Deck Archetypes and Deck-building Tutorial

[Chapuz]

Deck Archetypes and Deck-building Tutorial

First of all, I wish everyone have a nice read and enjoy this article

This guide will introduce you to deck types and Archetypes, as explaining an always-working deck-building process.

Spoiler for introduction:

Before you start, you must be introduced to:

• Quantum Index: In few words, the QI is a magic number calculated with a certain forumula in which many players rely to see if they have a good amount quanta generation of each element in the deck. The QI can be automatically calculated with This tool. Although, it is calculated for "draw and play" decks and other strategies' quanta generation may difere with the QI suggestions. To see more details about it, refere to This topic.
• Elements Glossary: If you don't understand any word or expression refered to the game, you will find it in the Here. (for example: CC = Creature Control)
• Auto Mulligan: When you draw your hand at the beginning of the game, if you have no 0-cost cards you automatically draw another 7 cards. You don't know when this happens and only happens once.

In this tutorial you will find several deck examples of different basic strategies. As there are much more ways to do them, don't stick into those specific builds. If you want to see specific card combos and synergies, you can look at the link in the end of this tutorial.

Deck types by elements

Spoiler for Deck types by elements:

Mono decks are the ones that posses cards of a single element; they are the easiest decks to build and test.
Note that if a deck has cards of an element PLUS any other card of a different element that cost 0 quanta, that deck is NOT a mono. For example, if a deck has Photons, Immolations, Phoenixes and Fire pillars, that deck is considered as a Duo. Same happens if you have an Air deck with Unstable Gas and a couple of Fire pendulums

Duo decks are the ones that have cards of 2 elements. Most of the synergies in Elements combine cards of 2 different elements (example: Schrödinger's cat + Boneyard). Pendulums use to be handy to cover both types of quanta, but if a deck has too little quanta consumption of an element, it can be powered just by the mark (Example: Ghost of the Past + Nightmare).

Trios and Quartets are the decks that have 3 and 4 elements respectively. They use to be harder to balance, as pendulums and pillars of a single element don't make the whole job. They usually have a specific strategy that is worth the effort of making a consistent Trio or Quartet.

Rainbows are decks that have 5 or more elements. Their main quanta sources use to be Quantum Pillars, Novas and Immolations.

Deck Archetypes

Spoiler for Deck Archetypes:

Rush

Spoiler for Rush:

Rushes are those decks with the objective of making the biggest amount of damage as fast as possible. Their main objective is, in few words, letting your opponent reach 0 HP before you, and don't give him enough time (turns) to draw cards that can counter you. Some of them sacrifice speed for draw dependence and are fragile against certain shields and CC, but they are unstoppable if they aren't countered FAST. In unupgraded environment, pure rushes tend to have a 6~8 TTW. They use to stick to 30 cards to get the needed cards ASAP.

Some questions you must ask yourself when making a rush decks are:
What damage/card ratio do I want?
What damage/cost ratio do I want?
How fast can my creatures grow to be great attackers? (see Nymph Queen, Fire and Forest Spirits, Lava Golem, Steam Machine, Mitosis, Adrenaline and Acceleration)
Can I improve the speed with quanta-generating creatures, Novas or Immolations?

If you want to see a detailed analysis of the game theory of Rush, This is a recommended article.

Stall

Spoiler for Stall:

Stalls are the ones with the objective of making your opponent deck out as a winning alternative. They use to have lots of healing sources and/or CC and are either huge and/or have an Eternity to rewind any cheap creature infinitely until the opponent decks out. Sanctuaries, Stone Skins, Miracles, Shards of Divinity and Shards of Gratitude are the most seen healing cards, yet other ones like Emphatic Bond and Shard of Sacrifice can be also used. In big rainbows, an Eternity+PA and 5-6 Hourglasses are a must, combined with Sundials to support healing and drawpower. Stalls are the only deck style that doesn't tend to stick to 30 cards.

