When to start caring about deckbuilding?

[Nacht]

At the moment, I'm playing Ep3 fairly casually in offline mode. I'm a fan of CCGs and deckbuilding really appeals to me, however, I'm kinda finding it hard to build decks with the cards I have at the moment. I'm CL3 right now and have 3 decks built, but none of them are really focused enough and the only card combination I can come up with based on what I have is Bind + Mechgun + Bindkill.

Is building a deck around a stratagy only worth concentrating on at higher levels when you have more cards? Or are the combinations and stratagies more subtle? My GF likes playing Arkz and has the same problem.

[Tycho]

Whenever you get cards you think would work in your deck, go put them in. Whenever you get enough interesting cards to build a deck with a different strategy, go make it.

You'll get more cards eventually, but even with common cards you can do a lot. In fact, in my main deck (I have several by now) I mostly use N-cards, against NPC's I get S-rank all the time.

[Skorpius]

Deck stratagies won't surface until you have about 50-80% of the cards. Even then, some stratagies aren't fully taken advantage of due to some rather are cards (AP Silence and Nano Dragon+)

Arkz are even worse since "good" creatures are higher ranked than "good" items.

Have patience, stratagies will come in due time, but don;t be surprised if others have similar stratagies, since the limitations of Ep3 create a closed environment of stratagies.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Skorpius on 2005-04-27 05:48 ]</font>

[Nacht]

I've build another Hunter Deck and I'm begging to see that it's more about balanceing cards at lower levels. So far I have about 10 Weapons, 10 Defensive Items and 10 Defensive actions in my deck (apart from the FO deck which has less weapons and actions and more techs).

I just wanna get some more "interesting" cards so I can start feeling smug when I pull off a good card combination. ^_^

[Kaply]

If you're playing exclusively offline against the computer in story mode, there are a few things you should do to prepare for the battles.

1 - your opponent's abilities. Some of the abilities can be particularly damaging to certain deck styles. For instance, Rampage is dangerous against decks that like to equip multiple 1-2 power equipments. Revenge is also deadly if your deck cannot target long distances or multiple areas (you = Hunter vs. Arks) Sometimes the wording can be ambiguous until you actually see a deck in action. ie. static range? some of the robot characters have this. Worse yet is the AB Guard type cards >.< Nowhere in the text does it mention that it will protect AB type monsters against ALL DAMAGE.
2 - the rule sets. dice rules. Remember being, limited to 4 as a max roll does NOT mean you will not get a 4. Sometimes the 4 powered cards can be so strong that they will cause you multiple headaches for 2-4 turns because they have so much HP or are so well defended by the combination of action cards that you cannot kill them off before they do immense damage to your deck.
3 - your own character's ability. This does not necessarily pertain to any special text that your character's card has. ie. rampage, etc. For instance, the HUnewearl has a very high base ATP of 3. You can build decks around just this one fact by placing in multiple low cost equipment to fill up the 8 pt limit. The comparison would be like this, with this character if you only had two 4 pt equipment to attack with, each would do their damage +6 in total. If you had four 2 pt equipment to attack with, each would do their damage +12 in total.

So to summarize, deck building starts as soon as you understand your character's strength or opponent's weakness. While combinations of cards can be strong, it's best not to ignore the stuff I listed above while building a deck.

Also don't ignore offensive actions either. I know at your level you probably haven't gotten cross attack? yet, but things like this + swd attack + side attack? (atp +2, atk range like swords) can lead to great damage in combos that are very hard to defend against vs arkz.

Edit: link to more detailed guides that cover stuff for the later levels when you do have more cards

http://www.pso-world.com/sections.ph...cles&secid=163

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kaply on 2005-04-28 09:53 ]</font>

[Nacht]

Hey, thanks for the pointers. Those genuinely helped ^_^. I've been exploiting Kranz's range ability by including attack cards like Attack and Assault with weapons like the Rifle and Shot both for tougher and weaker creatures which has helped me stay out of harms way, although I hadn't picked up on the idea of fielding cheaper cards though. I haven't built a Hunter Deck yet, but I think that might be next...

[Kaply]

You should be careful with assault

The ingame text offline sounds too good to be true and it is

http://www.pso-world.com/items.php?o...432&version=v4

This seems like what it really does.

"Raises AP of attack by 5 minus the number of cards in hand, no gain if result is negative."

In other words with the limit of 6 cards in hand, that might translate to only 1 AP most of the time.

[WotanAnubis]

You should be careful with assault

The ingame text offline sounds too good to be true and it is

"Raises AP of attack by 5 minus the number of cards in hand, no gain if result is negative."

Hmm, strange. I always thought that Assault raises AP by 5 minus the number of creatures/items you've got on the field. As a result, for me, Assault is a staple in my pure Action-Card decks and works very well indeed, even though it's sometimes the only card I can play from my hand.

[Nacht]

Assault would work well in my Hunter deck if I include a load of weaker weapons/shields. Just drop them all on a high roll and use assault ^_^ Sounds toasty.

[SLON]

Muscular would be more effective if using multiple weapons.