Decks

From Battle Dex

Contents 1 What is a Deck? 2 Designing a Map-Specific Deck 2.1 Resource Locations 2.2 Starting Gold 2.3 Anticipating Your Opponent's Moves 2.4 Getting Buff 2.5 Staying Healthy 2.6 Ace in the Hole

What is a Deck?

To win in Battle Dex, you must not only practice, you must also prepare. Deck building is an important part of preparation.

A deck is a set of 12 cards that you build in advance. Rather than picking and choosing from your complete card inventory every time you play a game, you can build a deck ahead of time that is optimized for a particular map, a certain type of strategy, or a particular opponent. You can have maximum 3 times the same card in your deck. Only exception are heroes, from which you can only have one card of each Hero in your deck.

Designing a Map-Specific Deck

Building a deck that is customized for a specific map is a great way to gain the upper hand on your opponent, who might not be as prepared. If you can find an optimal card-move combination for your first few turns, you can quickly take control of the game.

Think of it like a chess opening. In chess, players often memorize a set of initial moves that are designed to meet certain goals such as controlling the center of the board or coordinating an aggressive attack.

To illustrate this, let's create a deck for the Crossfire map, shown below.

Resource Locations

First, look at the location of the resources in relation to the starting hexes. Notice that the resources on the right are each separated by 5 hexes and the resources on the left are each 4 hexes apart. Since only infantry units can capture resources, and infantry can only move 3 hexes, that means it will require 2 turns to capture a resource.

However, we can bring movement cards in order to increase the speed of our units and capture the resources in the first turn. The Adrenaline card increases an infantry unit's speed by 1 hex, allowing him to move 4 hexes per turn. The Adrenaline Shot card increases a unit's speed by 2 hexes for 3 turns, allowing him to move 5 hexes per turn. So we'll start our deck by adding the Adrenaline and Adrenaline Shot cards to the first 2 slots.

So on our first turn, we will:

• Build 2 infantry units and place them on the far left and right starting hexes
• Use our two movement cards on them to increase their speed
• Select each infantry unit and right click on the resources we want to capture

Infantry w/ Adrenaline moves 4 hexes per turn

Infantry w/ Adrenaline Shot moves 5 hexes per turn

Starting Gold

The Crossfire map gives each player starting gold of 550, so we can not spend more than that on our first turn. Since we know that we will need 2 infantry units, we can save gold early on by using a discount card. The Enlist 2 Infantry card allows us to create two infantry units for 100g, whereas it would normally cost 140g. So let's bring the Enlist 2 Infantry card.

We are now using 3 card slots (out of 12) in our deck:

1. Enlist 2 Infantry (100g)
2. Adrenaline Shot (10g)
3. Adrenaline (10g)

So it will cost 120g to use the 3 cards, leaving us with 430g to use other cards on our first turn or purchase units.

Anticipating Your Opponent's Moves

In the game of chess, you always want to think several moves ahead when formulating a strategy. Similarly, in Battle Dex, we want to think about what our opponent will do next and be prepared.

Take a look at the map again. Since the map is symmetrical, your opponent is probably thinking about doing some of the same things you are. What do you think your opponent will do first? Obviously, your opponent will also try to cap the resources closest to them. Then on turn 2, you will both probably try to capture the next resource up. Since we know this, we should send additional units to support our infantry units and possibly take out the opponent's infantry unit.

Also, our infantry units only have 2 vision, so they won't be able to see any upcoming dangers ahead of them after they capture the first resources. So it would be a good idea to send some units with good vision. Since Recons are low cost, can move fast, and have great vision, let's send a Recon unit with each infantry unit. To save on gold, we can use the Enlist 2 Recon card to build 2 recons for only 75g. Also, to increase the vision of our Recons even more and reveal any hidden units (such as a Camouflaged Infantry or Guerilla Fighter), let's bring Survey The Field and apply it to each of our Recons.

