There are a lot of threads about general deckbuilding concepts, like "how many locations should I have" and the like, but I was wondering about more nebulous ideas: how to make a deck run or "click"? What kind of things do you look for in your decks to make them work smoothly? Is it the cost curve? Keyword or trait synergy? Weird combo effects?

I ask because I haven't quite figured it out myself - some of my decks seem to really go off well, and others are absolute clunkers, though they all seem to look good on paper...

Delobius said:

Well it can be any of those things that make it 'work'. I think one of the first things to look at, especally for new players, is that you are not trying to make your deck do too many things at once. One of my friends refers to this as cool card syndrome. Yeah it might be cool to have a Targ Dothraki deck which runs in Summer and packs alot of burn and splashes in dragons but generally you will just be diluting your deck so none of it will work right very often. My advice to anyone starting out deckbuilding is to pick one theme/combo/strategy for the deck and make that work to the best of your ability. At first totally ignore anything which doesn't directly tie into your main deck theme. If you can get a 60 card deck focused to that 1 single theme then play that and see what works and what could be cut. Eventually you'll get a good idea of what makes your specific deck tick and then be able to experiment around that to see what you can do to make it better.

A few basic thoughts: Do you have enough "draw" cards? Do you have enough income cards? What is your character cost curve like? My general character cost curve looks like this, organized by character cost:

0 - 3 (refugees)

1 - 6

2 - 6

3 - 7

4 - 5

5+ - 3

That's just to get you started, every deck will look different, depending on your plots and location income. Also, even if you are following this curve, what is your strength and icon spread like? I generally focus on one icon (mil for Stark, int for Lanni, pow for Bara), but then make sure the other icons are well represented as well. That's just a few super-generic thoughts...

The two most important things for making a deck feel smooth are...

• Good cost curve (includes low-cost characters, appropriate level of plot gold, and resource locations); and
• Robust, redundant draw engine. I think somewhere between 7 and 10 draw effects is best, depending on whether they are repeatable. (Not all of these have to be draw though...I usually count cards like the Blackfish, Street Waif, and the new Jhogo as "draw.")

I agree in theory that trying to do too many things may make the deck feel clunky, but in practice I find that the above two factors make up 90% of clunkiness. If I put 60 cards of mish-mash together but have enough draw to draw 2-3 extra cards each round and the gold to play them, the deck should feel very smooth, assuming I have the right balance of characters, locations, and non-setup cards. Now a deck that actually has a central theme (power rush, focus on a particular control mechanic like "kneel," etc.) will likely do better than one without, but I wouldn't say that a central theme is necessary for the deck to be smooth. I do agree though that decks should not include cards that contradict each other...for example, playing tons of 1-STR guys is usually a bad idea if you include Threat from the North in your plot deck. This is one reason why Lanni's Clansmen are, I think, pretty terrible - you have a House that typically wants more cards in hand than the opponent, and then you give that House a mechanic that requires you to have less in hand.

Edit/Addition:

My typical cost curve (characters and locations) usually looks like this:

• 0: At least 6, but usually 9-10
• 1: 8-10
• 2: 8-14 (depends a lot on the deck)
• 3: 2-5
• 4+: 1-3

I usually try to ensure that half of my deck costs 2 or lower. This speeds up setups, and it makes you less vulnerable to Winter, location-discard effects, and Blockade. If I'm running the Knights of the Hollow Hill agenda, the breakdown is quite a bit different (I run much more expensive characters) since there's no setup, and you have the extra +2 gold. Also, I don't play Bara, but I assume that if you're a Bara player, you play a lot more 3- and 4-gold characters since you play duplicates of the key unique characters that you want to draw.

Yeah in Baratheon decks I tend to have many more 3-4 gold characters than Twn2dn suggested, but that's caused by three things (not just duplicates). Maybe ~6 characters at 4 gold, and ~8-10 characters at 3 gold. Also I usually have less 2 gold characters, but a similar amount of 0-1 gold chars... mainly because I feel that 2 gold chars are usually worst on the cost/benefit scale, and are weak to stuff like Venomous Blade.

1. Lack of decent draw in Baratheon. The less cards you draw per turn, the more gold your characters and locations should cost, and vice versa. I've noticed a similar effect in Stark. This of course was more of an issue before Val.

2. 'Kicker' -type resources such as Narrow Seas and Seat of Power.

3. And yeah, duplicates. But usually I tend to run only duplicates of one or two key characters, like Robert/Melissandre.

Usually you can help cost issues in characters, by picking lower cost locations over higher cost ones. So if your cost curve for characters tends to be high (plenty of 3+ gold characters), then pick say Smuggler's Cove over Kingswood Trail. So, costly locations/attachments -> cheaper characters, and vice versa.

I remember somebody once presenting their 'basic' split of the number of different cards per deck (could have been dormouse, no idea anymore), which helped my quite a bit. If I'd have to rewrite it based on what I tend to use myself, it would be something like:

~30 characters, maybe a bit more if it's an aggro deck and a bit less if it's a control deck.

~10 resource locations

The rest ~20 cards are a mix of non-resource locations, attachments and events, with a few rules for those as well:

Maximum of 6 attachments (and that's already a bit much... although season decks can sometimes have more than 6 due to the ravens), and keep those cheap (a 2 gold attachment should make the sky fall on top of your enemy to be worthwhile).

Minimum of 6 events (but almost never more than 10).

At least 4-5 non-resource locations.

WWDrakey said:

I'm not criticizing your statement, it seems about right for many decks, but just to play devil's advocate I'll disagree and say it varies a bit depending on your House. Targ can certainly do with more than 6 attachments sometimes, especially if you are running 3x LDC or Pentos, and Flame-Kissed is a 2-cost attachment that I wouldn't want to do without. Martell can easily do with more than 10 events and still be very solid, I include 12 events in most Martell decks. Even Baratheon may want a few extra if using the Kings of the Sea Robert.

Skowza said:

There was a reason I called it a 'basic' split of cards in a deck. But yeah, pretty much what Twn2dn said, it's mostly about balancing out the non-setup cards. A Martell deck with 12 events won't usually be running 6 attachments, and Targ decks that are high on attachments usually don't have as many events. And there's of course a lot of decks that break these rules, I think my version of a Viserys Packrat deck has something like 26 attachments... and KotHH decks are another matter entirely.

I think the main point is that if I start going over these rules in some regard, I make sure to test the deck out in that particular area and see if the choice is worth it. (Start keeping note of any events that see very little play during games etc.)

I know that every decks number of resource card may vary deck by deck. But is there a basic number that is usually used?

Rising Dragon said: