire game plan was around getting it to work.

There's also one more trap you can fall into - some of the end phase objectives can be scored in any end phase, but they are so demanding that they're virtually a 3rd end phase objective. Good examples are: To The End or Feed The Beastgrave. Chances to score them during round 1 are bordering with 0. You could technically score them in round 2, but this would be a very challenging task. Be very careful if you're taking them - having a couple objectives like those can effectively turn your objective hand into a solid brick. You won't score anything, and the game will be over. A good practice is to have no more than 2 objectives that are scoreable only in the 3rd end phase. Even then, there's a risk that you'll draw both of them, but often enough, this can be worked around. Getting more is very greedy and may not end well for your chances for success.

Now, having said that - how to actually choose correct objectives? The golden rule is reliability. The easier and more reliable objective is for your warband, the more valuable it is. If you'll be given a choice between: 

• a surge that you can score pretty much at any time, or with a minimal effort, but it's worth only 1 glory;

• a surge that is much harder can be interrupted but awards 2 glory;

then most likely, the best choice will be to take a straightforward 1 glory objective. Usually, it's better to be sure you'll score 1 glory and draw a new objective card than it is to hope that you'll maybe manage to gain 2 glory. Easy, hard-to-disrupt cards guarantee you a certain glory level that you'll score in your game. The easier the objective is, the more effort you can invest into doing something else. 

 Also, try to select cards that are not contradicting each other. You might not want to be put in a situation where you have to choose between scoring one card or another. For example, running Uncontested and Coveted Spoils, in theory, could work, and you could simply claim all 5 objective tokens. But in reality, those cards are usually mutually exclusive. For Coveted Spoils, you might want your opponent to take some tokens - he's helping you then, but at the same time, this ruins the Uncontested, where you don't want your opponent to hold any of the objective tokens.

So each and every time you look at an objective - ask yourself: can I score this? What has to happen? If the answer is “No”, or the list of things to happen is too long, then most likely you should not select that card.

Another thing to look for is the kill objectives. So the cards that require you to kill enemy fighter(s) and/or do it in a certain way or quantity. There's nothing wrong with taking those cards, but try to not take too many of those. Killing requires some effort - you need to reach the target, hit it, and deal enough damage to kill it. There's a lot of things that can go wrong there. You might lack speed or damage to finish the enemy off. Or the dice will abandon you, and your attack will miss. This is the life of an aggressive player. Attacks fail or have not enough damage to kill. That's why an excellent aggressive deck will have many easy objectives you can score without actually killing your opponents. This way, you can quickly get some glory to rack up those upgrades that will help you run faster, hit more accurately, and deal enough damage to score your kill-based objectives. Get too many kill objectives, and you'll be stuck with bare hands and having to make the killing. Not a great situation to be in.

The last bit to consider would be the question of whether the objective gives you enough glory. Often enough, you'll find a decent objective that rewards you with only one glory. Get 12 of those, and you'll likely get a deck that is very easy to score, but that is losing games. Why? Because you'll have 12 glory in your deck, and that is a meager number. Most aggressive warbands will have around 16 glory in their deck. And they'll seek to supplement this with the glory from killing enemy models. There are extreme cases of warbands like Mollog, who has around 13 glory but is supplementing this with glory from the kills and Primacy (that's +3 in best case scenario), and by obliterating you - dead men score no glory. More defensive builds are usually looking at 20-21 glory in their deck. They won't get much from the kills, so they're using more complex but better paying objective cards.

So when you're designing your objective deck, you need to ask yourself, “how much glory can I make with this… and will it be enough?”. Luckily, there's a wide variety of objectives that are worth 2 glory and more - especially in the end phase category in the current state of the game. What's also important to note that you'll often find an objective similar to the one that's easy and offers 1 glory - it will be slightly more challenging but will award 2 glory instead. This is especially true when you look at some faction objectives - there are universal alternatives that are somewhat harder but grant more glory. It's always worth considering taking those, so your total glory in the deck is on par with expected values.

So now, you've gone through your objective cards and have tailored an objective deck that you feel is solid enough. The next step is to build your power deck.

