Introduction

Most card games have a developed meta and non-upgradable cards so that ‘top tier’ decks can be posted online and copied by anyone with the available cards. Stormbound is vastly different, and for most players determining your optimal deck will take quite a bit more skill. As of now, new cards are being added every month. Depending on how long you’ve played, your cards are also upgraded to varying levels. This means nobody has the exact same collection as you, and so you need to determine how to build your deck without much precedent.

So how do you build a good deck? First we’ll need to understand the different stages of the game. Then we’ll come up with a strategy to win during one of the stages. Then we’ll look specifically at what composes a deck, and what makes one card choice better than another. Putting it all together should give you the tools to make a strong deck, whether you have no upgraded cards, or everything all maxed out.

Stages of the Game

Early Game

The ‘early game’ is roughly defined as the first couple turns of the game. The important distinction to make is that in the early game, you will not have mana to play some of your cards. Thus decks that have many low mana cards will have an extreme advantage because they can push out two or three units per turn. Decks that only have a couple low mana cards will have to rely on getting lucky (drawing their low mana cards) in order to defend against the onslaught.

If nobody is immediately blown out of the game, then at some point both sides will have enough mana to comfortably play their cards. This can happen sooner if both decks have solely low mana cards, or later if both decks are playing high mana cards. Then the game will transition into one of the following two stages.

Stalemate

A ‘stalemate’ is when neither side can put up enough pressure to land a lot of units near the opponent’s base. The clearest sign of a stalemate is when both players alternate clearing out the opponent’s units and playing some of their own on their respective turns. It is usually difficult to directly win out of stalemate, although a freak accident like Needle Blast or well-placed Siren of the Seas can sometimes instantly pop the opponent.

Most often, one side will eventually overpower the other and stick some units that the opponent cannot handle. This transitions the game into the third stage.

Offensive

The game is in an ‘offensive’ state if a player can start his turn with his front line near the opponent’s base. Note that this does not imply the other player is on the ‘defensive’; the other player could have his own front line at the first player’s base. When the game is on the offensive, the offensive player is probably trying to close out the game. He has a variety of options, from running 2 movement units for a direct kill, to accumulating units outside the base to keep the attack up, to filling up the opponent’s baseline so that they can’t play any units.

If the game does not finish and a defending player pushes the other player back, the game will either transition into offensive for the other player, or into a stalemate.

Deck Archetypes

Every good deck has a game plan. There are three stages of the game… perhaps there are three clearcut game plans? You’re right!

Rush/Aggro — Win the early game

This strategy focuses on pumping out units in the first couple turns and hoping that the opponent does not have the cards to respond quickly enough. Most likely, you will be playing almost solely 1-4 mana cards. If you can’t close the game out soon enough, you may need to switch to the next strategy.

Attrition — Win in stalemate

This strategy focuses on keeping the game in stalemate until the opponent eventually dies. You utilize cards like Mischiefs and Needle Blast to continuously ping the opponent while trying to stop the opponent from pushing units up to your base. Occasionally a good hand+board may let you play several fast units to finish the opponent off with a First Mutineers or something of the like. If the opponent somehow gives you a board advantage, it may also be easier to switch to the next strategy.

Control — Win in offensive

If you are experienced with deck archetypes this may at first not make sense. Shouldn’t aggro be the deck that wins offensive? In fact it should not. Aggro strategies win early, and if the game is in an offensive state that is not early, then the offensive player played strong (perhaps high mana) cards to counter the opponent–with a front line at the opponent’s base, he is now in ‘control’ of the game! Control players seek to transition stalemates and offensive boards for the other player into an offensive board of their own. From here they try to close out the game. This strategy often involves high mana cards so that all the mana in later turns can be spent.

A note to aspiring strategists

All decks can essentially be classified based on its primary strategy (so that we can say a ‘Rush deck’ or ‘Control deck’). Note, however, that any deck can play to any strategy, and it is to your advantage to try to recognize in-game what your role should be. If you are playing an aggressive deck, but your opponent is playing an even more aggressive deck, you are better off playing for control/attrition and winning later on. Attrition and Control decks are even more fluid–control decks often use Ubass as a backup plan and attrition decks sure as hell will take advantage of an offensive position.

