Hard 30 – Beyond the First Five: Deck Building
There is not one perfect way to build a deck. There just isn’t. Anyone who claims to have the game solved with a perfect ratio balance of cards is a filthy bloodshot liar. I do believe there are some superior decks out there but the way they are built does not translate to every deck or phoenixborn. The best we can do is identify and implement patterns from known good decks.
Skip to the Last Round for the tldr!
Generic Deck Building
The easiest way to lose a game of Ashes is to not have units on your battlefield. The majority of decks require at least a passing offensive threat to be reloaded onto the field of battle every round. Whether it is the annoying efficiency of a Salamander Monk or a tempo play of a False Demon coming into play to clean up a small unit and still threaten a bigger one.
This means you want to have at least three Ready Spellbooks that summon threatening units.
There are three things to unpack from that sentence.
The first keyword here is spellbooks. Imagine every summoning you slap down as an additional card in your hand for all future rounds of that creature. So, going into round two you have three known units you can play plus an additional unknown to your opponent possibility of five for a total of eight ‘cards’. This is important to keep a fresh supply of warriors hitting the play area. If you try to do this with only allies from hand, it is possible to miss during your draw step.
The second one is the number three. You want to be able to field as many units as you can within your battlefield and cost limits. Most phoenixborn rock a six so that is going to be the target number. I want the capability of a full battlefield by round two. There are ways to drop six dudes or dudesses in round one but that’s not always the best option. That leads me into the last part.
We need to recognize what a generic threat looks like. A Cloudburst Gryphon is universally a good unit. It doesn’t do anything fancy besides providing immense pressure on your opponent if they have a costly unit in play. If nothing else it represents three damage to the face if they do not block it. Pretty much anything that punches up for its dice cost is a generically good choice. The suite of 2/1s for one die for example. The 2/2s for two that also bring along a secondary ability like Winged Lioness.
Think of it this way. Ashes has a limited resource system. Whoever controls the battlefield using the least number of dice with units has a stronger case for winning. Because they will have more resources to spend on other cards than their opponent. For instance, other avenues of winning the game besides units.
Removal as a Way of Life
Since most decks rely on units to do most of the heavy lifting it makes sense to run cards that unlife them suddenly and with conviction. Starting off I heavily encourage first time deck builders to run between six to twelve removal cards. I divide these into three categories; targeted, area of effect (AOE), and incidental. Most of your removal is going to come in the form of action spells which will take up between six and sixteen cards in your deck.
They all can be judged by how they cost and what casting speed they fall under. Most are going to be main action spells/actions. However, side action and reaction speed removal is usually better. Not only are you gakking a unit, it also removes them before another one can be played leaving a path to attack your opponent.
Three Types of Removal
Not all decks have this luxury but I like to play four targeted removal cards. These pick a singular unit and wipe them off the map. It doesn’t matter how big they are, they are just splatted. I also accept doing at least three damage in one shot. While not as desirable you may not have a choice depending on your color and phoenixborn choices. With the popularity of Time and Illusion on the rise we are already seeing a lot more To Shadows and I predict Excavate will jump right in as a staple removal spell.
The next grouping is AOE and you want at least two to four. A single card that can do damage or remove multiple units at once. Like Meteor, the newly minted Rapture, or the ultimate in AOE Wrath of Nature. Even unconventional options like Rile the Meek and Crimson Bomber work fine here. It is incredibly important to have AOE available. Decks that swarm out a ton of attackers can end your game quickly. I have decks that play only one nature die just to slot in x3 Wrath.
The last pile of cards is incidental removal. These are spells that do one to two points of damage. Just enough to knock the little units or put the final kabosh on a big’un. I don’t have a set number for these because I want these to fit organically into the deck. It doesn’t matter how the removal happens, just that it works. Whether it’s from a Gilder ping to guard an important unit, Return to Soil to facilitate the mill plan, or Ice Trap if I’m concentrating on tempo. Every deck is different and there are a lot of options.
Reaching for the Win
When you play a game of Ashes what is your preferred method of your opponent taking their last point of damage when the battlefields become clogged? There are only three possibilities: damage from a unit using bypass, direct damage from an action spell or reaction, and fatigue damage. These are generally called the reach of your deck and they can be accomplished in several ways.
An important distinction here is this is NOT the main way the deck does damage. This is how the deck gets in the last three to five points of damage. You should not have to pack in a ton of the same type of card effect to get the win. Four to five is plenty to make it happen. You also don’t have to solely focus on one method of reach. As a side note, some people use these designations as the archetypes; bypass (some prefer swing), burn, and fatigue (mill for those used to MtG).