Stalls' main advantage is the card advantage: Having many cards in your hand lets you counter as many cards and strategies as possible. To do that, they pack cards that let the player have this mentioned card advantage:
.Hourglass, Mindgate and Fractal provide a bigger amount of cards in your hand.
.Massive CC, Pharaoh and Otyugh provide more than 1 kill per card.
.Eternity lets you either lock your opponent's draws or prevent your own deck out.
.Sundial does NOT provide card advantage, yet is a core card to have an extra turn of healing and drawpower if you have Hourglasses or Mindgates.
.Precognition does NOT provide card advantage at all. It makes 30-card decks faster though.

If you want to see a detailed analysis of the game theory of Stalls, This is a recommended article.

Spoiler for some examples of Stalls:

This one is an easy-building stall, which is based on heavy healing, defense and HP increase to let the opponent deck out.

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This one is based in drawing speed and card advantage to take a lot of mass CC to support the healing. Notice that there are chances of killing your opponent with the Mingdate draws and if Pandemonium casts PU on an opponent's creature.

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Firestall is based in heavy CC and healing as well, with a sticky attack power to end killing your opponent by damage if can't deck out.

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This stall is based on locking the opponent's field with Malignant Cells while you are protected with your shield. Flooding makes there are only 5 surviving creatures and Antimatter makes that remaining creatures heal you. You don't deck out because you have an Eternity + Dragonfly (any cheap creature is OK) to be rewinded infinitley.

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Control

Spoiler for Control:

Control or domin (domination) decks are the ones which combine a decent attack with some CC to delay your opponent enough to make you deal 100 damage before him. They can be a couple of dragons or poisons with Basilisk Bloods, Lightning, Freezes, Fire/Ice Bolts or Shockwaves with any other addition the elements can offer.
Control decks have a higher TTW than rushes, but they are usually prefered over them because they counter many other strategies. For example: you can have a Life Rush, but splashing 6 Lightnings with an  mark can make you win against Maxwell Demons, Otyughs and other strategies that counter your rush. If you kill a 10-cost Dragon with a 2-cost Lightning, you have gained 8 relative quanta. You have an advantage.

Spoiler for some examples of Control decks:

More than decent damage with cheap CC to delay your opponent

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Expensive CC and creatures, but harder to get rid of them.

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CC feeds your Bone Wall while slowly killing your opponent. This can be also used with Fire, Aether and Entropy CC as well.

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Stall breakers

Spoiler for Breaks:

Breaks are the decks designed specifically to counter stalls and control decks when they are expected. They usually have growing creatures or ramp damage, like Spirits, Lava Golems and Steam Machines to out-damage any kind of healing and may include Quintessences and Cloak for CC protection.

Spoiler for some examples of Stall Breakers:

Titans are hard to get rid of, as they have massive HP when flying. With a pair of Accelerations, the damage after some turns can become massive. Titans also have self-Momentum, so annoying shields are not a problem for those.

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55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 561 561 561 562 562 562 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 8pr

Steam Machine has 6 HP, so it's not that easy to kill. It gains 4 attack per turn, so they can quickly make a burst damage.

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This one makes damage dealt to your opponent increase every turn with poison. Shard of Patience fits well, as many other cards do.

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This one, as it seems more complex, it's just some steamies with drawpower and protection.

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Denial

Spoiler for Denial:

Denial decks are the ones that are based on preventing your opponent from playing cards. The key cards of this strategy are Discord, Black Hole, Devourer, Nightmare, Earthquake and Silence.

A question you must ask yourself when making a Denial deck is:
Do I want to complete lock down my opponent or delay id from playing for a certain amount of turns while I can kill him slowly?

Spoiler for some Denial decks:

Most of them are based in card-combos, each of them explained in the link at the end of this tutorial.

Advantages of each Archetype over the others

Spoiler for Hidden:

There is no best deck or strategy. However, there are strategies that are particularly good against others.
In a summary, we could say: Rush --> Break --> Stall --> Domin --> Rush
(if you didn't understand any of the words in yellow, read the spoiler above this one)

I will proceed to explain each of those terms:
Rush --> Break Break decks tend to be slow, as they are just designed to beat heavy healling decks or loads of CC and PC. Rushes are just faster than them.

Break --> Stall No much to say, breaks are designed to beat stalls.

Stall --> Domin Domin decks are not as fast as pure rushes, and stalls tend to outheal them or kill the Domin's creatures before they die.

