I am new to the LCG games and I have only 1 core set.

There's 12 total neutral cards. So if you make 2 warring decks, each gets 6 neutral cards.

There are 29 cards in each faction, + 1 warlord, making 30 cards. Add 6 neutral cards to each faction and you get 36. That makes 15 more cards in order to make "legal" 50-card deck +1 warlord =51 cards.

So I tried it with Chaos and Dark Eldar, +6 neutrals. No problem- I got my 51 cards total.

Then I tried it with Space Marines and Astra Militarum. I got 49 cards! + 1 warlord = 50, not 51.

Am I counting something wrong? I looked at the loyal cards from Astra and they have 15 loyal cards, which is why there are only 49 cards total when combining SM and Astra deck. Space Marines have 14 loyal! And I just counted Chaos and looks like they have only 13 loyal cards, so it gives more choice. Looks like each deck has different number of loyal units. If there are other ones with 15 loyals that's a bummer if u want to have 2 players play out of 1 box "legally" with 51-card deck...

I don't care though if I'm missing 1 card in the deck for "legal" purposes as I never play any tourneys, it just strikes me odd that you can't mix SM and Astra together to get a legal deck size from 1 core set.

They do say in the instructions that the game is "ready to play out of the box" - I guess they must have meant casual games of 36-card decks?

They also said that the 51-card pool is considered a "custom" deck building. That would be my only complaint - that the game doesn't allow you to do that with SM and Astra deck. I wander maybe Eldar or Tau have the same problem... Otherwise, I think the game is awesome.

The only other thing I've noticed is that the resources are very scarce, and Cato seems to have a great advantage over other factions, with gathering more resources in general, and able to manipulate other player's army units by using his Sicarius's Chosen, or the Fury of Sicarius to destroy very strong opponents, and then cheap Indomitable which if played at the right moment can prevent any amount of damage from an attacker. Sweet.

So my questions are:

1. What are the different game style plays in this game? What I mean is deck size. They suggest 30 cards + 6 supports. I like that format because the abilities of the deck trigger a lot more often. If you have 1 core set only, combining factions to make a 51-card deck makes the deck not trigger the desired effects as often as 36-card deck.

2. Do you like the 36-card decks better than 51-card deck? And would you ever do more than 51, like in Magic The Gathering where they have 100-card decks sometimes? Seems like a smaller deck is more consistent, but I've never really tried 3 core sets with full deck-building, so I really have no clue if a 50-card deck would be more consistent than just 1 core set. I'm assuming the 50 cards would be much better because, well, they would be "custom."

I think if you have 1 core set and you're just playing casually then not having 50 cards (plus the warlord) is no big deal. You may end up decking yourself but if it's just casual you could always shuffle your discard pile back into play.

I think to really customize your deck you'll need to pick up another core set or two, or just wait until more expansions come out and the card pool grows.

As for your questions:

1) to truly get synergies working and to get a deck to function at its highest potential you will want to run 3 copies of most cards. If you're playing casually and this isn't a big concern (and you want to save some money) then you can stick with 1 core set - the synergies just won't pay off as well/often.

2) I always try to stick to 50 card decks. I may go a card or two over but you really start decreasing the odds of drawing what you'll need/want the more cards you pack in.

Hope this helped!

Don't forget that you can add multiple copies of neutral cards. The game is ideally to be played against someone who also had their own sets.

Yeah, each faction has 14-15 Loyal cards, so some pairings come up 1 shy, for splitting a core and playing with a friend it's okay to cut a deck down 1 card. Also some factions only have a few elites, so dropping [Fall Back!] is cool, and personally I swapped a [Fall Back!] for a [Promotion] because I play Chaos which has 6 elites versus my friend's SMurfs which has 3 and command issues, makes pretty good sense no?

All in all though, utilizing a number of the neutrals you can build one deck of 50+Warlord for any faction out of a single core.