If we position our Recons on the left and right, we can use 2 turns to move them close to our opponent's side of the map. We can move the recon on the left to the position 2 hexes away from each of the other resources. That way the Recon could fire at the opponent's infantry on either resource. We can move the right recon down so that it is 1) close to the opponent's resource and 2) can see the middle of the map. We can now see a large part of the opponent's side of the map and prepare for what's coming up.

At this point, we have planned how we will use 5 of the 12 card slots in our Crossfire deck. We also have a strategy for how we will capture 4 resources in only 2 turns for a cost of 205g.

1. Enlist 2 Infantry (100g)
2. Adrenaline Shot (10g)
3. Adrenaline (10g)
4. Enlist 2 Recon (75g)
5. Survey the Field (10g)

Getting Buff

Wow! We have captured over half of the resources on the map in 2 turns and we haven't even spent half of our staring gold! Too easy right? Not so fast. Your opponent isn't dumb. Sure, we have a good start on how we will capture resources and see what's ahead, but our opponent isn't just going to walk an infantry over and get killed. What if there's a Fighter and a Light Tank waiting for our Recon? We are dead. Infantry and Recons are weak and we need to prepared to fight the other types of units in the game.

So let's build a couple more units. First we make a Fighter since it can move quickly and can attack both air and ground units. To make him stronger than another potential Fighter we might run into, let's buff him with the Airpower card.

Let's also build an Artillery unit to help us against ground vehicles. To give him an edge, let's buff him with the Ballistics card, which increases his attack range.

We have now used 7 of our 12 card slots:

1. Enlist 2 Infantry (100g)
2. Adrenaline Shot (10g)
3. Adrenaline (10g)
4. Enlist 2 Recon (75g)
5. Survey the Field (10g)
6. Airpower (40g)
7. Ballistics (35g)

Staying Healthy

After battle, your units will have taken some damage. After spending so much gold on building our Artillery and Fighter and buffing them up, we need to protect our investment. Therefore, we should bring a couple of heal cards to repair the damage.

The Medic card is especially handy. If you are about to cap a resource or a control point and your Infantry is about to die, you should definitely heal him with a Medic so that he can survive another turn and get the job done.

Also, since your Artillery only has 75hp, a Minor Repair card is enough to keep him alive and firing.

We have now used 9 of our 12 card slots:

1. Enlist 2 Infantry (100g)
2. Adrenaline Shot (10g)
3. Adrenaline (10g)
4. Enlist 2 Recon (75g)
5. Survey the Field (10g)
6. Airpower (40g)
7. Ballistics (35g)
8. Medic (30g)
9. Minor Repair (40g)

Ace in the Hole

You will also want to carry a couple of cards that can be used to:

1. Change the dynamic of the turn and surprise your opponent
2. Bail out your units in case of an emergency

Let's suppose our Recon sees 2 Heavy Tanks coming. He will surely die without some additional help. Since your Artillery can only fire 2 times per turn and Heavy Tanks have many hit points, you will need to bring some backup fast.

To prepare for situations like this, it is often good to have a few cards that can quickly help you out. Here are a few examples:

• Minor Artillery - Does 65-85 damage to ground mechanical units. While this will not kill 2 adjacent Heavy Tanks, it can do enough damage to help the rest of your units finish them off.
• Airlift 3 - Since you have a Fighter already, you can quickly build a few tanks at your base and move them adjacent to your Fighter with an Airlift 3 card. Without this card, it would take your powerful ground units too long to get to the other side of the map.
• Light Tank Hero - This card is hard to find and is expensive, but if you have it, you can instantly move a powerful Light Tank adjacent to any one of your units for 4 turns.

Here is our completed deck of 12 cards:

1. Enlist 2 Infantry (100g)
2. Adrenaline Shot (10g)
3. Adrenaline (10g)
4. Enlist 2 Recon (75g)
5. Survey the Field (10g)
6. Airpower (40g)
7. Ballistics (35g)
8. Medic (30g)
9. Minor Repair (40g)
10. Minor Artillery (100g)
11. Airlift 3 (75g)
12. Light Tank Hero (175g)