It is difficult to give an objective measurement of what deck strategy you should go for without evaluating your options in game. However, once you do decide on a deck strategy, it is easier to construct it.

Deck Composition

Barring specific card choices (next section), there are two general topics that should influence what goes in your deck. The first is having a good mana curve–you want to make the most of your mana every turn. The second is working with card synergies–whether to include whole ‘packages’ like freeze cards or poison cards.

Surviving the early game

I cannot stress enough the importance of running enough low mana cards. Not every game will have a stalemate or an offensive stage. Every game will have an early game. If you cannot consistently make it out of the early game then you cannot hope for a high win-rate (read: your deck sucks). With that being said, how consistent do you want to be? This depends heavily on the metagame. If everyone else is playing a rush deck, then your only concern is surviving the early game. If everyone is playing for control, then your low mana cards aren’t as important.

Furthermore, in subsequent turns where you are playing higher mana cards, having low mana cards to squeeze in with your last 1-2 mana crystals also makes a huge difference.

With that being said, here are my personal benchmarks for any deck you play:

At least 1 card costing 1 mana

At least 4 cards costing 1-2 mana

At least 6 cards costing 1-3 mana

These restrictions are already incredibly lenient for a high-level deck. Any deck that only meets the minimum requirements would probably be a control deck; even many of my control decks generously exceed these requirements.

How many bombs to play

‘Bomb’ commonly refers to a high costing card that pretty much wins the game or at least has high impact on the game. Newer players tend to be immediately attracted to playing as many bombs as possible due to their flashy nature. However, this tends to be a big mistake. Many bombs require specific situations to be useful. As a result, bombs tend to be a little inconsistent.

Being inconsistent along with costing high mana means you will be cycling your bomb very often. Now imagine if you are playing multiple bombs. Sure, that one time you drew the right one at the right time saved your life. But you’re forgetting all the other times it was just sitting in your hand wasting space when it could have been a 2 mana card that you could spend your remaining mana on.

I would consider any card that costs 6 mana+ to be a bomb. You can think of a counterexample? You probably shouldn’t play that card. This is often dependent on how upgraded your overall cards are. Many bombs are epic/legendary, and if you cannot upgrade them to be on par with your commons, they may not be good enough to put in your deck.

With all that said, I would say you should run 0-3 bombs in your deck. If you run any more than 1 then your deck is probably a control deck.

Card Synergies

By card synergy here I mean specific cards that require specific other cards to be useful. For example, cards that want enemy units to be frozen or poisoned. Or, cards that benefit from a certain tribe of cards being on the board. Oftentimes these cards have very powerful effects if the conditions are satisfied, and are tempting to put in your deck. However beware! These cards tend to be even more inconsistent than bombs. Bombs are a single card, whereas synergy cards often require you to play multiple cards in a turn (for example, a card that damages frozen units needs to you first freeze a unit on that same turn).

It is difficult to give a benchmark for how many cards in a certain synergy to run. However, you should always consider the following:

Are these cards playable on their own? Icicle burst does nothing without frozen cards, so it is difficult to use. Wisp Cloud is weak on its own, but it can attack the turn it is played. And finally, Midwinter Chaos can be great even if you have no other freeze cards.

Do you have enough enablers? In order to improve consistency you will need to run a lot of cards that play into your strategy. If you only have 3 freeze cards available, your combos are not consistent enough to use.

Does it break your mana curve? If you only ever want to play Midwinter Chaos and Wisp Cloud in sequence, you can think of them as a single 7 mana card that takes up two card slots. They don’t count as your ‘low mana’ cards! Make sure to think of that when looking at your mana curve.

As a side note, these tend to be reasons why structures are a lot harder to include in your deck than other cards. They usually require specific things to happen to be useful (need to be safe for a turn at least), and are pretty bad played on their own.

Should I put this card in my deck?

Finally, let’s get down to card choices. There are several things to consider when making a choice.

Value

I could write books on the concept of value (and for other games, books have already been written). In Stormbound your supply of cards in hand are essentially unlimited so the most important ‘value’ to consider is your strength/mana ratio. For example, a level 1 Westwind Sailors is 1 strength/mana. Other cards aren’t as clear-cut. A level 1 Execution is 0.75 strength/mana usually, but if you execute a unit with less than 3 strength, you get less value out of it.

