I have read with interest on people making different kinds of decks, but how do you go about it? I am relatively new to Warhammer the Invasion and card games. What criteria do you use for making a certain kind of deck and how do you decide what kind of deck to make. My wife and I play mainly with the core decks and a few other cards thrown in and have a lot of fun and good games. Games may last 30 to 90 minutes with about a hour being the norm. Playing with High Elves & Dark Elves mainly because we seem to have better games with these than when we played Dwarf & Orcs, which the Orcs mainly won. I have all battle packs but since we were having so much fun with HE & DE haven't really tried making different decks; but I am going to start playing with some other people soon and would like to know how to make some. I like Chaos and mainly the destructive side the best, although I would like a Dwarf deck if new friends are playing destructive side. Thanks for your help in advance. I enjoy the Forum very much and read it each day.

Well first I want to say welcome to the game, glad to see new people.

In making I'm going to assume you read the rules for deckbuilding and are looking online for advice beyond these set rules. First advice is just play the starter decks of each race (including the random 10 neutral cards). Once you get a feel for each race, ask yourself "What card(s) really stuck out when playing them? What card(s) were you always glad to draw?" Then, build a deck around these cards. Look at all the cards and ask yourself what combinations work with this deck?

An example: I like Armoury (which requires you to have 2 developments your kingdom in order to get an extra hammer). In my decks that I use Armoury, I usually have 3 of them. I also run 3 Innovations since they also are better the more developments you have in your kingdom.

Part of the fun in this game is making your own deck (at least for me). This community is also great about making your own deck. If you post a deck, you will probably get a few comments withink 24 hours. Just make sure to post what you are working with (like 1 of each expansion) otherwise we are going to assume you have access to 3 of every card.

If this doesn't help, the check out deckbox.org where there are literally hundreds of decks posted. Not every deck posted is guaranteed to be good, but it can give you ideas for building your own deck. If nothing else, just take a posted deck and tweek it to your liking.

Hope this helps

Welcome!!!

Quoting what Torbeck wrote, at first.

Then, let me add something...

Even if you can build up "generic" decks which don't focus on anything in particular (just have a fun/fine tuned deck to play with and destroy your enemies ), havin' a focus helps a lot.

For a Focus I mean "something you have at the "centre" of your deck". It can be a particular in-race interaction, a specific use of a couple of cards, a sub-theme (skaven is the example, but PLEASE, don't play them!!! ).

BTW, it's not simple findin' a focus, especially if you have a small amount of cards or you don't know the game so well...So, we can work on something in the middle.

At first, we should clearly understand the real focus of each "faction" (not race): Order is good in building things, Destruction is good in destroyin' them.

Even if it's not a general rule, the thing is: Order decks are usually more "brainy", often control-ish (even when aggro-ish ) and a little bit more slow.

Destruction decks are usually faster or, if not, just more "biting".

Let's see what I'm talkin' about: High Elf's removal is "Bouncing" (return stuff back in hand), Caos removal is "direct damaging". Now, you can see the "core" difference: in the Order side you have a delay (take some time), in the Destruction one you have an immediate solution to the problem (get rid of it, now!!).

Even if both of them can be pretty "slow-minded" they're pretty different.

So...This epic "mind-fail" of mine is going to end, don't be afraid...

If you like the control-ish side of the evil, I'd reccomend you to stay around Dark Elf and some Caos . If you Focus on Dark Elf you'll have an Aggro-Control deck where the loyalty is your main issue (get rid of it in the early game and then start hittin' by playin' a couple of Units per turn).

It's like "I can bite and stop any time I want".

Caos is not going to work so well alone and has a bit too much loyality issues too to be chosen as a good partner (need some serious tuning here). Anyway, you can have a nice time with Caos + Dark Elf (just add the VIle Sorceress, otherwise known as "The Emo ****" and some HP manipulation stuff) or Caos + Orcs (use the control side of Caos adding Pillage, Lobber Crew and some other removal).

If you wanna go Aggro, run straight Orcs (but please...Don't play skaven!!! eheheh).

With a small card pool and a little bit of patience, you can obtain a pretty strong deck.

If you wanna be in the RIGHT side, play Order.

Dwarves are pretty difficult to manage, especially for the loyalty. But I do trust in straight Dwarves and I see a couple of good playable builds.