Domin --> Rush The CC a Domin deck can have (usually 6 CC cards) uses to be enough to slow the rush so much that the Domin's offense ends higher than the rushes.

What about denial? Each specific denial strategy has advantages or weakness against different decks, so they can't be generalized. For example, Black Holes use to destroy rainbows, but they almost don't affect monos and duos. The effect of Discord is exactly the opposite.

Speed of a deck

Spoiler for Speed of a deck:

Before anything else, this definition must be introduced.
The speed os a deck is NOT how fast you kill your opponent, but how fast you take to accomplish your deck's purpose. 
The speed of a deck is highly determinated by 2 concepts: The number of copies of each card of the deck and how optimal is the Quanta production.
Now you are introduced to this concept, let's continue with the tutorial and we will talk about this later.

Deck-building process

Spoiler for Deck-building process:

Monos, Duos, Trios and Quartets

Spoiler for MDTQ Deck-building process:

Deck Base
First of all, the base cards. Pick the cards you will need them all, are part of your main strategy or will need one ASAP to start playing, like 6 Stone Dragons and 6 Basilisk Bloods when running a simple control deck, 5-6 Nymph Tears in a NT-based deck, Bone Walls in a BW + CC deck or a bunch of Hourglasses in a big stall, or 6 Minor Vampires and Adrenalines in a healing-based deck.

Quanta Filling
If you are making a Mono, just fill the remaining space with pillars. If your mark matches the cards' element, you may want to split 50% of them to pendulums to make your deck a bit more resistent to Earthquakes.

If you are making a Duo, think a little bit about it:

• If an element uses too little quanta, consider it powering it with your mark and put in the deck just pillars of the other element. Some examples for this are  for Nightmares in a deck with Ghosts of the past,  for Flying Weapons in a Catatitans,  for fueling Unstable Gases and  a deck with Graboids, Reverse Times and  to splash some Lightnings in your rush, or 6 Firefly Queens in a Firefly spam deck.
• If both elements consume a considerable amount of quanta, think of the possibility of taking only pendulums: if both elements can be powered by them, with this build you have the guarantee of not drawing only pillars of one element. This is definitely better than running 50% pillars and 50% pendulums.
• If it is definitely better to have more than 1 different pillar or pendulum, choose them feeling you will always have enough quanta of both elements. Think of the mark as a permanent and early pillar, choosing it well highly improves the decks' speed.

If you have a Trio or Quartet base you have several quanta building options, but remember that their quanta balance is an art.

• If one element has little quanta consumption, like in Duo builds, you can either power it with your mark and have pillars of the other 2 elements or decide to get Novas and the other 2 elements powered by the mark and pillars/pendulums. Notice that Novas gives you the possibility of adding support cards of every element!
• If you need much more quanta of an element than of the others, pick that element's mark and then pendulums of the other 2 elements.
• If you need tons of quanta of all the 3 elements and must run 3 different pillars/pendulums to make it work, consider it being powered with. Quantum Pillars. That offers you the possibility of adding extra off-element supporting cards.
• If your Trio uses Fireflies to get quanta, consider them late Light pillars.

Rainbows

Spoiler for Rainbow Deck-building process:

Deck Base
Rainbows are generally oriented to a particular strength. You can just want to make damage ASAP or either want to pack lots of CC, poison, healing or any other particular card. Then, you can call your rainbow "poisonbow", "healbow", "CCbow", "Adrenabow", "Grabbow" or whatever name you choose that identifies your deck.
As your quanta generation will be totally random or equivalent for every element, it's highly recommended to distribute the quanta consumption between EVERY element you can. For example, if you pack 4 Maxwell Demons, you would probably won't have enough quanta to play them all, but you can replace 3 of them with cards that support CC like a Shockwave, Lightning and Otyugh.

It's also recommended to play only cheap cards, as the quantum generation for particular elements can be pretty low. For example, if you only have creatures and quantum pillars, by the end of the game you will surely make more damage with Adrenaline, Lycanthropes and Wyrms than with dragons with their respective elements. The exception to this rule is when you are running Immolations, quanta-generating creatures or your mark's element, as you will surely have more quanta of that elements.

