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40k Conquest Fundamentals: Deckbuilding
Dec 10 2015 12:00 AM |
Kingsley
in Warhammer 40k: Conquest
conquest deckbuilding fundamentals Kingsley
Step One: Big ChoicesThe first step in deckbuilding is selecting your warlord. This is by far the most important selection you can make, because not only does it select the one card you're guaranteed to have in every game, but it also determines your faction and what eight other cards in your deck are.
Thus, selecting a warlord (and hence signature squad) that fits well with your playstyle is a must. For instance, if you like grinding your opponent down in extended battles, picking Aun'shi would be a big mistake! If you're not sure what approach you want to take, picking a warlord that doesn't particularly commit you to any style (like Cato Sicarius) might be a good move. If you're unfamiliar with what different warlords and factions provide, my faction overview has more information on the different factions and warlords.
After choosing a warlord, I next select an allied faction or Synapse unit. Typically, this is based on whether there are any particular holes that I want to cover. For instance, Old One Eye is a bit weak on command, so I usually select the Stalking Lictor when playing him; Zarathur has tons of nice cheap effects but isn't great at drawing them, so I ally in Orks for Ammo Depot. There's usually some element that your main choice isn't great at or could use a little help with, and choosing the right allied faction or Synapse unit can be a great way to set up a solution.
If it's hard to decide what allied faction you want, consider what cards you would want to bring into the deck. Framing the question in terms of specific choices can help make the decision more grounded and practical. For instance, when making a Shadowsun deck, I think about which would be more useful to me - the Eager Recruit and Tactical Squad Cardinis that I would pull in from Space Marines or the Warlock Destructor that I would pull in from Eldar.
Step Two: Unit Selection
Once I've chosen my warlord and alliance/Synapse, I start filling in the deck. Units tend to be the most important component of a deck, so I often start by selecting my units. As I discussed in my article on the command struggle, I typically try to have around nine one-for-ones and six two-for-twos as a "command base". Since most of my decks play somewhere around 30 units, that command base constitutes about half the unit supply.
The remaining fifteen or so "unit slots" typically get allocated to a mix of generalist units able to be deployed either for combat or command (most two cost one icon units fall into this category) and combat specialists which are inefficient in command but strong in battle. In general, I like to keep a low cost curve - most of my decks focus primarily on units that cost 1-3 resources, with a few 4+ resource heavy hitters. I usually restrict myself to only 1-2 units that cost five or more resources - drawing too many of these early can be quite costly.
A typical cost curve for units might thus look something like this:
- 8-9 one-costers (all one-for-ones)
- ~12 two-costers (six two-for-twos and six versatile two-cost units)
- ~6 three-costers (mostly combat-focused cards like Honored Librarian or Pathfinder Shi'O'Res)
- 2-3 four-costers (heavy hitters like Inquisitor Caius Wroth, Daring Assault Squad, or Wildrider Squadron)
- 0-2 five+ costers (almost always Elites with a big impact on combat like Gleeful Plague Beast or Firedrake Terminators)
Note that some units, like Eager Recruit or Elysian Assault Team, are best thought of as being "combat tricks" rather than units proper. I often pretend that these units are events when figuring out what ratios I want in my deck - while there are some rare scenarios where I might want to deploy them normally (most notably deploying Eager Recruit so that I can play Promotion on it to steal command from an enemy one-for-one), they almost always end up being saved in hand to use for the right moment rather than deployed normally.
Step Three: Filling in the Rest
After establishing my unit selection, I fill in the remaining 50 cards with events, attachments, and supports. Of these card types, I generally prioritize events; a normal deck of mine might have 13 events, four attachments, and two or three supports. Taking many supports is especially dangerous because supports don't have shields - broadly speaking I usually want to have at least 15 cards with shield icons on them (events or attachments), at least 5-6 of which have two shield icons. This means that I usually wind up with relatively few supports - though note that some supports, like Rockcrete Bunker, provide defensive abilities that probably "count" somewhat towards your shield numbers.
With these general proportions in mind, how do I select the events, attachments, and supports that I want? Well, it's fairly simple. For events, I'm primarily focused on two different types of thing:
- Strong surprises like Drop Pod Assault, Archon's Terror, or Gift of Isha which can change the course of battles.
- Cards that provide economic advantage like Promise of Glory or Deception. These are usually pretty obvious.
As for attachments, I start by taking 3x Promotion in every deck that doesn't have a Limited command unit (AKA every deck that isn't Tau or Tyranids). Other than that, I usually don't take very many attachments unless they're extremely strong (Slaanesh's Temptation, Regeneration) or have strong synergy with other elements of my plan (Ion Rifle in Tau decks). While Conquest does a better job with this than many games, the classic card game principle of attachments providing card disadvantage if the opponent destroys the attached unit still holds true.
Supports are my least favorite card type thanks to the fact that they do not provide shields; as a result drawing them during command does not help you win battles that turn. However, some supports can still be very powerful - cards like Catachan Outpost or Ammo Depot can have far-reaching effects on the game and are quite difficult for most opponents to shut down. In general, I try to limit myself to relatively few supports so as to preserve my shield and unit count - the most number of supports I run in any of my current decks is 8, and that's with 3 of them being Rockcrete Bunkers.
Step Four: Test Hands
The last step of deckbuilding, and one which is frequently omitted, is to draw a bunch of test hands. Most deckbuilders, including both the CardGameDB deckbuilder and the ConquestDB one, have built-in "draw test hand" options. After composing a deck, I usually use these features to draw a large number of test hands. If the hands look like they are strong and segue nicely into my plan for the deck, that's great - if not, I try to make alterations accordingly.