Step 3: Power Deck

 

The power deck is where all your upgrades and gambits are. It's your toolbox to help you gain dominance on the board, withstand an onslaught from an aggressive opponent, or help you score your objective cards. Best power decks are designed to help you strengthen the areas where your warband is weaker, provide extra accuracy or damage, help to move your fighters outside of the activations or to disrupt your opponent's actions. If you have solid but slow, fighters you'll want to take extra speed cards to help your fighters reach their opponents. If you're playing into holding objectives, you'll wish to tech that allows you to push your fighters around, so they can get on the objective without having to move.

In theory, a power deck can be as large as you want - as long as it has at least 20 cards in. There's one rule - at least half of it must be used for upgrades. You cannot have more gambits than you have upgrade cards. But you can have more upgrades than gambits. So - you could go wild and put in lots of valuable tools. But in practice, you'll want to stick to 20 cards total. So - 10 upgrades and 10 gambits (ploys + gambit spells). This is actually important to understand. While it is tempting to go above 20, it is a bad idea.

The more cards you have in your deck, the lower the likelihood you'll draw the cards you actually need. That's why the vast majority of decks are sticking to those 20 cards total. This means that there's a pretty cutthroat selection of the cards taking place when you decide what to put in. In best decks, there's no room for “nice cards” or “good cards”. You have 10 slots for your gambits and 10 places for your upgrades. And only the very best and the strongest will make it in. This doesn't mean that decks are the same - different play styles and different warbands need other things.

Another thing is that there is often a place for a personal preference - after all, the way you play the game might call for slightly different cards than those that are optimal for someone else. But having said that - this selection process is pretty tricky. Especially so when you've trimmed down the list of cards, you would like to have down to 11 of each category. Finding the last one to cut can sometimes take longer than putting the list together. It's a challenging process, and sometimes it's best to simply test out which of the options you're considering is the best.

So what should you be taking in? First of all - there's a golden rule that if you have some objective, you should have at least 2 ways of scoring it. 3 are preferred. So, for example - if you're intending to score Cover Ground, but you don't have any fighters with the movement of 6 or more, then you should take at least 2 cards that will boost your speed. Ideally, it would be 3 cards - 2 ploys and an upgrade are a good idea. Having only a single trigger - only one card or only one fighter who could do it - means you might wait a long time to be able to score it. Or sometimes you might even not be able to do it at all, because you couldn't draw the needed card. So this is the first thing to cover.

What next? Cards that help you position better on the board. Friendly pushes are often very valuable. They help get the positional advantage or to claim objectives. It's always worth having at least something to help in this department.

Accuracy and damage are the following things to take - if you plan to make attacks, you might want to invest in tech that makes them more reliable and more deadly. Missing a clutch attack because you've had nothing to boost your odds can feel really bad. Some control decks will invest much fewer resources (or at times none at all) into aggro cards, focusing on defensive or playstyle-specific things.

The next category of things is defensive power cards. You'll often have fighters you don't want to lose. Or that are holding an objective, and you'd rather have them stay there. For that, there are defensive gambits and upgrades. Extra wounds, extra defenses, rerolls, gaining guard, damage reduction. It's always worth having at least a little bit of those. Losing a fighter gives up glory to your opponent and makes your job harder. So having the ability to prevent that from happening is excellent. Especially when this can stop your opponent from scoring his objectives (i.e., kill objectives).

Disruption is another category - distraction effects that push enemy fighters can stop them from making a charge or force them to charge instead of simply attacking. They can stop enemy fighters from claiming an objective. There's tech to move or destroy feature tokens heavily impairing hold objective player's ability to score glory. You can try to shut enemy fighters down by giving them move or charge tokens or other harmful effects. A good deck always has some form of disruption because this can stop your opponent from gaining a lot of glory, which is equally vital to scoring glory yourself.

The last category to consider is playstyle-specific cards. This is a particular group - here, we will get things that are not really a part of other categories, and yet they help you score glory. Examples are Lost Pages, Katophrane Tomes, Cryptic Companion, Katophrane Keys, draw cards, etc. Those are the cards that often (but not always) have very little value on their own, but they are used to gain glory. Or are supporting your glory gaining ability - for example, draw tech is crucial if you rely on finding certain upgrades like Lost Pages and Scattered Tome. You might also want to take draw tech if you play To The End, as doing it without any draw is a daunting task. Those cards might feel a bit like a waste of the slot, as they're not bringing any immediate benefit (like most of the Lost Pages or Keys), but they're paying the dividends at the end of the game.

