Deckbuilding 101: Resource Ramp

By now, probably everyone who reads articles on this site has heard of the Rule of 5 for deck building: 1/5 Feng Shui Sites ("FSS"), 1/5 foundation, 1/5 characters, 1/5 cheap stuff, and 1/5 everything else. (Check out Dave’s excellent article on the Chimpshack if you’re unfamiliar with this rule before you continue.)

The Rule of 5 is an excellent place to begin deck construction; most decks built strictly adhering to this rule will work well. However, the more decks you build, the more you will find that some decks just don’t work with this kind of resourcing. This article will take a closer look into choosing the right amount of foundation characters and Feng Shui Sites, which I will refer to as "resources" in general, early-game discard strategies, and which properties of your deck change the number of resources you will need.

I will begin this article by setting up several boundary conditions, things which I will assume are true in general, but may vary from case to case. The following paragraph is mainly intended for people who want to understand how I’m doing my analysis. Those of you who just want the deck construction and play advice can skip this part.

The first questions we have to ask are: at what point does a deck need to be in play, and what does “in play” mean? When a deck is in play, it has enough resources and generates enough power to interact with the game in a meaningful way, most importantly to stop an opponent with an early surge of power from winning. An Architect deck may only need a single resource and 1 Power to be in play. At that point, it can stop attacks for the win with Nerve Gas and Imprison. Decks of almost all factions can be in play with a single resource and one site, but most decks will require more than that. A deck needs to be “in play” by the time an opponent can go for the win, and preferably should be in play when everybody is ready to start taking sites. In multiplayer games, site-taking can start as early as round 2, but typically commences in round 3. Fast decks can win by round 4, sometimes even round 3 if everyone else is having a slow start. In short, turn 3 is a good measure of when a deck should be “in play”. (I will explain in a later article how those numbers come about, what the "power curve" is and how the speed of a card is determined.)

The maximum number of cards a deck will see by the beginning of the main shot of turn 3 is 24: 6 cards in the opening hand, and 3 rounds of discarding 6 cards and refilling your hand. Sure, in theory you could be seeing more cards, but then you’re hardly having resource problems, are you? So two important thresholds for card drawing probabilities are 6 (your opening hand), 12 (total cards you can draw on turn 1) and 24. Most often, however, your draw will fall somewhere in between. If you draw nothing in your opening hand, you’ll be at 12 cards total by turn 1. If you have an FSS and a foundation in your opening hand, and discard everything else, but don’t draw another playable card before turn 3 and still want to generate power, you’ll see a total of 10 cards. There are many other combinations you can think of, but for now let’s remember 6, 12 and 24, and deal with the other possibilities further below in the discard advice.

Finally, we will set a probability threshold. Comparing straight probability numbers is difficult. What does a 5% difference in draw probability mean? Does it differ if you look at 45% and 50% compared to 90% and 95%? Most people don’t have a good grasp of these kinds of numbers, so we’ll set a threshold probability of 95%, call that “certain to draw a card”, and compare the number of cards we need to draw to reach that probability of drawing the specified number of foundations or FSS. At that threshold, the probability of not getting a bad draw in a 4-round tournament is better than 80%, which is a good enough confidence level for a tournament deck.

With these numbers in our heads, let’s start looking at basic deck compositions. We’ll start out with mono-faction decks as those are easiest to deal with, and look at different resource ratios: 1/5th (the standard recipe), 1/4th, and 1/6th. We are also assuming that you put in the same number of foundation cards and FSS. The table below shows you how many cards you need to draw out of a 60-card deck to get a specific number of FSS or foundation cards. Of course, these numbers vary with deck size. A 90-card deck needs to draw one card more on average, a 40-card deck needs to draw less.

Also, let's look at how many cards you have to draw in a given turn to get at least one non-resource card, assuming you draw resource- and non-resource cards evenly throughout the game. You will have to draw 5 cards per turn in a 1/4th resource deck to get to 95% probability of drawing at least one non-resource card, 4 for a 1/5th deck, and 3 for a 1/6th deck.

