Building a deck quick and easy part 1

So for this article I’ve decided to focus on the basics of Shadow Era, and how to make your deck better once you begin playing some games. For the experiment I created another account and picked the Boris deck for beginning with (Do note I am making the assumption what I say for the Boris deck holds true for the other decks you can pick in the beginning).

You can do this yourself by going to http://game.shadowera.com/ and signing up with your own details, and In case you need it more information on this can be found in previous articles ‘Shadow era parts 1-3’ on this blog.



Boris, lord of removing allies who cost 4 or less. 



In the Boris deck you get the following 30 card deck:

Hero:

Boris

Allies:

2x dirk

2x Sandra

3x puwen

3x blake

Supporters/Items:

2x val defender

2x war banner

1x smashing blow

1x enrage

1x warrior training

1x crippling blow

1x blood frenzy

1x shield bash

1x cover of night

1x retreat

1x reinforced armour

1x special delivery

1x camp fire stories

2x rain delay

1x bazaar

2x extra sharp

So what we have is a very basic and not all that well put together deck, but it does give you a chance to see a number of support abilities and bonuses in action.

Now we can do one of two things. Either go and level up against the computer to get enough crystals (by Lvl 4 you should have gained 100 crystals as you net 25 per level up), and also by doing this it helps you learn how the game works and gain some gold. The other option if it is still active when you read this and begin playing is going to the following link HERE and put in your email address used for your account.

What this link does is give you crystals for free as a small gift, but its limited to 2 million crystals, Although it seems that people get between 125 and 200 crystals from my tests so there should be a good amount still going strong.

Another different route is to do some of the surveys or adverts to gain some crystals if you want, it’s usually free, and some of the adverts give a couple of hundred crystals, where as more minor adverts only give a few ten’s. Each displays the requirement for you to receive the crystals clearly so you can pick the ones to suit.

So now we’ll assume you’ve got to lvl 4 playing the computer and have at least 100 crystals. What do you do now? Well imo buy another deck, but make sure it’s the same type as the one you started with.

And here’s the reason why, updated card list after I purchased a warrior deck with my crystas:

2x Boris

1x amber

4x dirk

4x Sandra

6x puwen

6x blake

4 x val def

4x war banner

2x smashing blow

2x enrage

2x war training

2x crip blow

2x shield bash

2x blood frenzy

2x cover of night

2x retreat

2x reinforced armour

2x special delivery

2x camp fire stories

4x rain delay

4x extra sharp

2x bazaar

Basically what this shows is we got the same deck cards twice, so all our previous card amounts are doubled. Although we did get a bonus in the form of Amber, another warrior type who will play differently to Boris, so we now have the option of playing another deck type if we wish.

Now sell your second Boris card, we have no need of spare hero’s as one is all you can use. Also sell 2x Puwen and 2x Blake, the non hero cards in the game are limited to 4 of each type, so these net us maybe 45g each giving us another 200 gold maybe, add that to the initial 500 we start with, and the gold from levelling up to lvl 4 and we should have a fair amount for stage 3, but more on that later.



Dirk, heart throb, bad ass and 4 resources to play.



So with this card pile we can now make up a 60 card deck, but that is not efficient due to some of the cards being frankly horrible (Cover of night to be a prime example). So we’ll aim for the 40 card min needed for playing online.

We begin with our hero:

I’ll stick with Boris for this as we’ve got some experience with him now.

Next up we need some allies. We’ll take:

4x Dirk. (not one of my favs, but he does have ambush allowing you to hit enemies without taking return dmg if you don’t kill them outright)

4x Puwen. (Very handy card, 3HP you can survive turn 2-3 with not many enemy allies being able to kill Puwen in one go yet).

4x Blake. (3dmg is nice as well as his cheap resource cost, but 1hp means even a single enemy can come out from their hand and if they have haste (Allows you to attack on the turn you are played) can kill him off, but he adds quick dmg which is nice.

4x Sandra. (she’s not one of my favourites but she does add in some resource destruction when played with a slightly better hp and atk than some. She’s added in for filler at the moment)

Now for supporters / items, we’ll take the best cards first:

2x Smashing blow. (Perfect for removing enemy armours or weapons).

2x Blood Frenzy. (This is a good draw card for warriors, and while -1hp each turn might seem worrying, it gives you 2 cards a turn to get you the cards you need quicker).

2x Retreat. (A Very handy card allowing you to either put enemy allies back into their hand or put your own back into yours, great for removing crippling blow on your allies or to put their big nasties back in for a turn to buy you time for more card draws).

2x Crippling Blow. (Another staple card, it makes any enemy ally attached to down to 0 attack effectively making them useless unless the enemy happens to have cards in their hand to remove them.. like Retreat mentioned earlier, or other item destruction card options.

2x Bazaar. (While this card is a double edged sword making both you and your opponent draw 2 cards, it can help in getting you cards out quicker. Again a filler card for now)

So that brings us up to 27 cards, we need 13 more for online play.

We’ll cover the routes available for reaching this tomorrow in part 2.