The best way to stack your deck is to think about “squares.”

Several of Star Realms’ top players refer to “squaring” a deck as having a deck size that is a multiple of five, such that you never shuffle a new deck while drawing a new hand of cards. The ideal version of this strategy is that your deck is a multiple of five, plus one for each card draw effect in your deck. That can certainly be tricky with draw effects on ally abilities, but you get the idea. The main benefit of having a square deck is that nothing will “bottom deck” or “miss the shuffle.” As someone who seemingly has half of their deck-scrapping cards show up just as I am shuffling a new deck, this tactic seems like a great way to improve my game!

This week, squaring your deck is easier than ever. You literally can shape your purchases to ensure that you won’t shuffle your deck at the wrong time. You can also do the reverse – intentionally not squaring your deck to ensure a shuffle does happen. Knowing which route to take requires an awareness of the overall game state. Are you leading? Can you build to a strong combo? Is your best card in your discard pile? And so on.

Having a square deck is essential if you are looking to purchase deck-scrapping cards from the Machine Cult. If your deck is not square, you are going to draw your scrappers right when you shuffle, forcing you to scrap from your hand and possibly not being able to scrap a starting card at all. When I first encountered the format, I believed the scrapping cards were significantly weaker than normal this week. I’ve since learned this trick and now I consider them to be just as great as they always have been — it just takes a bit more work than usual.

One Big Turn appears to be the primary winning strategy this week, but there are other options.

Because you have the ability to literally stack (the bottom of) your deck, you can ensure that key ally abilities will trigger. You can ensure that you’ll have a bunch of trade bunched together on turn 3, and a bunch of damage bunched together on turn 8. You can eventually set your deck up to have huge combo turns to close out the game. For this reason, trade is worth more than normal, because you will be buying relevant cards all the way until the very last turn of the game. (Buying a great card, then triggering or playing a draw-card effect, is as great as it sounds.)

I’ve won a few different ways, but my favorite route is stall-and-scrap. Buying as many Trade Federation cards that grant authority, and the deck-scrapping cards from the Machine Cult, I can drag the game out past turn 25. Most people are neither prepared for this nor are they able to respond once they figure it out. Federation Shuttle has finally found a format where it can shine! One trade for 4 authority, and it bridges into something even bigger! Seriously, most of the best authority-gain abilities in the game are via ally triggers, and the Federation Shuttle (being a common that only costs 1 trade) has proven its worth again and again.