Quanta production
If you need a constant production of 2 or more elements or have a couple of expensive cards, about 4 cost or more, you will surely need Quantum Pillars.
If you have several 1-2 cost creatures and spells, you may want to replace some of the pillars for Novas to have higher chances of playing them in the first pair of turns.

Specific Rainbow strategies

Spoiler for Specific Rainbow strategies:

These are just some examples of used rainbow strategies:

Immobows are rainbows which are based in Immolation as quanta base. They can even be pilarless if you want to have a bunch of Novas. If you do this, make sure you don't have more than a pair of 4+ cost cards, except for Fire creatures and your mark's element. You may also want to have 6-8 Immolation fodders like Photons, Sparks and Gnome Riders (which also generage  quanta). They tend to be rushes and many times have Lava Golems as main attackers with mark.

Spoiler for an example of an Immobow:

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Grabows are a particular versatile rainbow style. They usually rely on packing a bunch of Novas and Graboids, as they are the most efficient attackers.
For the quanta production you can either choose  mark and any other heavily used element's pendulum or Quantum Pillars if you have about the same cost of every element. They tend to be control decks, as they can use many cheap CC spells from Novas.

Spoiler for some Grabbow examples:

Looking at This little thread and its feedback you will see how customizable they are.

Speedbows is how the "Rainbow rushes" are called. They are powered by Supernovas and are full of cheap and efficient attackers combined with CC to guarantee not being outrushed. As every Supernova-based deck, it is slightly draw-dependant, so Time quanta consumption uses to go on Precognitions.
You can find a detailed guide to this strategy Here.

OTK or "One Turn Kill" is a strategy based in stalling until you get enough quanta and a specific card combo that lets you deal 100 damage in a single turn. There are plenty of combos that can deal 100 damage, it's just matter of searching for the word "OTK" in the Rainbow decks section or looking at this Detailed OTK Deckbuilding Guide in the Wiki. There are also some 200 HP OTKs in the forums!

Combining strategies

Spoiler for Random ideas:

Here are some examples of decks that combine strategies. The variety of possibilities is huge, so this examples can introduce you to what imagination can do in this game:

Immorush + Voodoo combo. If you don't know the Voodoo + BB + GP combo, you can look at an explanation in the link at the end of this tutorial.

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Immorush + DBH. Discord messes up the quanta of the opponent, destroying monos and duos if you get one early. Black Hole eats the opponents quanta while healing you.

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Devourer + AdrenaVampires bow. Combining a decent attack, healing and denial.

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Or you can make it more control-ish

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Or base your mark in something else, like drawpower (this is a classic one)

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First test: Does the deck work?

Spoiler for Test!:

The objective of this test is just looking at your speed and quanta balance:

Speed

Spoiler for speed:

If the number of copies of each card isn't optimized, your deck will run slower than what it should. You don't need 6 copies of every card, yet it's recommended to have 5-6 copies of the main cards, 3-4 of the ones you need in early or mid game like Hope and only 1-2 copies of the supporting cards, like other shields or Steal.

Quanta Balance

Spoiler for Quanta Balance:

Balancing well the quanta production heavily modifies the deck's speed as well.
If your quanta is too low to play the cards you want by the moment you need, then you need to take out cards for more pillars. As you only have base cards by this point, you will notice if your strategy is too expensive to be reliable and may want to change your strategy.
If you had much more quanta than what you need, then you surely can replace pillars/pendulums for any personal addition.
If you had much more extra quanta of one element and were too tight in another one, then you can change some pillars/pendulums or change the quanta consumption of your deck.

This is a good point to notice if it is better to have a strategy change. Some thinga that can happen are:
"Should I power my Flying Weapons with my Mark or with Novas and add good cheap cards of other elements? "
"An extra element for Momentum works nice, but sometimes I get bad draws making this Trio. It might be better to replace the Gravity stuff and make a Duo."
"My rush is fast but gets easily countered, I will add some control cards."
"I have way too much wasted quanta of this element, I may add more cards instead of pillars."
"Can I fit another element in? Parallel Universe may be excellent in this deck!"
"There are elements I am not using in my Immolation/Nova deck, I can fit at least 1 useful card of that elements!"
"This strategy is too big and complicated, and that makes it slow. Forget it, let's pick another strategy to test."