My rule of thumb for determining good hands is the "rule of four" - I want to play at least four actions and at least four command hammers on the first turn, assuming a warlord that starts with the standard seven cards and seven resources. In some cases this is not possible but an opening hand is still quite good, especially if the planet layout favors playing few units.
Drawing test hands is a great way to get a fair chunk of the benefit from early test games without having to actually play the full game - it usually becomes apparent just from these test hands that there are a few changes that improve the deck's overall shape and consistency, and doing those before you start playing "for real" is a good way to accelerate the development of your deck.
Step Five: Play the Game!
Once all the above steps are complete and the test hands look good, it's time to take the deck onto the battlefield and see what it can do!
Often, doing this will show some weaknesses that you weren't previously aware of, cards that you'd rather phase out, and so on. That's okay and to be expected - experience often shows us things that weren't apparent from a purely theory-based perspective. Only through repeated plays of the deck will you refine it into a truly cohesive build - good luck out there!
- Tacullu64, aurelius, SammyBoyFTW and 9 others like this
16 Comments
Are there some missing words from the paragraph on attachments in section 3?
Thanks again for an excellent article.
Points I'd disagree with or modify slightly:
With Units, I find 30 is at the high end: while we all started the game around that point, I believe that the current card pool and deck-shapes leave most decks best of in the 26-29 Unit region, with higher Unit counts only if you're running 4+ units without Command. The "don't count as Units" Units that you mention are the ones that push me past 27.
Re: "other cards", I'd say the meta has changed sufficiently that 4 attachments (typically signature + 3 promotions, in the old days) is no longer a given. A lot of factions have 2-shielders tucked away in their attachments, and I've found that very often a 2-shield attachment is a better include than a 1-shield event.
I'd also question the "rule of four", as that is very much deck dependent, though I understand you're looking at a basics approach. 4 deploys and 4 hammers is great for Space Marines, but I'd be massively disappointed if that was my average out of Eldorath/DE or Zarathur/swarm.
Also, the two things - deploys and hammers - can of course compensate for each other. If you make six deploy actions and four hammers, those four hammers are much more effective (as we know from our Zarathur games) than, say, three deploys with 5 hammers.
Yup, fixed! Thanks for the tip!
Most of my decks are something like 28-32 units, so 30 seems like a nice middle ground. As for the "rule of four", that's really just for a baseline "decent hand" - doing better is certainly nice! I might write another article that's just about what constitutes a good or bad hand, since this can be so complex.
I have to say that even as someone who plays this game most days of the week, I always find new and interesting ideas in your articles. Cheers again for writing these.
For a deckbuilding rule of thumb, having at least 28 units with hammers that sum to a total of 48 resources gives you a pretty good pass rate on opening hands.
When I built a Nazdreg deck, I wanted to avoid all 1 HP units for better flexibility with Dakka, Weirdboy Maniac, and Ork Kannons. Which meant no 1 costers except Goff Boyz (I probably should have also considered going AM instead of Chaos, for Tallarn Raiders and maybe Mystic Warden). When I first built the deck it had 32 or 34 units in it, with kind of a high cost curve, and that was just horrible. I keep slowly cutting that down, and I think 27 is probably closer to the right number. But then I just decided to go nuts and made a different Nazdreg deck patterned after the Chaos low unit count deck, and now it has 16 units. At least that's one way to ween myself off high unit counts...
You should make sure to bundle all these articles together, and link them all in a sticky at the top of the forums. Great one-stop shop for new players to get started.
Thanks for doing this for the community.
Another great article. Thanks Kingsley!
Minor typo in the first para of step 3 - you refer to units or attachments (in brackets), but must mean events or attachments.
Thanks, fixed!
Baharroth's Hawks are a hybrid unit - they provide decently good command (especially thanks to Mobile) and decently good combat (assuming Baharroth is there). This is similar to how a unit like Tactical Squad Cardinis is neither really a command nor a combat unit, but rather can play either role depending on situational factors.
Wow! My 2 main decks completely ignore most of this advice (DE Urien discard/millstone that completely ignores command) and (Chaos Zarathur with 9 5-8 cost cards) and yet i've won 8 of 12 games with DE & 7 of 9 with Chaos. Now granted I'm not playing against pro-tour level opponents, but they're all long-time card chuckers...so I must be doing something right.
On the other hand, I built a SM/AM swarm deck that pretty much conformed to your "normal standards" and got my ass handed to me 3 games straight. Perhaps I should stick to going against the norm.
If this advice doesn't fit with the way you play, feel free to disregard it! I myself have a few successful decks that don't look much like this format - but I think this sort of thing is a good starting point, since it lends itself to a fairly balanced composition and you can branch out from there.
I see your point about a balanced starting point. And with each faction only getting 2-3 cards per warpack that isn't likely to change anytime soon.
The thing is, I hate looking at the deck lists and seeing every deck with the exact same 45 cards (with maybe a 5 card difference here or there), and I just thought it was funny that my 2 most successful decks at the moment are decks that practically everyone else says sucks too bad in theory to even attempt building.
May be some merit to building against the conventional wisdom. It could catch people off guard and without solutions to the problems posed by that deck, especially if they don't realize it is non-conventional.
I played an Astra Militarum deck once that was super heavy on elites. Needless to say, when he went to Y'Varn on turn one, I was not expecting it.