Many a time I’ll be asked how I’d go about building a specific deck. We each have our own deck building processes, but today I’ll give you a brief rundown on how I go about it.

Stage 1: Sign Ups – What is a Deck Limit??

In Stage 1, I don’t bother paying attention to how many cards are in the deck. I pull up Swdestinydb.com and go to the deckbuilder, change the settings to whatever faction / colors I’ll need and then start building. Assuming that I know the lineup already, I’ll go to upgrades, sort by cost, and start scrolling down the list as I add items. If i feel a card is powerful and synergistic to the deck and useful for my needs, i’ll put it as a 2 of, but if not, then it’ll be a 1 of. For the most part I avoid weak cards that I know won’t make the deck but if there is a bare level of synergy or theoretical usefulness then it’ll at least make it through “sign ups”.

In the upgrades portion, you want to pay attention to # of useable damage sides as well as how much damage, pay sides, and additional effects like redeploy. In a 2 character non-vehicle deck, for the most part I skip out on going through the supports, but it is best to go through it anyways so that you don’t miss a gem like Backup Muscle or Imperial HQ or some other synergistic card.

Events is one of the harder ones to decide, but usually i already have a layout in my mind of what i should be expecting. I spend most of my time in the 0 / 1 cost categories and rarely venture out into the 2+ portions, but I still like to go through them from time to time so that I don’t limit myself. In today’s article, you’ll be seeing me start off at the 36 card mark, but on the days where i’m REALLY searching through unchartered territory for me, i’ll be staring down at 50+ card decks. This is a recent FN-2199 / Beckett list that I was theorizing about since someone asked me to make one on the Loops Discord.

You’ll notice that some of the cards should be questioned as to why they are there, but knowing that I don’t have access to Blue with this composition, then I had to reach a bit further for removal and when it comes to FN, I go a bit deeper on upgrades so that I can scrutinize the comparisons much more whilst making my decisions as well as have backup plans to try when some weapons just don’t work out the way i intended.

Stage 2: First Cuts – Squeezing down to 30

You’ll want to have a rough idea on what you want for ratios in the deck / starting hands or a per round basis. I’ll be looking to have 13-14 weapons so that I get 2 a round. Math dictates that i need 12 so it’s 40% of my deck but you can’t afford to miss and 4 drops don’t count, so 14 is the intent here. I decided 4 “ramp” cards should suffice so that leaves us with 12 cards between mitigation and “other” purposes. The hard part is whittling it down. As I mentioned earlier, I like to start over the limit on decks so that later when I have difficulties, I can see what I thought may have been viable and maybe that fixes the issue. The DB website has an option for checking “History” which let’s you see what cards you cut / added and when. It is very beneficial during those troubled times of a deck not operating the way you intended and sometimes going back in time to take a peek at your mentality during the build can help to clear up the “mental block” on how to proceed, or in this case, backtrack.

My “2x” cards are “locked” in deck to me. So I’ll be making cuts from the others and then also adding other temporary 2x of cards as I decide that 2 makes sense. I prefer this method so that I know how many slots I’m working with. To be a 2 of the card needs to be amazing (in general or synergy with the deck) or have been proven to be used to good effect constantly. Sometimes we give too much credit to old cards so don’t automatically assume it had to be maxed out. Question the decisions of old and if they can compare to current standards. I have 0 holdouts for that reason. As I’m looking through the deck and deciding how many redeploy weapons I need (a requirement when building our friend Nines), I come to a sudden quandary (ssh, i hope that word is correct)… Where the hell did my LL30’s go??. Stupid mobile deck building, they some how never made it in the deck and I make that adjustment. I re-read the cards in the deck to make sure that I didn’t miss any text (Donderbus, WTF you doing here bro?? *kicked*).