Adding personal touches

Spoiler for Personal Touches:

Apart from the deck base and quanta, it's recommended to add your personal additions to your decks. Those can be in-element supportive cards or a more drastic change like changing pillars for Novas and any element cheap control cards.
If your quanta is too tight or you sometimes have slower games because of drawing too few pillars, don't sacrifice more quanta for additions unless you are sure it will annoy your opponent more than you. For example, it may not be that bad if you play a Purple Dragon 1 turn later if you can play another Antimatter first.

How to test your deck

Spoiler for Testing tips:

First of everything, you must know which level you are going to test it against. You want your deck to succeed in AI3, AI4, PVP or Arena, so don't lose time going to Level 1 and 2. Directly to AI3: These decks present a challenge to new decks, as they offer a good variation of focused strategies.

How many tests should I run? You can have a good or bad feeling when testing a deck with only 5 games, but you might have had unprobable good or bad draws in excess. The amount of recommended games to test a deck (without many heavy modifications) is between 15 and 20. That's the minimal amount of games to have some stadistical evidence.

When testing your decks, you must ask certain things to yourself:

Deck-building basics
"Did I lose because I didn't have enough quanta to play certain cards I had in my hand?"
"Could I have won if I had enough quanta to play that Miracle/Dragon/Rain of Fire?"
"Is the number of copies of each card fine tuned? Would it be better if I packed an extra Dune Scorpion/Hope, or less than 5 Nightfalls?"

Rushes
"Is my rush faster than other rushes?"
"Can it out-damage a healing deck?"
"Can it deal 100 damage before it gets completely removed by CC?"

Stalls
"Could my stall outheal a good rush?"
"Could I draw enough CC in time?"

Step-by-step example

Spoiler for My example:

I want to make a control deck. I love Bone Wall because it protects me from complete hits and it's not easily stolen or destroyed like the Dimensional Shield. Bone Wall synergizes with CC because it makes the wall grow AND less creatures remain to damage my defense! So I will pick  for CC because I can pack 12 CC cards (Shockwaves and Thunderstorms). Let's make a deck with Bone Walls, loads of CC and some dragons for heavy damage. I also think Soul Catchers can be useful as  source so I my only pillars have to be  . I am such a genious.

Spoiler for first attempt:

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*can't win a single game against AI3*
Problem 1: I don't get the Soul Catchers soon enough every time to get an early Bone Wall. I need to kill at least 2 creatures to reach 7 
Problem 2: Even when I have a perfect draw, I still lose. Level 3 has a lot of CC; Shockwaves, scarabs, mutations, Maxwell's demon, Lightnings... My awesome 5 dragons are easily destroyed and I end with no damage sources.
Problem 3: I have too many useless Bone Walls in my hand, even with perfect Draws I need only one.

Solution to problem 1: Change the quanta generation to only pillars and pendulums.
Solution to problem 2: More creatures. I will try with Mummies and Wyrms instead of dragons to have my quanta less strained.
Solution to problem 3: I will reduce the amount of Bone Walls. To ensure getting one early, I will also reduce the deck size to 30 cards.

Spoiler for second attempt:

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52r 52r 52r 52t 52t 52t 52t 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 5oe 5oe 5oe 5oe 5oh 5oh 5oh 5on 5on 5on 8pr

This deck actually wins! Sometimes.
The CC can make stall enough in case I don't have an early Bone Wall, even if it has been reduced by half. Sometimes the quanta is tight, but it works.

Problem 1: Heavy CC and shield still beat me.
Problem 2: Having only 6 CC cards makes me think about changing from  to  . Lightnings deal more damage than shockwave and Thunderstorms don't help much when facing Dragons or high HP creatures. I could add a pair of Owl's Eyes Eyes but I don't like having permanents as core cards because getting them destroyed hurts a lot.

Solution to problem 1: Let's try changing the damage sources, from creatures to Poisons.
Solution to problem 2: Swap the  Pendulums for  ones, and the Shockwaves and Storms for Lightnings.

Problem 3: I don't even have to test it to notice I will be short on damage with only 6 Poisons as damage source.

Solution to problem 3: Taking advantage I am using  , I will try to fit a couple of Phase Dragons! Those are hard to kill.