There is one important thing to bear in mind when looking at these numbers: while the cumulative probability of drawing the specified card within the number of cards shown on the table is 95%, you aren’t guaranteed to draw the card after you exceed that number. If you have drawn 12 cards out of a 60 card deck with 12 foundations and not drawn a foundation, the probability of drawing a foundation on the next card is 25% (12 foundation cards divided by 48 remaining cards).

With these numbers, we can draw one conclusion straight away: filling half of your deck with foundation and Feng Shui sites is a terrible idea. While you are pretty much guaranteed to draw foundation and FSS in your opening hand, you need a really high card throughput later in the game to keep on drawing good stuff, which is nigh impossible, given that the cards you need to get rid of are, again, foundation and FSS.

The 1/6th deck also looks a bit unviable. While it should run smoother later in the game, you have to go through three hands to be guaranteed a foundation and an FSS, and even more than that to get multiple resources into play. However, if the deck does not contain many cards that require more than 1 resource, a 1/6th resource setup may be feasible, as we'll see later in the article. A lean deck could also try to run between 1/5th and 1/6th resources.

But even the 1/5th deck seems to have issues. Sure, you’re almost guaranteed to have foundation and FSS by turn 2, but does it really requires more than a third of your deck to ramp up to 2 or even 3 resources? How can that be, given that 1/5th appears to be the tried and proven magical formula? Well, first of all remember that you will have that number of resources at the indicated number of cards in 19 out of 20 games. On average, you will need to draw less cards. Still, there are other ways that you can employ to get your deck into play quicker.

Two very important components for every deck are alternate power generation and ramp characters. Alternate power generation cards enable you to stay on or above the power curve but aren't Feng Shui sites. Ramp characters are characters that require only one resource to play while providing resources themselves. For our deck construction purposes, we will count alternate power generation as Feng Shui sites, and ramp characters as foundations.

Alternate power generation cards, such as Drug Lab, Violet Meditation, Blood Lust, or IKTV Special Report provide many advantages for deck building. When your deck is drawing FSS normally, these cards can provide you with a power boost to get ahead of your opponents. When you are not drawing FSS, these cards prevent you from falling too far behind, besides doing other useful things. Violet Meditation (VM), Scrounging (Scr) and Pocket Demon (PD) provide comeback, Drug Lab and Trade Center form a wall behind which you can hide FSS in the late game, and the myriad of other power generating events provides you with power during your or other peoples’ turn, adding to your overall power generation. Essentially, if you have the resources to play the card, an alternate power generation card can be counted towards your FSS, which is really only the case if all your resource characters cost one power and provide the required resource or talent. Otherwise, you will have to draw an initial FSS to be able to play the power generation card. If you play 12 FSS and 3 Scrounging in a 60-card deck, it should run as smoothly or more smoothly than a deck with 1/4th FSS, as the Scrounging will make up for missed Feng Shui sites in the early draws. However, you should only rely on power generating cards that have little to no secondary costs. VM, PD, and Scr are top tier because they only require a single resource, and you may even outproduce opponents who draw an ideal 2 FSS. Isothermal Zodiac is alright when played with Ancestral Tomb or Ape Nuts, as power generation is almost guaranteed in that case as well. Dirk Wisely’s Gambit, Bloodlust, and IKTV Special Report on the other hand all have requirements that may not be fulfilled in the early game, and thus shouldn’t be counted as FSS in deck construction.

