1. In the rulebook section "For the First Game" it reads, "...shuffle the 24 non-alliance neutral cards (cards 111–119) and deal out 10 neutrals to each player."

   Should this read "...shuffle the 21 non-alliance cards neutral cards (cards 111–119)..." or "...shuffle the 24 non-alliance neutral cards (cards 111–121)..."?

2. When building your own decks, do you still shuffle in neutral cards?

   Let's says my friend comes over and doesn't own a copy of the game, so we'll be sharing my cards. I have some of the battle packs, and we want to each build a deck. If we want to use neutral cards to build a deck is it a case of first grabs first gets?

Thanks.

You can build the decks however you want as long as you don't go over 3 of any given card and you don't put destruction and order in the same deck. Those rulebook "first game" things are just to help learn the game. That isn't how you play always.

Let your buddy use the better neutrals like Warpstone Excavation and Contested Village so he/she can get a few wins under their belt, get addicted, and buy the game!

I've heard talk of Warpstone Excavation being great, but units entering that area are corrupted. Isn't that a bad thing? Or should I search the forums and find out why being corrupted is so good?

I've only played a couple of practice games by myself so I know what to do when/if a gameplaying friend materialises.

Being corrupted just means that a unit can't be declared as an attacker or defender (and can be targeted by certain cards/effects). There's no upside to it for the most part, but in a lot of constructed decks there isn't much downside, either. Units like Lobber Crew and Savage Marauder are rarely going to defend, anyway, so it doesn't much matter if they are corrupted. So, for many decks, Warpstone Excavation is a free hammer in Quest or Kingdom that is fairly hard to remove since it isn't a unit. If you're playing with a limited cardpool, WE won't be nearly as good, though it is still pretty good for Destruction.

It would probably make the most sense to give all three Warpstones to the Destruction player and all three Contested Villages to the Order player. There may not be any others you want to run; if there are, just take turns selecting them.

Thanks for the advice so far. One last question... (for now)

Once you've built your deck, are you to shuffle it? I see talk of combos, but with a shuffled deck you'd have no guarantee that the combo cards will come out in order.

I really need to play this with someone who knows what they're doing.

Yes you shuffle. That is the balance of playing a combo type deck. You play combos because they are typically powerful, but you do not always get them into play. Variance for the game is good. Building a consistent deck is part of the fun in the game. You build to reduce variance as much as possible as that will give you the upper hand, but the game is designed to have variance (It keeps the game from being overly repetitive).

Warpstone Excavation is good because the "drawback" hardly matters. If you don't plan on playing units to the Quest zone, what harm will corrupting all units played there matter?

Thanks again for the advice. Another practice game gave me a chance to figure out how to make best use of cards - and Warpstone Excavation came up. I liked it after seeing the drawback was minimal.