Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Lackey is your friend big-time especially when it comes to deck-building! 

For me deck building often starts with an idea or topic which is tempting me (e.g. a Theme like Genesis or a concept like Musicians/Judges/Egyptians or individual cards I'd like to play etc.).
Then I read about it in forum and/or LoR and check in Lackey regarding appropriate cards and possible synergies. My cards are sorted by type and within type by brigade (e.g. Type = Heroes then all Heroes sorted by brigade) while multibrigade comes last and dual aligned cards have their own section.

1. Have a plan
2. Go all in on the plan
3. Test it in a few actual games
4. Adjust the deck until the deck executes the plan as well as possible
5. Decide if the plan actually results in winning

There are always decks in card games that are not immediately obvious as good decks and some that even look terrible on paper but are amazing in practice. The best way I've found to find these decks is to go all in on a very narrow tactic or strategy and just see how true to the strategy you can stay, without worrying about making the deck actually win. After you have your deck executing your decided strategy as well as possible, then you evaluate if the the chosen strategy actually results in you winning games. Sometimes you have to deviate a tiny bit from the original strategy to make winning games the result but if I find myself deviating too much from the original strategy I scrap the deck and go back to coming up with a new plan.

But there is one a fly in the ointment:
Without any speed and/or searching (without drawing you need massive searching) from/in all piles it seems no competitive T1 deck can be built anymore. At least this is my opinion and experience.

That's pretty much been the case for the decade+ that I've been involved in the game.