Touch-up by
Chapuz.
How to build a good Arena Deck
So you've decided to make an
Arena deck. You saw all those posts on the forum with people winning lots of free electrum and you decided that you want to try too! But your deck only gets a few plays a day, and then drops out of the top 500, never to be played again. What do you do?!
First off, good deck builders realize that Arena decks are not the same as standard decks. It takes clever knowledge of what card the oracle gives you, as well as knowing what sort of decks are good in combination with it, with a pinch of what part of the metagame can control it. It doesn't take a mastery of deck building to have a rough idea what sort of things to do in order to take steps that make a deck more stable.
A perfect deck does not exist. There are good decks, popular decks, effective decks, but always a counter deck. No deck is so good that everything can beat it. But, when you have an advantage such as double draw, higher starting health, or a better mark than your opponent, you can certainly put that to your own advantage, so that you may increase the overall odds that your deck wins. So, for the first few tips, we'll explore the 4 primary advantages you have over the challenger decks:
Stamina Stamina is one of the most undervalued abilities that you can stuff into your deck. An unastute deck builder looks briefly at the skill point cost for an additional 5 HP and quickly rationalizes that since all of the other 3 skills cost more, they must be more important. But, this is not always the case. Say, for instance you want to make a deck that focuses on late-game lockdowns with strong protected permanents. If you do this, you typically need to survive beyond initial rushes. 5 upgraded cards are not going to do as much as 20 more HPs to stop the opponent from rushing you before you can set up your control. One extra quanta per turn isn't going to be as effective as 50 more health points to swallow up before your contain starts to hurt their damage output. Depending on the deck, an extra draw per turn can outweigh 100 more HPs, but it really depends on the deck. So, stamina can certainly be more important than most people think. It definitely isn't just a skill to throw only your leftover points into. Carefully think about whether those 5 cards you're planning to upgrade are really more important than 20 more health.
Protip: you can edit your deck and its stat points at any time. If you find it's health is too low to be effective, why not try dropping some other abilities and put that into the stamina. A lower starting HP than your opponent isn't a good enough reason to double draw in very many decks.
Wisdom The most important thing you should ever consider before putting stat points in any of these last three abilities is the question, "Do I need this?" There are few decks where more upgraded cards will actually hurt the deck owner. But, there are certainly cases where the 4 skill points you used to put them into the deck could be better served somewhere else. If you plan to use wisdom, make sure you have a good reason to.
The next most important thing to consider about wisdom before putting any stat points into it is what cards you plan on using with your quota. Is it worth spending 4 skill points on those two upgraded weapons you have and no other cards in your deck. Are 2 more base damage per turn really worth more than a free shard of divinity at the start of the game? Is it really necessary to reduce the cost of that one card by one quantum, or when you test out your deck, was the AI ever really slowed down by a quanta deficiency? These are very important questions to ask before adding wisdom to the deck. Know what upgraded cards you plan on using before you even distribute your stat points and you're less likely to accidentally waste them.
Intellect These last two abilities are the ones that I find require the most thought. I find it helpful to think carefully about your deck before putting in stat points. A lot of times, you can ignore mark completely and just add more pillars (with double draw to get them faster) for a cleaner feel. But other times, EQ decks are too big of a problem to allow the vulnerability you avoid by having triple mark. It's up to your own judgment in the testing phase on which idea is better. Also, be wary of adding this ability over HP if there’s a choice.
Protip: depending on the deck, there are helpful cards from other elements that might help your deck out a lot. Unlike the decks we use, 3x mark can allow these other cards to be more easily inserted to your deck. Just be sure your pillar count is high enough after the mark swap.
Protip: when testing your deck, carefully observe how the quanta balance looks. If you have more quanta than you expected, try to cut down on intellect and put the stat points elsewhere if possible.
Dexterity Oh boy, this is an interesting debate. A lot of people swear by dexterity. It certainly gives
a more random first hand. But all subsequent draws give you 2x the cards, so it's more forgiving later into the game. But, perhaps the biggest advantage it gives is that your deck is 2x as large as it would otherwise be. This is incredible for control cards, creatures with strong abilities, or just any general card that you're glad has a limit of 6 when playing against another player.
It is very rare that dexterity harms your deck. It hurts deckout decks (2x draw counters the eternity's reverse time ability) and more than likely some other decks that I can't think of at the time of the post. (but I'm sure you'll tell me :p )
Protip: 2x draw means that you can draw a card that prevents the opponent from doing something AND play another card of your own. Cards like silence, nightmare, cloak, and most control cards are very effective when used in conjunction with double draw.
Protip: a lot of strategies that require multiple cards to work are much more efficient with double draw. Protect artifacts can be drawn the same turn as your artifacts. Quint follows the same logic. You can draw momentum and dune scorps on the same turn (or other buffs and creatures). Do note, however, that the AI doesn't do a lot of the combos you can think of.
PLEASE TEST your deck to see if it plays the way you expect it to.
Now that we've gone into detail about the abilities your deck has, there are a few other things to focus on. I've mentioned testing decks a lot. But what does this mean? When I test my deck, these are the things I focus on:
Decks Look up
the most common decks people use against the arena. Test out each of these decks against your deck and you can easily improve your win percentage versus the majority of players.
Abilities Is your mark helping enough? How low can you get the deck's health and would more health be more helpful in later days? How often do you see the deck keeping dead cards in its hand? Are some of these cards useless or is it just quantum trouble? Does it need more upped cards or are those cards redundant? Think about what abilities you thought would be helpful and find out if they're really helping.
Cards Is the AI using the cards in the way you expected? Does it take too long to play the cards you wanted the AI to play? Does it prioritize the cards you would rather it didn't use at all? Would another card make your life hell playing against it? (rage quitters farm too :p) Would a different upped card work better?
Protips - does your deck just suck?
Steal a FG's deck and modify it to be more devious. Pick and modify a forum deck instead of one of your own. There's no shame in just starting from scratch either.
- When planning your deck, write down a few things you want to look at for testing so you don't forget.
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