# Kevin Lowe's Speed Deck Principles

By Kevin Lowe.

My old design theory, posted ages ago along with the Cease Upon the Midnight deck, is unchanged. That is that

a) fast is good (get to the fun stuff faster)
b) small is good (get to the fun stuff faster).

The idea is to get as many card effects into play as possible -- cards are free -- and to evade by speed, as much as possible, the 5-card limit.

In honour of Dennis' brave crusade to smite Cards That Suck, I'd like to add the Heffernan Principle,

c) Don't use cards that suck.

Based on those ideas, my current deck template, whatever faction I'm playing, is as follows.

- 10 Feng Shui sites
- 10 1 cost foundation characters
- 10 ways of getting more power (2 or 3 non-FS sites, Vivisectors, Dirk's Gambits, Helix Rethreads, Now You've Made Us Mad, Mole Network etc).
- 10 Whuppin' Sticks (mostly 2-5 cost characters, with resource costs, sometimes 3-5 cost States like Arcanotanks, Megatanks, whatever).
- 10 Fun Things (everything else)

None of the above are permitted to be Cards That Suck. In general, I like at least 10 cards of the above to be zero cost - that is, cheap power generators or cheap fun things. If a faction has a keen 0-cost event that's almost always useful, like Final Brawl or Operation Killdeer, go wild for it.

In some decks (ones packed almost exclusively with 0-2 cost cards, mostly 0's and 1's), I'll make the Fun Stuff slot 20 cards instead of 10. If I recreated Cease Upon the Midnight (Architect weenies & cheap effects), it'd have 20 Fun Things.

I try to make my Fun Things combine with my Whuppin' Sticks as far as possible, but I don't obsess over it.

I find decks designed this way are fast, fun, and quite effective. By comparison, Dennis' decks, which I have assembled and played myself, feel glutinously slow and hand-clogged. I found playing Dennis' deck a bit of a drag. It won, but not faster than any of my decks or any more thoroughly. Dennis uses, IMHO, too many Whuppin' Sticks and not enough power generation, and his decks are too big. 50 cards is plenty for two or three player, IME.

All comments welcome.

- Strategy

Last modified: June 18, 1997.
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