Ramp characters are ideally characters that are better than foundation characters, either because of their abilities or their cost-to-fighting ratio. Their requirements are low, so they can be played with a single resource, and once you have a foundation card in play, these cards can be counted as foundation. Their cost should not exceed 3, otherwise you won’t be able to play them until later turns, and you may end up discarding them instead from an early hand, which in turn means it will take you longer to find resources later in the game. Examples of good ramp characters are Midnight Whisperer, Scrappy Kid, and Gruff Lieutenant. The Willow Bends and Dirk Wisely’s Gambit should be counted as ramp cards as well. They are fairly easy to play and have no cost while providing a resource. Ramp characters are very important in decks that feature a large number of cards that require 3 or more resources.

So, with only 3 ramp characters and 3 alternate power generation cards, a standard 60-card deck with 1/5th foundation and FSS each should run as smoothly as a 60-card deck that has 1/4th each of foundation and FSS. The same trick, of course, can be applied to a deck with 1/6th for FSS and foundation. The difference will remain in the ease of drawing that all-important first character. Also, the deck with fewer resources faces stricter constraints for its foundation cards: when you so heavily depend on the first foundation to get into the game you have to make certain you can play it without drawing FSS (ie it has to be a 1-cost), and it must provide all resources you need to play your power generation cards and ramp characters (this means all of your foundation characters should provide Magic or Chi when playing PD or VM). Of course, you could consider doing something fancy like playing 1/5th foundation and 1/6th FSS, if a foundation character is all you need to get into the game.

A second feature that will grease the wheels of your deck is the inclusion of free cards. And with that I mean truly “free”, not just cards that cost 0 power. Final Brawl, Verminous Rain, Larcenous Mist all can be considered truly free cards, as the requirements to play them are very low, and they can be freely cycled from your hand, sometimes they are even useful as you play them to cycle your hand and dig through your deck in search of more foundation or FSS. Bite of the Jellyfish or Avenging Thunder, on the other hand, are not free. In fact, Bite can become a dead weight in many games, as you hold it in your hand in hope for a burn-for-power while everybody plays around it. Free cards are always good because they provide you with options when you don’t have any juice. In the early game, however, they also provide the advantage of essentially becoming free discards, allowing you to generate power from your single FSS while hunting for more foundation.

Similar to free cards in effect are free discards. The only viable ones for the early game are Coral Reef and The Bazaar. Both require no resources and are reusable. Like free cards, free discard help you cycle through your deck without foregoing power generation.

So now you’ve built your deck, shuffled thoroughly, and still didn’t draw any foundation in your opening hand. What now? Most people simply don’t discard aggressively enough from the opening hand, especially not if they’re staring at Ting Ting, 2 Golden Comebacks, 2 Brawls, and a Back for Seconds. Let’s face it: at this very moment, all those cards do exactly nothing for you. Chuck them all. If your opening hand lacks FSS or foundation, discard everything. If you hold a power generating card that can be played with one resource, or a 1-cost ramp, maybe hold on to those, especially if your deck requires a lot of resources. But discard at least 4 cards. Turn 2 now may look a bit different. If you drew and played a foundation in turn 1, but not an FSS, again discard everything, with the above exceptions. If you had an FSS, but nothing else, forego power generation and discard everything that’s not an FSS. Giving up a point of power in turn 2 is less painful than foregoing power generation in turn 3, where you may be losing 2 power instead of 1. Even if you forego power generation in turn 2, you should still have 2 power, enough to play your second FSS or foundation characters, should you draw them. If you played a foundation and a site in turn 2, you may still want to forego power generation if you hold no playable cards.

