newbie deck building help

[Slidz]

Newly into cipher and idk if this is appropriate to ask here, apologies if not, but there aren't really any online resources for making decks, besides what the starter decks give, for what that's worth, and it all just seems very overwhelming.

I was wondering if anyone had an idea where to start or could help in building/building advice.

Thanks to anyone in advanced.

[SoulWeaver]

You're fine to ask, we're happy to help if we can! Firstly, is there a specific character or game you want to play with? That usually helps with determining what to put in - if you specifically want to use Cordelia as MC, to throw a random example out there, then you may want to look into Flier support, such as the most recent Severa R card, or if you want to play with characters from Gaiden/SoV, then waiting until the new set comes out may be your best choice so you can get the new Celica.

[breademic]

I'd recommend joining the Cipher discord if you aren't already on there! In the "tourney results" channel you can see the deck list for which decks have won in each weekly tournament. This can help you get an idea of how cards will work together and possibly how to start building a deck.

https://discord.gg/ed3PSMn

The YouTube channel, Cipherfaire, has a couple deck building videos if I recall correctly.

[eclipse]

There's a lot that goes into this.  For example, if you're into other CCGs, you can tell us which ones, and what kind of decks you like.  While you're probably not going to be able to do something like a Self-Destruct Button deck in Cipher, it'll be a good starting point.

Or, if you really like a given character, perhaps a deck can be built around him/her.

[Slidz]

Thanks for the replies. After looking at some other decks to find out what some good MCs are, I think I want to do a Tiki MC, a Corrin MC, a Micaiah MC, or a Lucina MC deck. What are any of their playstyles? so I can pick between them.

Edited March 3, 2019 by Slidz

[Murdock]

Hello!

Our playgroup has been brewing a lot and we've figured out a few general rules of thumb that seem to be helpful no matter what deck you're building.

-You don't want too many high cost cards, you want to have a decent spread of 1-5 cost cards. That's pretty standard for a lot of CCGs but good to keep in mind.
-Pretty much every deck wants some number of fliers. They have a support value of 30, so they're always good supports regardless of whether you're on attack or defense.
-Different MCs are more or less important to their deck, but you always want a good number of your MC in your deck to guarantee you get to promote them and also so you have crit/evade cards for them. The MC is the one card you know you'll always have in play, so you want to take advantage of that. I usually like 8-13 copies of an MC. Not too many more than that though because you don't want to fail supports constantly
-By the same token, your MC is already in play at the start of the game, so you don't really need 1 cost versions of them most of the time. If there are enough promoted versions of your MC in the game, just use those, not drawing a promotion of your MC promptly is a big way that variance can make you lose (sometimes a character only has 2 cards though so you have to use multiples of their 1 cost)
-If they're available, have 3/2 cost versions of your MC in addition to their "endgame" versions, so you can get your MC powered up early to defend themselves. 
-Similar to fliers, usually having a healer character or two with the ability to retrieve cards from your retreat area is always helpful. 
-Be careful how many sword units you have in your deck! They tend to have promotion forms with awful support values, and base forms that are only good on attack.

I hope this is helpful! As far as the specific characters, were their individual cards of them you were looking to build around? there are lots of lucinas and corrins and tikis so there are different ways you could tackle building decks around them.