Endgames when your hand runs dry

Every Built Deck game has a point where the cards stop mattering as much as the pieces. The pile is thin or empty, the Braincells you banked in the opening are in the discard, and the hand you're holding is whatever you didn't want to play earlier. Most games against a careful opponent get there. The player who planned for it from the deck editor usually wins it. Here's what changes when the cards run out, and how to make sure you're the one still holding something.

What an empty pile actually does

The rules here are kinder than people expect. When your draw pile is empty, the start of your turn deals nothing. There's no reshuffle of the discard, and there's no penalty: the game doesn't make you discard, lose Braincells or skip anything. You just play chess with whatever's left in your hand.

The one exception is a curse. Mill says that if you ever end a turn with an empty draw pile, you lose the game. Mind Blank does the same for an empty hand. If your opponent plays either, the endgame stops being a slow fade and becomes a clock you can see. More on that below.

So the ordinary dry endgame isn't a punishment. It's a change of tempo. For most of the game you had a new card every turn and a choice to make. Now you don't, and the board decides.

How fast a deck runs out

You start with seven cards in hand, drawn from your 52-card deck, which leaves forty-five in the pile. Each turn after that deals you one card while your hand holds fewer than seven. A turn where you start with a full hand deals nothing, which is why a cautious player who never plays anything doesn't draw either.

That means the pile shrinks at roughly one card per turn you play a card, and not at all on turns you don't. A player who plays a card every turn has a pile that lasts about as many turns as there are cards in it. A player who hoards runs out much later, and runs out of options much earlier, because the cards in their hand are the same cards they've been refusing to play.

Midnight Oil changes the arithmetic. It stays in play, and once on each of your turns you can spend thirty seconds of your clock to draw a card. That's a second card a turn, which is a stronger hand in the middlegame and an empty pile sooner. It's the card to watch for across the table, too: an opponent running it will be out of cards before you are, and Mill likes that.

Braincells don't come back on their own

The other thing that runs dry is the money. A Braincell you spend goes to your discard pile. If you banked twenty over the game and spent twenty, your Braincells pile is empty and your discard is where they all are.

Two cards reverse that. Brainstorm costs 1 and returns every Braincell in your discard pile to your Braincells pile, all at once. Recollection costs 1 and takes them back into your hand instead, to bank again one at a time. In a game that's gone long, Brainstorm is a windfall: one card, and you can afford things again. If your deck plans to reach the endgame with cards still to play, it should hold at least one of these.

Spare Braincells also buy time. One Braincell adds thirty seconds to your clock, on your turn, as often as you can pay. Each side has ten minutes for the whole game, and a long game eats that. A Braincell you can't spend on a card because your hand is empty can still keep you from flagging, and in a won position that's the best card in the deck.

Planning for it from the editor

The endgame is decided mostly before the game starts, by what you left in the deck. Three things to check:

Cheap cards you'd still want at move forty. A 1-Braincell card that does something on a bare board is worth more in the endgame than a 4-Braincell card you can't afford. Move Again wins pawn races. Royal Pawn and King Like get a king where it needs to be. Shield saves the last rook. Tripping hurries a pawn. 1 Turn Freeze stops the one enemy piece that can catch yours. None of these is exciting in the opening, which is exactly why they're still in your hand later.

Something that gets a card back. Dumpster Dive and Second Chance turn your discard pile into a second, smaller deck. The discard is where every card you played went, so by the endgame it holds your best ones. Second Chance lets you pick.

Braincell recovery. One Brainstorm. Two if the deck is expensive.

And one thing not to do: don't run twenty Braincells and thirty-two cards that all cost 3 or 4. That deck is wonderful for fifteen turns and then it's a hand of cards it can't pay for.

When the board is nearly bare

Chess endgames come back with full force once the cards are gone, and the ones that matter most in Stupidchess are the ones a single card can tip.

A pawn race is the clearest. In chess the race is decided by counting squares. Here, Move Again is two squares for one Braincell, and a Tripping on the turn your pawn leaves its square is another. A player holding either wins races they'd lose on the count. When you promote, you choose the piece. Take the queen unless there's a reason not to.

A king and rook against a king is still a checkmate, and still takes some technique. What's new is that the lone king can hold a card too. Royal Knight lets a king jump out of a net for a turn. Horizontal Teleport moves the rook, or the king, along its rank. One card from the defender can undo ten moves of work, so count their hand before you count your moves. The Learn page covers the last stand rule: a mated side with a card they could play gets one more turn to find a way out. In a bare endgame that card is often the whole game.

A stalemate is a draw, and a side with no legal move but a card that could give it one gets the same extra turn. If you're winning, make sure the king you're hunting has somewhere to go until you're ready to mate it.

Playing against a curse

If Mill or Mind Blank lands on you, the endgame has a deadline. Count. Mill means your pile is the clock: once it's empty, the first turn you end loses. Mind Blank means your hand is: play your last card and end the turn, and you've lost.

The answers are the ones that undo a card. Countermand is an Instant that undoes the last card played, on their turn, before it ever takes hold. Revert Last Play does the same on your own turn. Failing those, slow down. Against Mill, stop drawing: a full hand deals no card, so hold seven. Against Mind Blank, stop playing: keep one card in hand at all times, even a Braincell. The curse only triggers at the end of a turn, so you control when, if ever, it does.

And if you run those curses yourself, know that they're slow. They win games against players who can't count. Against ones who can, they're a 3-Braincell card that changed how your opponent plays, which is something, but not a win.

The short version

The dry endgame rewards the deck that kept a few cheap, useful cards and one way to get Braincells back. It punishes the deck that spent everything by turn fifteen. Look at your deck in the editor and ask what it does with no pile and three Braincells. If the answer is nothing, swap a 4 for a 1.