So far, we have just been dealing with single-faction decks. In two-faction decks, everything is even tighter, since now your foundation is split between two factions. If you include the same fraction as before, you will only have half the number of foundation per faction, and it takes a huge number of draws to reach the first foundation of a specific faction (24 cards to reach a specific faction foundation with "certainty", 28 to get one of each for a 1/5th 70-card deck). Obviously, you have to both over-resource and play mostly with cards that require one resource or less. For two-faction decks, I typically chose my base number to be 70 cards for a standard deck instead of 60. The ideal number of resource cards in this case is either 8 or 9 for each faction, if the factions are evenly balanced, meaning that both number of cards and resource requirement distribution are close to identical, so that when bad comes to worst, I can play the deck with only one faction. Most two-faction decks stress one of the factions, however, and put less emphasis on the second. These decks are easier to construct. They should still be over-resourced, but typically you can get away with playing cards that require more than one resource for your main faction. Again, try to balance out the number of resources required for the factions and the number of cards, eg your minor faction should not contain cards that require 3 or more resources, and you should play fewer cards in the minor faction. The most extreme version of two-faction decks feature the second faction as a “splash”: 5 resource characters, and 5 cards that require only one resource. With this strategy, you’re as likely to draw a resource as you are to draw a card requiring the resource.

Finally, let’s analyze a winning deck and look at its foundation and FSS distribution. I picked this deck, because Robin always complained about getting bad draws with the Gatling shuffler.

Double Dragon
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Foundation:
5 Friends of the Dragon
5 Student of the Dragon
3 Hacker

Substance:
1 Lin
2 Jenny Zheng
3 Wu Bin of Turtle Island
1 Serena Ku
1 Bei Terong
1 Captain Jake Molloy
1 Ting Ting
1 Swift Eagle
1 Dr. John Haynes
1 Steven Wu
2 The Nemesis

Events:
2 Back for Seconds
2 Dirk Wisely's Gambit
2 Fighting Spirit
4 Final Brawl
1 Flying Kick
3 Golden Comeback
2 Got My Mojo Working
2 Old Hermit's Gambit
3 Open a Can of Whupass
1 The Crucible
1 Thunder on Thunder

Other:
1 Ready For Action
3 Dragon Dojo

FSS:
5 Nine Dragon Temple
5 Dragon Graveyard
2 Festival Circle
2 Waterfall Sanctuary

Total cards: 69

Foundation: 16 ramp: 2
1 resource: 15
2 resources: 8
3 resources: 16

The deck contains 1/5th FSS, and more than 1/5th foundation, thus appears over-resourced at first glance. However, it contains no ramp characters, and only 4 characters with a resource cost of 2, 3 of which cost more than 3 power. There are no low-resource force boosters in the deck; the deck can only take sites if it gets to 3 resources. Counting the Gambits as ramp cards, Robin needs to draw 20 cards to be certain to get 3 resource characters (I won’t count the 2 resource characters, as they are so expensive that Robin is as likely to throw them away in the first 6 cards as he is to hold on to them). There are very few free cards in the deck and no free discard, so card cycling will come from discarding and playing sites and whatever characters he draws. Apart from the sites, there is no alternate power generation in the deck (the Gambit is too unreliable until Robin can play a big character unless the board is clear), thus he is dependent on generating power during his establishing shot, and can’t afford to discard more than one card with great regularity. All these factors combine to bring this deck into play fairly late, probably by turn 5 or 6. If the opponents’ decks are both working well, this will be to his advantage: with his FSS choice, he doesn’t mind being the gimp as every site taken from him will give him more power, and he can conserve his strength while the opponents are depleting each other’s resources. And once Robin has his three resources, he has a very versatile deck with hard hitters that can deal with a multitude of denial. But this deck loses to a very fast deck almost by default. It will be in play by turn 3 only on a very lucky draw, and even turn 4 is pushing it, so if one of his two opponents also has a slow start, a fast deck can run away with the victory before the game even starts. In short, according to our analysis above, I expect Robin to draw poorly more often than not unless he flushes his hand very aggressively. Suggested improvements would be very simple: by replacing one or two foundations with Scrappy Kids, he could improve the value of his Gambits. If no ramp characters are to be added (suitable ones would be the Chinese Doctor or the Reluctant Hero), adding States that boost fighting would increase the deck’s early-game options dramatically, and those States would still be valuable in the late game.

I hope you have enjoyed this discourse on resourcing a deck, and that it will help you improve the flow of your play.