Reading the board after a card has changed it

In ordinary chess, the board you see is the whole truth. Every piece is where it is, every threat is visible, and the only hidden thing is what your opponent is thinking. In Built Deck, a good deal is hidden. Your opponent's hand is face down. Some of their actives are face down. A trap may be sitting on a square that looks empty. And the position you've just finished reading can be undone, by you or by them, with a single card. The vision role exists for this. These are the cards that let you see more than the board shows, or take back what it's just shown you. This article is about what each does, and about the habit they all point to: read the board again, every move, as if you'd never seen it.

What's public and what isn't

Start with what you can already see without a card. Both discard piles are public. Nearly every card your opponent has played ends up in theirs, and so does anything they discarded down to the hand limit. Their draw pile is face down, but its size isn't. Their hand is face down, except for a card you watched them fish out of a public discard pile, which stays known to you while they hold it. And every mark a card leaves on a piece, a freeze, a shield, fire, armor, shows on the board.

What you can't see: the order of their draw pile, the contents of their hand, where a face-down trap sits, and which line a face-down Bear Trap covers. That last one is the odd case. You can see that your opponent has a face-down active in play, so you know a line is trapped. You don't know which.

Looking at their hand

Reconnaissance costs one and shows you your opponent's hand for the rest of your turn. For one Braincell, that's the best information card in the catalog, and the mistake is to play it idly. Play it when the answer changes what you do next. If you're deciding between an attack that Flash Shield would stop and one it wouldn't, Reconnaissance first tells you which to make. If you're wondering whether to shield a piece against a kill card they might hold, it tells you whether to bother.

Train of Thought is the long version. It costs four and stays in play as a saga: chapter one lets you see their hand this turn, chapter two takes a Braincell from them at the start of your next turn, and chapter three doubles your Braincells, then the card is discarded. It's an economy card wearing a vision card's clothes, and the peek is the smallest part of it.

Your own hand can be laid open too. Cash In banks every Braincell card in your hand at two each, and the price is that your opponent sees your whole hand until your next turn. That's a vision card you're giving them. Play it when your hand has nothing left worth hiding.

Looking at your own pile

Sneak Peek costs one and shows you the top card of your draw pile. Recon costs two, shows you the top three, and lets you put them back in any order.

These look weak next to seeing the opponent's hand, and against a robot they are. Against a person, Recon is a planning card. You're dealt one card as each turn begins while your hand is under seven, so the top of your pile is next turn's card. Knowing it is worth something; choosing it is worth more. If the three cards are a Braincell, a Revert Last Move and a Lightning Strike, Recon lets you take the strike now, next turn, when you need it, instead of in three turns.

Digging in the discard piles

Four cards take a card out of a discard pile and put it in your hand. Dumpster Dive takes the most recently discarded card from your own pile, for two. Rival's Trash takes the most recent from your opponent's, for three. Second Chance lets you search your own pile for the card you want, for two, and Grave Robber searches theirs, for three.

Two things make these vision cards rather than just regain cards. First, they turn a public pile into a resource, and the pile is public for both of you, so when you take a card out, your opponent knows what you now hold. Second, they change what a discard means. A card your opponent has played is not gone. If they used Death's Reach on your queen, Grave Robber puts Death's Reach in your hand.

The Braincell diggers are Brainstorm, which returns every Braincell in your discard pile to your Braincells pile for one, and Recollection, which takes them back into your hand instead. Spent Braincells go to the discard, so after a big turn, Brainstorm is a refund.

Undoing what just happened

The reverts are the cards that make reading the board a habit rather than a step. Revert Last Move undoes the last physical move by either player and everything it caused. Revert Last Play undoes the last card played by either player. Revert Last Turn undoes the whole of the last turn. The first two cost three; the last costs four.

Countermand is Revert Last Play as an Instant, for four. You play it on your opponent's turn, the moment they've played a card, and the card is undone before they can build on it. It is the only Instant revert, and against a deck that wins with one big card, it's the best defensive card there is.

The rule for using a revert is simple to say and hard to follow: revert the thing that mattered, not the thing that stung. Your opponent takes a pawn with their bishop, then on the same turn plays Double Time and marches a rook into your camp. Revert Last Move undoes the rook move. Revert Last Play undoes Double Time and the moves it granted. Revert Last Turn undoes all of it, including the pawn. Pick the one that puts the board where you want it, not the one that undoes the most.

And remember the other side holds reverts too. A move you make that depends on the move before it is a move your opponent can unpick for three Braincells. If a combination only works as a sequence, finish the sequence in one turn, with an extra-move card, so there is one turn to revert and not a chain of them.

Finding traps and walls

Disarm reveals and destroys every trap your opponent has placed, for two, and does nothing if they have none. Wrecking Ball tears down every wall for two. Probe points at one square for one Braincell and destroys whatever trap or wall is there, or nothing, if you guessed wrong.

Disarm is the card that makes a trap deck nervous, so a trap player will try to bait it out early. Hold it. A face-down active you can see is a Bear Trap somewhere, but you don't have to find it; you have to not step on it, and for that, the trap article has more. Play Disarm when there are two or more traps down, or when the one that's down is on the line your plan needs.

The habit

Every one of these cards is a way to learn or change something about the board. None of them helps if you then move without looking. The habit they teach is this, in order, before every move:

1. What marks are on my pieces, and which end this turn?
2. What marks are on theirs, and which end this turn?
3. What face-down actives do they have, and what do they tell me?
4. What's in their discard pile that they could fish back out?
5. What did they do last turn that a revert would undo, and do I want it undone?

It takes ten seconds once you're used to it. Each side has ten minutes for the whole game, and the players who win on the clock aren't the fast ones, they're the ones who never had to spend a minute recovering from something they'd have seen in ten seconds. Read the board. Then read it again after the card.