The Three Ways to Win Town
To secure a win with an attacking unit you have to use bypass. Bypass can come in a couple different flavors but the root is the same. Anything that gets an opponent’s units out of the way so you can attack. The newest and very popular members of this family are the Realm Walker and Crystal Archer. They either ping or exhaust potential threats on the way to the face. The star standard summoning method is Frostback Bear with Fog Owl combination to create multiple bypass effects. Other effects are created with Echo’s ability, Hypnotize, and Crescendo are powerful options. Meoni does it better than anyone else.
Burn does damage directly to the phoenixborn. It is a nice option to pair with some bypass or to even run by itself. Brennan is the current undisputed champ of turning your opponent into cinders. But, the whole deck doesn’t just send fire to the face. It has an incredibly aggressive unit attack plan round one. Sympathy Pain is a phenomenally flexible card to act as burn or removal, Molten Gold should almost exclusively go to the dome, and Fire Archer is an excellent way to chip away at life and create a unit speed bump.
Fatigue is a little trickier than the other two. In order to win by fatigue you have to discard your opponent’s deck into their discard pile. Then, you have to survive to the top of the round for them to take the damage. It is not the easiest route. This is normally done in one of two ways. The first is to fully lean into the whole mill lifestyle. We are talking Purge, Ruby Cobras, and Orchid Doves. The problem with this actually surviving long enough to have milled your opponent into them not having any more options. It is a much more viable option to mix fatigue with the two other reach methods.
The most successful is an Aradel build that pairs bypass and fatigue seamlessly with a touch of burn. It concentrates on controlling the battlefield while pitching cards with Ruby Cobra, Enchanted Violinist, and Return to Soil. Aradel’s ability itself acts as bypass. What makes it a fatigue deck is by using non-power side effects and packing Call to the Realms. Reducing the number of times the deck needs to meditate to be able to play off of its cards. Basically, the player can go more rounds because it will have more deck.
Filling In the Rest
Remember before when I said not having enough units in play is the quickest way to lose? This is where allies come in. Now, you probably have already slotted some in to help fulfill your reach. You also just need some solid bodies to clog up the board. It would be nice if they slotted into enhancing your reach, go towards a different reach method, or act as a primary attacker or defender.
A nice ballpark for the total number of allies is anywhere between six and twelve depending on how much your Ready Spellbooks cost to activate every round. I speak about average costs in this article. The goal should be to play two or three threatening units and one or two supporting units every round. This will help inform how many allies you need to run; consider the Ready Spellbooks and battlefield size.
Speaking of Ready Spellbooks, don’t forget they can be slotted in your deck outside of the first five. Or even as multiple copies of the same starting books. Many people run more spellbooks than can be used by their phoenixborn as a way to have access to multiple starts.
Reactions fill a unique niche. They are the single most powerful effects in the game. The problem is you cannot guarantee them to be useful! Here’s just some general advice. Run a couple cancel cards like Golden Veil, Fate Reflection, or Angelic Rescue if you are relying on knights (three cost allies). The rest should be fairly self explanatory and are probably already addressed with your reach package.
Alterations are the least useful card type only because most of them require a unit to survive for them to be useful. When that unit dies it takes the alteration with it. In effect you get two for one’d. Not saying alterations are bad, just be careful of having them bottleneck your hand of cards.
Last Round
This guide is to be used as a totally top down bird’s eye generic view of a deck building starter article. Notice I did not even talk about the first five, that is for a later essay. Lots of creators get struck with something they want to start with and then need to fill out the rest. Hopefully this aids in manufacturing a more comprehensive deck, playstyle, and wins! Heyo and gl!
Generic Card Count Cheat Sheet
Conjuration Summons Spellbooks 3-8
Action Spells 6-16
Allies 6-12
Reactions 3-9
Alterations 0-4
Subset Totals
Targeted Removal 3-4
Area of Effect Removal 2-6
Incidental 0-9
Reach Effects 4-8
About the Author
Jerod Leupold has been an avid gamer and advocate for over 30 years. Founder of Paroxysm by Design and Critical Hit Games storefront in Iowa City, Iowa. He has been published under the Gamenomicon franchise for Party First RPG and is currently launching his own rpg, Goblin Market. He cut his teeth playing the red book D&D but found his passion for writing articles about ccgs with A Game of Thrones. Follow Jerod at Paroxysm by Design on facebook, itch.io, or drivethru RPG!