Megacorp for constructed play, and how skills from one trading card game can transfer to another.

Magic, Yugioh and Pokemon are all trading card games most of our readers have at least a passing familiarity with. Some elements of these games are rudimentary; principles like card and board advantage are easily transferred from one game to another. Of course each game has elements that make it unique, but the one thing all trading card games have in common is a means to restrict the amount of things you can do on a turn.

Consider:

Magic has the 'one land per turn' limit, restricting the amount of resources available to play cards; with more powerful spells having a higher cost, they can't be deployed early.

Sorceries, the more powerful spells, can only be played on your turn

Yugioh restricts your play with the 'one normal summon per turn' limit, and with limited space in the play area for monsters, especially those in the extra deck. In absence of specific resource cards, life totals are sometimes used as resources, and those aren't infinite.

Pokemon limits your play by allowing only one supporter per turn to be played, attaching one energy card each turn, and having limited board space - one active attacker, five backups - and requiring a basic Pokemon to start the game.

The one thing to remember above all others when it comes to constructed deck building is this: the best cards, and by extension the best decks, are the ones that do the best job of breaking the game rules

With this in mind, let's take a look at Megacorp, the new trading card game on the block here at Rabblemaster Games, with a view to the soon-to-be-introduced constructed tournaments on Monday nights. The visual spoiler for the only set to be released so far is here; taking a look at the cards available reveals several important things to note.

Firstly, unlike Magic and Pokemon, opportunities to draw a card are thin on the ground. Aside from the founder cards, some of which provide insane card advantage and/or tutor effects, our buddy to the left Corp Advisor is the only card with the phrase "draw a card" on it, and it's attached to an average body. Second, the most powerful characters all have upkeep costs, and money appears to be the biggest limitation to what can be done in a turn, plus essentially being your life total - when you're broke, you lose. The other game restrictions are drawing one card a turn and revealing one resource card per turn (which can be broken) and only being able to sell, or divest, one card at the end of turn (which cannot) so with that, the five-card starting hand and lack of raw draw power in mind, let's look at the best way to break some rules to our advantage!

You may know this card by another
name in Magic: it's Wood Elves!

The first great rule-breaker I want to look at is Incarnate Donor. For the low cost of $2m plus a BQ, you can reveal and potentially buy the top card of the resource deck - and you need those resources to get cash flow happening, so you can play those expensive cards. You don't even need to pay the upkeep cost if you can't afford it, just sell her off at the end of turn.
It's straightforward and simple ramp, and the only constraint in deck-building is the need to include Compulsive Consumers in the resource deck - after all, you'd like to play her ASAP.

Another card that has a similar effect is Driverless Car Fleet. This is a resource card, so the odds of drawing it are a little lower than Incarnate Donor, but it makes up for it by having the ability to be used multiple times, and it is possible to chain multiple Driverless Car Fleets to quickly bring several resources out from the deck. It's a mere $2m and costs no additional resources

A self-perpetuating resource base

As raw card draw appears so thin on the ground in this game, we need to take a leaf out of Yugioh's book and look for cards that "extend" your board state. Included on many of the Corp cards is the Dead Drop ability, which lets you search up equipment from either of your decks and play it without paying its cost. Using Dead Drop abilities is cash-neutral when you need it to be - you pay the cost of the character with Dead Drop, and can recover the money by divesting at end of turn, and it can do a very good job of extending your board state.

Picture a card with Dead Drop 4 searching your resource deck for two Driverless Car Fleets, buying the next two cards from your resource deck, then being sold at the end of turn to recover the money spent on it. Building a deck like this involves filling the majority of the resource deck with zero-cost consumers, so that you can afford to play them when you reveal them with your car fleets and Incarnate Donors.

Here's a deck list I've put together taking advantage of the Dead Drop abilities of some of the Corp agents and the Donor/Fleet engine, which I'm using to help power out some of the hard-hitting military cards:

Cards                                                                                           Resources

4 Incarnate Donor                                                                   3 Driverless Car Fleet
4 Corp Advisor                                                                        2 Purchase Order
3 Corp Consultant                                                                   3 Affluent Consumers
4 Corp Executive                                                                     6 Selfish Consumers
2 Maxim Glazov, Cyborg Commando                                         6 Compulsive Consumers
2 Battle Angel

The power of this deck is in the Dead Drop abilities

1 Battle Angel Carapace
1 Railgun Lunasys Lancer 6
2 Vulcan Cannon
3 Avatar Industries Mining Suit
1 Jump Jets
2 Guided Munitions
3 Rail Gun Strike
2 Timely Interception
1 Misdirection
2 Kidnapping
3 Assasination Contract

Any character can operate one of these
and it hits like a truck on steroids

Once the deck establishes its resource base in the first turn or two, you'll be able to make some terrifying military assaults. Search up an Avatar Industries Mining Suit, bond a Vulcan Cannon to it, and cut the opponent's field in half with a 5 BQ strike straight down the line. Safely surrounded characters can be eliminated with the same mining suit plus Guided Munitions; the combination of [precision] and [penetrator] abilities means that nothing is safe - you can't run in Megacorp, and now you can't hide either!

Driverless Car Fleets can be equipped with the Railgun Lunasys Lancer 6 and deploy Railgun Strikes if you've finished using them to dig for resources.

The ultimate Dead Drop card is, of course, Battle Angel, with her Dead Drop 7 ability. Clearly the intent of that ability is to search for the Battle Angel Carapace (cost $6m) and something else that costs 1, but the Dead Drop ability is versatile and can be split over several cards - there's nothing stopping you getting two Mining Suits and a Guided Munitions, or a Railgun Lunasys Lancer 6 and a Vulcan Cannon if you've got characters in play ready to equip. But the Battle Angel Carapace is a nutty piece of equipment as well, and can end games swiftly when combined with Guided Munitions; Disruptor and Precision abilities are a brutal combination.

The deck is rounded off with necessary removal cards; Assassination contract is of course the most powerful of these, taking care of any problem characters on the opposing side, while Kidnapping is effective against more costly problems - the opponent is more likely to be able to pay the $2m to recover their Incarnate Donor than the $6m to save their founder. Timely Interception looks to be necessary in most decks; powerful events like Mindfire or Psychic Scream can be countered, and the singleton Misdirection is best used to change the target of area-of-effect damage cards like Cold Snap, Tidal Wave or Telekinetic Slash.

There looks to be plenty of different strategies available for constructed in Megacorp - we hope to see your ideas running at full power on Monday nights at Rabblemaster Games!