MArcomage

this is a thread where people (newbies overall) can ask some help to build a deck.
there are so many cards out there that it can be tiring building a deck checking each card one by one.

Actually I need help with this deck: http://yfrog.com/0zgemjamj
(if you want to try it: http://www.4shared.com/file/_uHDFChd/GemJam.html).
It's a deck based on gateway: first I build up gems to use gateway (easily found with wishing lagoon or auxilia/scepter of evolution), than I use some rare finder to draw a killer card.
Still the deck is not so good, anyone has some suggestion to make it better?

Decent looking deck, but I would change a few things:
1. No Timewarp. It doesn't even pay for itself in gems, which are important for your deck. Instead play Haste, which at least nets you 1 gem.
2. Lose Basic wall in favor of Shrine. Shine basically does the same thing, but it's more versatile and it gives you gems.
3. You don't need Auxilia, Scepter of summoning, and Scepter of evolution. I would just use Auxilia because 1) it's cheaper and 2) you already have Wishing lagoon.
4. Ditch Unicorn and Elite elf for Phantom lancer. PL not only gives you gems, but it inhibits your enemy. I also like Halfling rogue because it allows card cycling and provides gems.

If I would build a deck based on being able to pay a killer card I'd build for getting that stock directly for that type of killer card, rather then doing it indirectly via the very expensive Gateway.

It's a long journey to use Gateway and later kill enemy tower ...but may be interesting if opponent haven't got any good cards to prevent this (like discarding or gems stealing cards), also is a chance to resources victory after Gateway. More dangers: Orc regiment and Pyramids.

If You are not enough quick You are probably Dead vs this deck :)

A general tip for deck building is to have a deck slot devoted to good/cool/fun cards.
I have one that I call "good to have" where I put cool and interesting cards that I encounter when playing against others. So whenever I make a new deck or fix up my other decks, I take a look at it and can easaly find or remember the cards I might want to include.
This limits the need of scrolling through the very long list of cards for new ideas!

jbryant3 wrote:
Decent looking deck, but I would change a few things:
1. No Timewarp. It doesn't even pay for itself in gems, which are important for your deck. Instead play Haste, which at least nets you 1 gem.
2. Lose Basic wall in favor of Shrine. Shine basically does the same thing, but it's more versatile and it gives you gems.
3. You don't need Auxilia, Scepter of summoning, and Scepter of evolution. I would just use Auxilia because 1) it's cheaper and 2) you already have Wishing lagoon.
4. Ditch Unicorn and Elite elf for Phantom lancer. PL not only gives you gems, but it inhibits your enemy. I also like Halfling rogue because it allows card cycling and provides gems.

I changed the commons as you suggested, I removed timewarp and scepter of summoning, replaced by stilshrine of Miriam and sabotage.

It is a quite nice deck, but if your aim is resources to play killer cards, I would also change 3 of your rares:
1. replace arthoria the sabre with Vampire Lord. Vampire Lord is cheaper and easier to play for you, since the -1 magic won't do you much damage as you have Sacrifice and Magic Well.
2. Angel of Destruction would be damaging and useless for you. Just 30 attack, and it destroys your resources, while your strategy is based on having high resources. 30 attack is also nothing for your deck, as the only damaging cards you have are rares. So remove it and I'd suggest replacing it with Prince of Thieves or Prosperity
3. Fortified Castle is again not so useful, as you already have quite a lot +tower and +wall cards. Plus you can get Pyramids with Wishing Lagoon. So I'd suggest removing it and replacing it with either General's Hand or Orc Army (not sure if this is the right name, the one that summons Orc Regiment among other orc cards in hand and gets your recruits up by 80)

+1 for Lord Ornulu's point 2.
I wanted to mention that on my first post, but I forgot. Though I have to say Prosperity is probable better for you if you aim to have high stock already...
Of course, you could also just pick a high dmg rare instead. A matter of preference. ;-)

(Asside that: I kinda like Vampire lord, but that's a different matter. ;-))

Progressor wrote:
If I would build a deck based on being able to pay a killer card I'd build for getting that stock directly for that type of killer card, rather then doing it indirectly via the very expensive Gateway.

I agree. In my experience, raising facilities is rarely worth it. Getting stock directly with cards like Fair Trade and Restoration keyword cards, is going to work out much better for you. I think the game right now is pretty fast-paced, especially at high levels of play. Waiting until you have 75 gems and can draw a specific uncommon is just not tenable. If you want to play the 'collect lots of resources and then drop some big bombs' style of deck, here are the cards I would recommend:

- School of Restoration
- A few common Restoration cards. Which ones you take will depend on your deck type (Benediction is extremely good, but obviously only if you have enough Holy cards to support it)
- A few uncommon Restoration cards, preferably including Meditation (since you need gems to keep playing more Restoration cards...)
- Fair Trade
- Greed is Good (so underrated, this one!)
- Pixie is another amazing card for resource gathering that is criminally underrated. Try it. You won't be disappointed.

