Card Strategy

To help people struggling to beat the AI or online opponents, here are some tips from Darwin Kastle:

The plan when playing Star Realms is to get your deck to do the most powerful things possible in the shortest amount of time possible. This usually means being able to play either as many expensive and powerful cards as possible in a turn, or to make use of as many powerful ally abilities as possible in a single turn, or preferably, both. To accomplish these things, you need both an overall plan based on the early game and a plan that evolves as the game goes longer. There are 6 main aspects to the game’s strategy.

1. Game phases – As you play the game it’s important to realize that the game has different phases as play progresses and to be aware of what phase you’re in. This is easiest in the digital game because of the ability to check the contents of both you and your opponent’s deck every turn. If you’re not doing this, you should be.
   • Opening In the first phase you’re trying to figure out what factions your deck will favor while quickly ramping up your deck’s ability to do whatever strategy you’ve decided to embark on. The default strategy should be massively increasing your trade, scrapping your starting deck, setting up a collection of bases and constantly triggering ally abilities. Step one on this path is usually taking every scrapping card you can and big trade cards like Freighter, Trade Pod, Barter World and Patrol Mech. When neither scrapping cards or big trade cards are available, then cheap trade cards like Cutter, Federation Shuttle, Trading Post, Survey Ship and even Explorers are usually next most desirable. Cards like Imperial Fighter and Blob Fighter should be avoided until you’ve determined that they are in a faction that you’re already focusing on, because you don’t want them stunting your deck’s development, especially if you’re not going to be triggering their ally abilities frequently. Big combat bases like War World and Defense Center are great in the mid to late game, but usually a waste of time in the early game when you should be spending that 5 trade on cards to help your deck develop.
   • Mid Game. As your and your opponent’s score gets down around 40, you’ve probably reached the next phase of the game, especially if you have at least two or three good non-Explorer trade cards in your deck and/or if you’re starting to trigger some of your ally abilities and you have a good idea what factions your deck is favoring. At this point you should be scrapping your Explorers and avoiding adding any new ones to your deck. You’re still happy to pick up scrapping cards, but if your opponent’s deck is at least somewhat aggressive, their attractiveness will wane a little. Your main focus is now turning to acquiring bases, grabbing ships in your faction and picking up expensive combat ships.
   • Late Game. Once you and your opponent’s score gets down around 30, you’re probably in the late game. The cards you want are shifting dramatically...

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• 21 strategy
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