It would be important to know the card pool you can choos from for us to give you nice suggestions, but take this as a general input: you can play around " Grudge Thrower ", sacrificing stuff, hitting with the Dwarf Ranger , the brand-new Dwarf Relic and Stand Your ground to get stuff back. You can use some acceleration (Wake The Mountain + Innovation + Treasure Vaults), use big guys (Mountain Brigade, King Kazador) and some useful Tactics (you can control the board with Demolition!, Grudge Thrower Assault, Master Rune of Valaya, Blessing of Valaya, etc.).

You can run pretty low on Units (risky, but good in the late game) and during the early game, focus on aceleration and removal.

Otherwise, you can ignore the Grudge Thrower interactions and play just for acceleration + Big Guys, that's pretty heavy!

High Elves are good for standard control (cancelation, bouncing, healin') as well as aggro (indirect damage, small guys)...Right know, I see them pretty strong for "brigade" decks (more than 1 race decks), cause they give nice support, especially for heavy control decks.

Empire is strong and, for reasons I can't explain, I know they're becomin' faster...

Anyway, the Empire is two-sided : heavy control (you can create decks just playin' around Judgement of Verena) and sof control-aggro (cheap Units, Units movement, Power boosts).

Nice Race, works better with a Splash if you cannot play around JoV, IMHO.

Just as an end note, as Toberk said, check out Deckbox.org and use it in conjunction with this card database for advanced search ( http://info.wsisiz.edu.pl/~szczesnj/warhammer-invasion-LCG.php )...It's pretty useful.

I write down the main focuses of each race, just help you a bit, as well as a general stat-analysis for deckbuilding.

Hope it helps.

ORDER

Empire

Main Focus: control, Unit movement from zone to zone, "tactical" advantage.

Secondary Focus: aggro stuff, cheap Units, power boost.

Dwarf

Main Focus: tough Units, "die hard" stuff, removal.

Secondary Focus: recursion, sacrifice/hit stuff.

High Elf

Main Focus: standard control, indirect damage, cheap but "evil" Units.

Secondary Focus: healin' interactions, aggro-ish stuff, board-units stall.

DESTRUCTION

Orcs

Main Focus: aggro stuff, basic removal for a straight win, aceleration.

Secondary Focus: control stuff, die hard stuff, strong removal.

Caos

Main Focus: direct damaging, big guys.

Secondary Focus: corruption, damage manipulation, power boosts.

Dark Elf

Main Focus: HP manipulation, basic control, cheap and evil stuff.

Secondary focus: hand manipulation, combo stuff, heavy board control.

Basic Deckbuilding Stats (not a rule, but a guide)

Aggro decks: 30 Units, 12 supports, 8 Tactics.

Control decks: 24 Units, 12 Supports, 14 Tactics.

Hope it helps.

To toss in a bit of specifics to go along with the great suggestions and info from everyone else in here (props to DB Cooper for being so thorough!). Once you decide on a couple of themes to focus on, I'd pull the copies you need of those key cards and set them aside along with any other key cards (3x Contested Village, 3x Warpstone Excavation, for examples) that you feel any deck could benefit from. Then use the remaining space to fill the void with good supporting cards that provide some versatility (or conversely, even further focus to your deck's theme). Many people here, coming from other game backgrounds swear by the need to have the minimum amount of cards in their decks (which would be 50 cards) but there are several others of us who believe that the necessity for a tiny deck isn't quite as compelling a need. Each to his or her own - you'll have to make up your own mind on that. Right now, at the tournament level (anyway) it's all about having the fastest Rush deck that gets the job done - in that environment, you're probably better served by having as small of a deck-size as possible to maximize your draws but there are arguments made that claim this isn't the best idea. I'm no longer quite so sure where I stand on the matter.

Good luck either way!

My first "thank you" went somewhere, I don't know where, so here I go again.

Thanks guys for the very informative answers. All were good and gave me some ideas. I like the idea of playing and making a deck around a theme or cards you like to draw. The "focus" of each deck helped tremendously also. Even though I am relatively new I also understand that some decks may need more than 50. I have 55 in my DE deck because 3 times playing my wife with HE she has been within one turn of running me out of cards. So I put some extra units in DE because of that. I also like the idea of having a deck with a "splash" of other races besides Skaven lol.

I think this game is very well thought out and will get even better in the future. From reading this forum I can see there are a lot of enthusiastic players with good ideas.

Thanks to everyone who answered. It helped me a lot and I am sure other people who may have had the same question.