There, I'm giving away all my secrets now that I'm retired :P

I know that is easyer stock up resourcers in other ways, but I wanted to make a gateway deck. so your suggestions (good ones) don't fit this deck strategy.

Lord wrote:
It is a quite nice deck, but if your aim is resources to play killer cards, I would also change 3 of your rares:
1. replace arthoria the sabre with Vampire Lord. Vampire Lord is cheaper and easier to play for you, since the -1 magic won't do you much damage as you have Sacrifice and Magic Well.
2. Angel of Destruction would be damaging and useless for you. Just 30 attack, and it destroys your resources, while your strategy is based on having high resources. 30 attack is also nothing for your deck, as the only damaging cards you have are rares. So remove it and I'd suggest replacing it with Prince of Thieves or Prosperity
3. Fortified Castle is again not so useful, as you already have quite a lot +tower and +wall cards. Plus you can get Pyramids with Wishing Lagoon. So I'd suggest removing it and replacing it with either General's Hand or Orc Army (not sure if this is the right name, the one that summons Orc Regiment among other orc cards in hand and gets your recruits up by 80)

I want to use rares only after I've played gateway, cards like prosperity and prince of thieves are useless from this point of view.
And vampire lord is not cheaper than Atrhoria becouse the first it's quick and the second is swift, so having many facilities let you play arthoria more times than v.l.
Angel of destruction is a defensive card that deny the enemy to play killer cards (that I give him with confusion). anyway I'll change it with tornado and I'll take mediator in place of confusion.
I'll add the rares you suggested (dark horde, general army...).
I've almost forgot water elemental

I'm trying to build an illusion deck, but I'm having trouble getting started... Does anyone have one? If so, is it any good?

I have one, and lost quite some games from Unexpected's Illusion decks.

In general Illusions need gems, so be sure to pick some gem-boosters.
Asside that, one of the first tweaks I made was removing the more expensive uncommon illusions. I felt it was to hard using the Illusion keyword if all the uncommon Illusions I got where so expensive.
Also you want to be able to pay many rares, but no big surprise there. ;-)
Obligatory pick: Veteran Militia XD

I mainly use Illusion in combination with Nature and Golden Sceptre to hunt Collector's award :)

Also in Illusion decks (and others), Dream Shift is a 'must have'.

I have 2 illusion decks, one combined with Holy/Soldier keyword and the other with Beast/Alliance. You basically need a lot of resources from the get-go and a few damage-dealing cards that cost ONLY recruits, so you save up gems until an uncommon Illusion comes in hand

Making a deck centred around illusion cards is probably not such a good idea (since illusion is unlike most keywords, in that it doesn't necessarily get more potent the more cards you have), but a lot of decks can benefit from one or two or three uncommon illusions (dream shift and sorrow are widely useful), and one or two common ones. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing.

Figured I'd post my decks in hopes of getting new ideas and inspiring others to build different decks.

Recruiter - tons of recruit-building cards, wins with high-recruit cost cards (war elephant, orc regiment, dragon squadron, etc.)
Knights Templar - (new) Holy/Soldier deck, seems to win more with tower building than destruction...
Tower Up - (newish) few-keyword tower building deck
Commonality - illusion-based deck, wins randomly depending on rares pulled
Magical Mayhem - mage/legend deck, either builds with ice queen or wins with unicorns
Nature Restored - chaining restoration cards to have resources to chain nature cards
Aqua - all aqua-based, wins with big beats
Pyromania - burning deck, wins with destruction (usually phoenix)
Zombieland - undead deck, wins with undead host typically
Dirty Pirates - brigand deck, wins with water elemental most of the time
Alliance - bunch of alliance cards to get lots of resources to win with orc regiment, leviathan, or dragon squadron
Beast Nasty - beast deck with a few nature cards thrown in, wins with rare and uncommon beasts and frenzy
Charger - (new) deck based on charge-cards, supposed to win with dragoons, but not sure how well it works...

You could combine Aqua with your Tower-Up deck. I have something similar. Basically you keep the opponent at low resources using Aqua cards, you increase your tower by 5 each time you activate the keyword, plus you always have lots of bricks around for +tower cards. It seems quite successful for me as there's a 70% win rate last time I checked and about 40% of those wins are destruction and the rest are construction. Some of them were Major victories

The problem with combining the 2 is that I use soul sacrifice in the Aqua deck to speed it up. I thought about tower wins though.

Outnumbered and outmached might be useful in your recruiter deck :)

I would also suggest to combine Holy with Undead or Alliance with Undead. I found that Holy was the best solution for me, as it provides immense amounts of resources, especially if playing with Fairy. In addition, it's a good way to win against other Holy decks as you can keep playing with good attack cards even if the opponent discards your Undead cards