So… we're having 5 categories of cards to choose from and only 20 slots… The good news is that often part of the selection will make itself for you. If you're playing an aggro warband, you'll generally want to take some speed, a few defensive cards, some self-positioning cards, 1-2 disruption cards, and use the rest for the best accuracy and damage options you can come across. In your case, sheer aggression and damage output is a disruption effect on its own. Like I've said - dead fighters score no glory, drive back is a distraction effect replacement. You'll go lighter on those defensive and control elements because you'll be killing a lot, and that's good enough very often. You'll want to have a backup for when your attack has failed to connect - that's why it's always to have that disruption option in the deck.

A player playing a defensive control deck will focus on defensive and disruption cards in the same vein. At the same time, he'll try to fit in specific cards that will help him have enough options in hand, thanks to the draw mechanic. Alternatively, he'll try to score more glory thanks to cards like Pages or Cryptic Companion. They'll be happy to skip accuracy and damage even entirely in favor of making sure that their key fighter stays alive and gets all the critical upgrades on. So they will take things that will prevent you from making a charge, from killing, from moving your fighters onto objective to score glory, etc.

That's a key takeaway to understand - your power deck has to provide you the tools needed to win. Depending on how you want to win, your toolbox will have different tools in it. But it's essential to not put a pickaxe in there when you're going to be fixing clocks. Not only will it not help, but it will take the space you could've used to pack a precision tool instead.

The last thing to note is the restricted cards. And this applies both to power and objective decks: you can have a total of 3 restricted cards between both decks. It's a good idea to use all those 3 slots - those cards that are restricted usually have this status for a good reason. The only exception is Rebound. It doesn't deserve being restricted, but banned to hell and condemned to be forgotten… but I digress. In general, you'll want to use all 3 restricted slots because there are some potent cards in there. This doesn't mean you have to do it - sometimes, you'll be able to build a deck that works like a well-oiled machine without all 3 restricted slots being used. This is, however, quite rare, so most likely, you'll have to choose which restricted cards you'll want to keep.

Step 4: Giving it a go

Now you've built your decks. But how to know they're good? The answer is simple - by putting them to the test. Good deck builders like UnderworldsDB have a feature that allows you to stimulate your card draws. I would highly recommend you try dry running your list in there. Spend some time creating draws and see how both of your decks flow. Are you often getting hands that are hard to score? Are your power cards useful for you? Are you getting needed cards to trigger your objectives often enough? Those are the questions you'll try to answer. If you'll find that answers are not satisfactory, then you'll need to go back to the drawing board. The good news is that you'll be having an idea where the problem is, and that's already the half of success - the second half is to fix that problem by adjusting your deck. Do those draw simulations several times - the more, the better - until you're satisfied that the results are consistent across the draws. Of course, you'll sometimes get lucky and extremely poor draws. But over a few dozen of those, you'll know how your deck behaves on average. This is invaluable feedback.

Once you've gotten to a point where you feel confident and more simulated draws provide you very little feedback, it's time to test your list live. Run it against various warbands. See how it behaves in matchups that are not favoring you. Playing versus warband where you're a firm favorite is not super valuable - the advantage your warband has on a fighter level might cover up severe flaws in the design. Make sure you run your list against the warbands that are tough for you. This will instantly uncover areas of weakness, and you'll get to see whether your power deck can cover them up well enough and to what degree your objective deck can be scored. If you find some serious issues, experiment with different cards to try to bridge the gap. And then test it again. Not only you'll refine your build, but you'll also learn to play with it. And this also goes a very long way during the game.

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And that's it! Deckbuilding is a complex process that sometimes can be a bit frustrating - depending on where you are in the season you'll either have too few suitable options or too many. So you'll have to either choose the least bad option or select the very best from great ones. It can be difficult. And might require some testing. But while sometimes challenging, it's actually one of the best elements of this game. It feels terrific when you'll manage to introduce some innovation to the meta. Or build and pilot very unconventional decks to success.

What's your thought process when you're building a deck? Are you doing something differently? Let me know!