The six card roles

Every card in the catalog carries at least one role, and the deck editor sums them into a chart with six points: attack, defense, trap, modification, vision and regain. The chart doesn't tell you whether a deck is good. It tells you what a deck is for, which is the question most new deckbuilders skip. Here's what each role means at the board, which cards wear two of them, and how to read the shape your deck makes.

Attack: take something away

Attack cards act on your opponent's pieces, hand or Braincells. The simplest take a piece off the board outright: Assassinate kills a pawn, knight or bishop for two, Execution kills a rook or queen for three, and Death's Reach kills anything for four. Lightning Strike destroys any enemy piece, and like the kill cards, there's no saving what it hits.

Others don't remove a piece but ruin its day. The freezes (1 Turn Freeze, Freeze, Deep Chill) stop a piece moving. Ignite sets one burning. Demote turns a knight, bishop or rook into a pawn. Move Opponent Piece and Swap Theirs rearrange their position for them.

Then there are attacks that never touch the board. Pickpocket discards a random card from their hand. Brain Drain steals a Braincell. Mental Block stops them spending next turn. The whole-board cards like Tectonic Shift Up and Purge are attacks too, because the damage they do is to the pieces, even though both sides feel it.

A deck heavy on attack wins by subtraction. It doesn't need to outplay you at chess if you have half the pieces.

Defense: keep what you have

Defense cards protect your own pieces. Shield, Aegis and Guardian Ward make a piece uncapturable for a stretch. Pawn Armor and Plate Armor do it until the opponent breaks the armor with a weapon. Iron Wall covers every non-king piece you have for a turn.

Defense also means undoing what's been done to you: Thaw and Group Thaw free frozen pieces, Douse puts out a fire. And it includes the Instants that answer a threat on the opponent's turn: Flash Shield the moment they line up a capture, Splash before a burning piece is gone.

Defense doesn't win games by itself. It keeps you in them long enough for something else to.

Trap: punish a square before they reach it

Traps are placed face down and wait. The sixteen line Bear Traps (Bear Trap: e-file and its kin) cover a whole file or rank and freeze the first enemy piece to land anywhere on it for two turns. Spike Pit destroys the first enemy piece to step on its square. Landmine and Claymore destroy the first piece of either color, and a king that steps on one loses the game. Wall is counted as a trap as well as a defense: it blocks a square outright until it crumbles.

What traps share is that your opponent plays into them. You don't choose the moment; you choose the square and wait. That makes a trap deck a different rhythm from an attack deck. You spend early turns laying, and the payoff comes when they move where you hoped.

Modification: change how the game works

Modification is the biggest role and the loosest. It covers every card that bends a rule in your favor without directly harming the opponent. Movement grants: Knight Like, Queen Like, Royal Rook for your king. Extra moves: Move Again, Double Time. Teleports along a line: Horizontal Teleport, Queen's Teleport. Pawn rule changes: Tripping, Sideways Pawns, Backpedal.

It also covers the board itself. The rotations (Rotate 90° Right), the ring turns (Outer Ring Left), Corner Shuffle Right, Homecoming, and Break Ground, which opens new ground past the edge. And the hand rules: Big Pockets raises your limit, Hoarder skips one discard.

Modification is where the game stops being chess. A deck built on it plays positions nobody has seen before, which is the fun of it and the risk: your opponent hasn't seen them either, and neither have you.

Vision: know more than they do

Vision is information and correction. Reconnaissance shows you their hand for the rest of your turn. Sneak Peek and Recon show you your own pile. The reverts, Revert Last Move, Revert Last Play and Revert Last Turn, rewind the game; Countermand does it as an Instant, undoing a card the moment it's played. Disarm reveals and destroys every enemy trap, Probe checks one square.

The discard diggers carry vision too, because searching a pile is knowing what's in it: Second Chance takes a chosen card from your own discard, Grave Robber from theirs.

A vision-heavy deck wins by never being surprised. It's the hardest kind to play well, because every card asks you to think about what the opponent might do rather than what you want to do.

Regain: get it back

Regain cards return what's been lost. Instant Resurrection brings your most recently captured piece back where it stood; Initial Resurrection puts a captured piece back on its starting square. Revival is for pieces that were killed or destroyed rather than captured, which ordinary resurrection can't touch. Defector turns the piece your opponent last captured to your side, and Reanimate places it.

Regain also covers cards: Dumpster Dive takes back your last discard, and Braincells: Brainstorm returns every spent Braincell to your pile. And it covers trades that pay you, like Ransom, which gives your opponent a piece back and hands you three Braincells for it.

A regain deck treats pieces as temporary. It trades freely because the trade isn't final.

Cards that wear two roles

Some cards sit between roles, and the chart counts them for both. Knowing which they are helps you read a deck that looks lopsided.

• Dumpster Dive, Rival's Trash, Second Chance and Grave Robber are regain and vision: they get a card back, and you know what you're getting.
• Brainstorm and Recollection are regain and vision for the same reason.
• Brain Drain and Lobotomy are attack and regain: what they take from the opponent, you keep.
• Defector is regain and attack.
• Wall is trap and defense. Jump is defense and modification. Pile On is defense and modification.
• Disarm, Wrecking Ball and Probe are vision and defense.
• Breakout is modification and attack: it opens an edge and marches your piece out, which is your move for the turn.

Reading the radar

The deck editor draws your deck as a six-pointed shape. A starter deck makes a clear one. First Blood spikes toward attack with a little modification. Hold the Line spikes toward defense and trap. Upheaval is almost all modification. Second Life leans on regain. Mind Games leans on vision.

A spike means a plan. A deck that's one long point knows what it's doing, and the question to ask is what beats it. A deck that's a near-circle has a little of everything, which sounds balanced and usually means it does nothing in particular: a freeze here, a shield there, one trap that never fires. The best decks have one clear spike and one supporting role beside it, like attack with enough defense to survive the trade, or trap with enough vision to know when the trap has been found.

Use the chart after you've built, not before. Pick a plan, choose the cards, then look at the shape and ask whether the chart shows the deck you meant to build. If it doesn't, the chart is right.