As shown by Execution, a lot of your value calculations can only be determined on the battlefield. However, when deck-building, you should consider the most likely case. My level 1 Witches of the Wild could be 0.5 strength/mana, but I’ll pretty much always be playing it bordering at least one enemy unit, so I’ll value it at 1 strength/mana.

How much strength/mana is ‘good’? That depends primarily on how upgraded you are in general. I use my Gifted Recruits as a benchmark. If any of my cards can match Gifted Recruits on its strength/mana, then it’s pretty good. You’ll notice it tends to be harder to match this ratio as cards increase in mana cost–yet another reason low mana cards are better!

You’ll notice that decks that want to win quickly play high value cards early on. In order for late-game decks to compete with these low-mana high-value cards, their bombs need to be even higher value. For example, a level 3 Dawnsparks attacking once already becomes 10 strength/2 mana. While this is situational, any bomb needs to at the bare minimum have a situation where it can provide a large amount of value.

Movement

Movement refers to a unit’s movement, but spells can have pseudo-movement. For example, Potion of Growth buffs a unit, which is essentially playing a 0 movement unit. Execution, on the other hand, deals damage when played, which is essentially playing a unit with movement. In general, cards that lack any form of movement will have a higher amount of value from a pure strength/mana point of view. However, I strongly recommend you to choose cards that have movement simply because they are better in so many more situations.

For example, disregarding the cycle effect, Goldgrubbers is a much better card than Cabin Girls. It can advance your own front line as well as kill enemy structures/units the turn you play it. Although Cabin Girls has 1 extra strength at every level, the lack of movement makes her a much worse choice.

That being said, like bombs, having a couple no movement cards in your deck is fine. No movement is ‘situational’, and sometimes you’ll be in a situation where no movement is fine, and playing something like Summon Militia instead of Gifted Recruits is ok.

On the other end of the spectrum is high movement–units with 2+ movement. These cards tend to have drastically less strength/mana than 0-1 movement units. However, I would recommend you include at least one such unit in your deck in order to defend and attack bases better.

Sample Deckbuilding

Let’s put this all together by building a deck. The combo Rain of Frogs + Kindred’s Grace stands out to me, so that’s what I’ll start with. This is a very high value combo, and even when upgraded costs 6 mana to pull off, so I’m guessing this will be a control deck.

To start off I need to secure my early game. Green Prototypes and Gifted Recruits are my auto-includes for all of my decks. Dubious Hags is the equivalent of Gifted Recruits, so I throw that in there too.

Toxic Sacrifice is an incredibly high-value card, so I could use that. Azure Hatchers has synergy with Kindred’s Grace and Toxic Sacrifice, so let’s use that too. At this point my early game is decent. My Witches of the Wild is level 4, which means played bordering one enemy is an 8 strength swing (2 strength/mana), and two enemies is a 12 strength swing (3 strength/mana). Compared to Gifted Recruits, which is my benchmark, this is a higher mana card that has the same value ratio–excellent! Let’s throw Witches in there.

Now we look for a bomb other than Kindred’s Grace+Frogs. Tode the Elevated is not upgraded enough to give good value, and Klaxi’s lack of movement is unappealing (Kindred’s Grace already has no movement). Blood Ministers can situationally be incredible, and even converting one unit is fine, so that’s what I’ll use.

Let’s find some other toads to synergize with Kindred’s. Copperskin Rangers is very solid (all 2 mana cards are). Let’s use it! I also consider Amberhides now that we have two poison cards. However, I only have two enablers and don’t want to put in more, and it is not good enough on its own, so I leave it out. Sharpfist Exiles is a decent bomb, but late game we’ll be the ones with a lot of units, so it’s a little antisynergistic and I leave it out.

Since I don’t have any other bombs I decide to try an attrition strategy instead of control. Instead of pushing board advantage with value from Kindred’s Grace, we can instead use value to buy us time to ping the opponent. I would love to put Ubass in, but he’s not upgraded enough. Instead we top the deck off with Warfront Runners and First Mutineers (should have put the latter in long ago).

And there we have it! This deck in fact performs very well at rank 1.

This guide only scratches the surface of deckbuilding. Every concept I brought up can be fleshed out much, much more. There are metagame decisions and specific synergies that go into running a perfect analysis of a deck. But we’ll save all that for a later day. Cheers!