Three deck plans: rush, control and traps

There are 168 cards in the catalog and about 32 slots in a deck once the Braincells are in. You can't build a deck that does everything, and the ones that try do nothing well. What you can do is pick a plan. A plan is a way of winning, and every card in the deck either carries it or protects it. Here are three plans that work, built from cards you can look up, with the Braincell count each one wants.

Rush: win by subtraction

A rush deck doesn't try to out-chess anyone. It takes pieces off the board until the opponent can't defend, then mates with whatever's left. The starter deck First Blood is a rush deck, and it's a good template.

The core is cheap removal. Assassinate kills a pawn, knight or bishop for two Braincells. Execution kills a rook or queen for three. Three copies of the first and two of the second give you removal most turns from the middle of the game onward. Lightning Strike at four destroys anything, and First Blood runs three despite the cost, because a rush deck would rather have too much removal than too little. A single Death's Reach covers the piece nothing else reaches.

Around that, you want tempo. Move Again at one Braincell gives you a second move, which in a rush deck means two threats in one turn. 1 Turn Freeze and Freeze stop the one defender who could answer. Swap Theirs and Move Opponent Piece drag a defender out of position before you strike. Tripping pushes your pawns faster, so they arrive as attackers rather than spectators.

The last piece is Mental Block, which stops the opponent spending Braincells on their next turn. In a rush deck that's a turn where they can't shield, can't thaw, can't resurrect. Play it the turn before your biggest attack.

A rush deck's weakness is defense. It has none, and it doesn't want any: every shield in the deck is a kill that isn't there. So you have to accept that pieces will be traded, and win the race. Against a deck full of Flash Shield and Aegis, a rush can stall out, which is where the removal that can't be saved from, Lightning Strike and the kill cards, earns its cost.

Braincells: twenty is right. Most of the deck costs two or three, and the four-cost Lightning Strikes need a steady supply.

Control: never let them have a good turn

A control deck wins by making the opponent's cards fail. It knows what's coming, undoes what lands, and keeps its own pieces untouchable until the opponent runs out of ideas. The starters Mind Games and Hold the Line each hold half of this plan; a real control deck borrows from both.

From Mind Games comes the information. Reconnaissance at one Braincell shows you their hand for the rest of your turn, which tells you what to protect against. Revert Last Move undoes the last board move by either player, and three copies mean a bad capture against you often simply doesn't stand. Countermand is the Instant version for cards: it undoes the last card played, even on their turn, and a single Revert Last Turn is the emergency brake. Pickpocket discards a random card from their hand before they can use it.

From Hold the Line comes the protection. Flash Shield at three copies means any capture they line up can be answered on their own turn. Plate Armor on your most important piece means it can't be captured at all until they find Armor Piercing. Iron Wall covers everything you have for a turn when you need to survive a big one.

Control decks play a lot of cards, so they need their Braincells back. Brainstorm returns every spent Braincell in your discard to your pile for one Braincell, and Mind Games runs three. Coupon takes one off your next card. Efficiency, if you can get it out, takes one off everything.

The weakness of control is that it has to win eventually. All the reverts in the world don't take a piece. You need a finisher: a couple of Assassinate for the pieces that matter, or a single Mill, which makes the opponent lose if they ever end a turn with an empty draw pile. A control deck that has stalled a game long enough will see that happen.

Braincells: eighteen to twenty, because Brainstorm makes the deck's Braincells go further. Go down to eighteen only if you're running all three Brainstorms.

Traps: let them walk into it

A trap deck lays its damage on the board face down and lets the opponent find it. It plays slower than the other two and it punishes impatience, which most opponents have. Hold the Line is the starter closest to it.

The line Bear Traps are the backbone. Bear Trap: d-file, Bear Trap: e-file and Bear Trap: rank 4 cover the center. Each is placed face down, and the first enemy piece to land anywhere on that line is frozen for two turns. Your opponent sees that you've played a trap but not where, and the center is where they want to go. A frozen piece on d4 is a piece you can attack at leisure.

Spike Pit destroys the first enemy piece to step on its square, and kings step over it unharmed. Put it where their knight wants to land. Landmine and Claymore are indiscriminate: the first piece of either color to land there is destroyed, and a king that steps on one loses the game. That last part is the trap deck's finisher. A Landmine on the one square the king must flee to is checkmate by another name.

Wall blocks a square outright until it crumbles, which turns your traps from a gamble into a funnel: wall off the safe route and leave the trapped one open. Jump lets your own king or pawn break through a wall, so you aren't funneled by your own construction.

A trap deck needs to survive while the traps wait, so take Hold the Line's shields and armor: Shield, Aegis, Pawn Armor. And it needs a way past the counter. Disarm reveals and destroys every trap on the board, and a good opponent will carry it. Pile On stacks one of your pieces onto another, and only the top can be captured, which gives you a defensive shape that doesn't depend on traps at all.

The weakness of traps is a patient opponent with Probe or Disarm, who clears a line before using it. Against them you need the funnel to be real: walls and threats that force a move onto the trapped square, not a hope that they'll blunder onto it.

Braincells: twenty-two. The traps cost two and three each, you want several on the board at once, and a trap deck doesn't recycle Braincells the way control does.

Choosing a plan

Rush is the easiest to play and the easiest to play against. Control is the hardest to play and the most frustrating to face. Traps sit between: simple cards, hard decisions about where to put them.

If you're new, build rush first. It teaches you what removal is worth and how fast a game can end. When your rush decks start losing to shields, build control and learn why. When you're tired of both, build traps and enjoy watching someone walk a queen onto a Spike Pit. Whichever you pick, the test is the same: look at each card and ask what it does for the plan. If the answer is "it's a good card," take it out. Good cards that don't carry the plan are how 52-card decks turn into 52 unrelated ideas.