Spoiler for third attempt:

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Neat! The quanta is pretty good, poison damage bypasses shields and my opponents have to eat their CC and PC.
Just because I like higher damage, I will change the damage output. Instead of having Poisons and 2 lonely Dragons that slowly get rid of the opponents quanta, I will get 2 Bone Dragons and 2 Fractals for mid or late-game ramp damage. This will need much more  than  quanta, so I will split the pillars and pendulums to increase the  generation:

Spoiler for fourth attempt:

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52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52h 52h 52r 52r 52r 52r 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pk

That's it! This deck eats rushes with the shields and Lightnings, out-damages heavy healing of some stalls and can have so many creatures that even facing CC isn't crucial (except when there is an army of Scarabs)

This was an example of the building process of a rareless bonebolt. I could have chosen to stay with an Air bonebolt/storm with 2-3 Owl's Eyes, or to go for Fire instead of Aether and get some Fire Bolts and Phoenixes for CC and sticky damage. As this has been my way to make a deck I like, now it's your turn to make yours!

Epilogue

Spoiler for Epilogue:

You now have a good theorical base of the deck Archetypes and how to build them. Now what? What cards will you pick if you want to make a Stall? Which synergy will you choose if you want to build a rush? Which defensive cards fit well with others? If you didn't do it yet, take a look at this Tutorial on Strategies and Synergies.


Special thanks to Absol and Calindu, who helped in the guide's organization and content.

[Zarathustra1883]

Chapuz does it once again!  +rep, this will be very helpful for new players. Kudos to Absol and Calindu as well.

Vote for Chapuz Forumtitle Master of Guides anyone? 

[eaglgenes101]

I'd seperate the stalls into 2 kinds: the ones that aim to cut off your damage sources, and the ones that try to recover quickly from damage. Each one has their advantages and disadvantages.

[Absol]

If this goes on, i can slack off and instead keep feeding Chapuz idea for him to spit out in form of guides. Huh.
Good work Chapuz. I would suggest to add deck examples so people know what we're talking about. Not copied one, speedbuilt one, custom for this guide's purpose.

[Chapuz]

If this goes on, i can slack off and instead keep feeding Chapuz idea for him to spit out in form of guides. Huh.
Good work Chapuz. I would suggest to add deck examples so people know what we're talking about. Not copied one, speedbuilt one, custom for this guide's purpose.

Several people that read this guide told me some examples were missing, so yeah. Added the important ones.

EDIT: Updated with some more stuff.

[TribalTrouble]

It's all colorful naow! :3 ^^

[Chapuz]

Updated with more examples, spoilers and better explanation of some stuff. And the step-by-step example.

[Blaze]

Hey! I read this ages ago when I started playing and it's helped me a lot. Just wanted to throw you a thank you!

[MegroN]

thanks chap, needed to categorise my decks, what better tread to use than concise categorization

[Aneninen]

A short supplement about denial decks:

Spoiler for Hidden:

Denial decks can indeed beat all the other deck types but, they can lose to all of them. Most denial decks are relatively complex, because they should include not only the denial combo but also cards for other purposes, eg. dealing damage, plus protection, healing and/or control cards. I mean, the denial effect is rarely enough to win the game. Due to the complexity, these decks are relatively slow, however, they tend to make their opponents even slower. So, according to my observation, the outcome of a match greatly depends on the starting hands and the draws. If the denial manages to delay the opponent to fulfill his/her/its deck's purpose, it's usually a win, if the opponent makes the setpu before the proper denial, it's a loss.

Also, the success and the "opponent spectrum" of a denial deck greatly depends on the support cards. Eg. heavy PC can take out Phase Shields which is a piece of bad news for many decks, while CC cards are great against rushes, healing provides some "stall-effect" on the other hand. But, the more support cards in a denial deck are, the slower it will be.

It's always strange when two denials meet (though, pretty rare). Maybe it's a rock–paper–scissors situation, so far I've experienced that Pestal beats DBH and loses to Ghostmare, DBH beats Ghostmare but loses to Pestal... (I never play Ghostmare, I simply hate that concept.)

(Sorry if someone has already written the same somewhere else. Feel free to remove the post if it doesn't fit this thread.)