Greetings all! New to this game as said but it seems like an amazing game so far and one i'm looking forward to expanding on definately, but I have some basic questions about recommendations people might have when it comes to deck building and such going beyond the Core Set starter decks.

Basically i've been wondering on what the general concensus is from people on things like min/max deck sizes? Like when I use to play MTG I remember we limited ourselves to 60 Cards as a nice balanced number between not to many and not too few. I know the rulebook recommends 50 as a minimum and 100 as a max but that's QUITE a big gap there! Also wondering if there is any sort of recommendation on balance between how much % of your deck you make up out of Units and how much out of Support/Tactics etc. I know second question will probably depend on if I go for some sorta special style of deck but just curious if there is any basic newbie recommendations. Oh and right now i'm looking to start off with a Dwarf deck, simply because i've always love dwarves, if that had any influence at all!

Thanks for any replies in advance and takign time to read and answer my inqueries!

Personally, I try to keep my decks as close as possible to the minimum. 50-51 is usually what I end up with. If you are looking to use larger decks, I would recommend no more than 55 cards. 60 is already way too many. Remember that every deck is looking to get it's best cards/combos out and the more cards you have, the less the chance of drawing them. This also makes larger decks less consistent.

Normally I look for a minimum of 23-24 units in my decks. This is fairly flexible, though. Decks with 26-27 or so units are not rare. I usually shoot for 9-11 resource generating support cards since you want a fairly steady number of non-unit cards that can help your economy. I don't look for any particular number in tactics unless the deck I'm using has cards that synergize with them.

As for newcomer decks, nothing could be easier than orc rush. However, I don't think you should play it for the sake of playing an easy archetype. I firmly believe that you should play the models that you like best and then experiment with other stuff. If that means starting with dwarves, I think that's fine. I do, however, recommend that you eventually try out all the races to get a feel for the entire game experience and who knows, you may find something you didn't even knew you'd like. Welcome to the game and enjoy!

Orc rush = auto pilot

Doc9 said:

Empire deck with both: Pirates and Verena package = autopilot with parking sensor

Thanks for reply and tips Titan ^^ had my first few games amongst friends since then and it is amazing fun, even if I did get my behind kicked mostly xD. Definately going to go on and get the Assault on Ulthuan expansion now, I wanted to ask in addition to my previous enquiry. When it comes to our deck making due to us all being Warhammer TT players and fans etc, we were going to think about playing our games with a no-mixed race/faction policy. However we're unsure if all the different factions individually are that well balanced, we did for instance figure out that Orc Rushing/Zerging is pretty dang good from our first game night indeed, but not entirely unbeatable. What's community concensus on the faction balance individually basically as opposed to simply Order vs Destruction? Thanks!

Rifulas Drakere said:

I don't know wether this is community census but my point of view is the following: it's really balanced at the moment. Every fraction has at least 1 strong deck archetype with the exception of High Elves but that's only when you look at the complete Cardpool (until City of Winter). It' not always easy to evaluate how strong a deck is when you didn't play against different kind of decks. There are also some battlepacks/expansions that gave a major boost to one race.

Orc rush is timeless good. It didn't evolve that much from core set to now but it was always a threat you have to consider. Therefore while deckbuilding you always include a few cards that can protect you against it. Orc rush can also have a hard time against the other 2 destruction fractions so it is advised not to play only order vs destruction, to get experience in various matchups.

Oh no no certainly, the idea wasn't to play only Order vs Destruction or such, it was just simply that when deck building among our friends, with the exception of neutral cards, we would only include cards from that particular Race. Like a High Elf deck would only be made up of High Elf + Neutral cards and such. So it would be a case of if we did a 4 player free for all (Using awesome community rules managed to find here o) we'd just each pick a Race and make a deck for them etc. Our concern was simply if the Races + Neutrals are balanced enough to make that viably fair or if some come off stronger/weaker than the others and so would get dull to play fast probably by constantly getting crumped.

Well...like Grille said, with the exception of High Elves, all of the races have a pretty strong archetype. So, race-centric decks are a viable option.

For a fun High Elf deck you can check out Mallumo's deck that uses a bunch of tactics and Star Dragon in tandem.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=155&efcid=4&efidt=590966

As far as that being a "strong achetype", it isn't, but it's still hilarious and fun.

My buddie is building High Elf Dragon and one based on burn and they seem to be pretty good I think We just play the game wrong is our problem lol

Actually many people will tell you to stick with a small deck. Funny thing is: I can kick ass with my 100 cards "order alliance / control" deck just fine

In the end it depends on your playing style. If you have a "winning combo" that you need to pull of it's best to stick with a small deck. But there are (working) strategies for bigger decks as well (as a side effect they also wreak havoc on dark elves trying to exhaust your pile of cards).

MOST important things to take into account:

Cheap units or buildings:

Make sure to have LOT'S of stuff in your deck you can afford with the basic 3 resources / 1 loyalty. At least a third of your cards should be that cheap (if not more). Otherwise you may end up having only ONE affordable card in your starting hand. And if your opponent takes that away (as there are many cheap cards to get rid of stuff) you may end up loosing before the game even begins.

Fight the urge to put too many big expensive units in your deck. Yes, they are very impressive, but many cards take out one big unit just as easily as one that only costs 2 resources.

Having things that last:

When in doubt it's better to go with a unit or a support card instead of a tactic. Many tactics are very powerful especially in the right combination. But remember that for many tactics you have to have targets (like your own units) to begin with. So those should make up only a rather small part of your deck.

Quests:

Same for quests. A quest alone achieves nothing if there isn't a unit to make it work. They CAN be useful in that there are currently only very limited options to get rid of quests, thus giving you a permanent loyalty symbol. But generally it's best to keep their number down.

Playing a lot:

Well, duh, obviously. But while playing look out for cards that seem useless to you (at least in that moment of the game) and end up being developed every single time. Take those out. Yes, you probably put them in because in the right moment they might be REALLY useful. But if that only happens in one out of ten games it's better to have a less useful card that can be used in EVERY game.

New player here too. Is there a site or guide as to where to get the cards you want for a deck? Or is it pretty simple like core deck + any battle packs w/ Dwarf on it = good enough deck for Dwarfs? Or is it like Magic where you can buy these cards individually from auction/3rd-party sites? I've checked out a couple database sites, but nothing that really shows a guide as to what to purchase...

And by "what to purchase" i mean in what battle packs the cards you need are in. I know deck lists obviously show the cards in the list, but I don't know what battle packs those individual cards are in!

edit: ok, nvm, i see on the databases it shows what edition/packs they're in. So I can just cross-reference that stuff.

Since there are no different card rarities, there's hardly any secondary market for individual cards. You might find someone selling single cards on ebay though. I'd consider that a highly inefficient way to spend your money though.

If you go to deckbox.org, Card Database -> Warhammer Invasion -> Advanced Search -> More filters -> Edition, you can see the contents of each battlepack or deluxe expansion.

If you are especially interested in Dwarfs, the Karaz-A-Karak battlepack will offer you the highest amount of cards for the dollar. The other five battlepacks from the Capital cycle (from The Inevitable City to The Imperial Throne) all have only a single Dwarf card each.

My advice would be to not focus on a single faction though, you'll miss out on a big part of the game, and except for the mentioned battlepack, you'll get a high number of cards that are useless to you. Be open about playing other factions, or find someone else who doesn't want to play them all and split costs and cards with them.