Sword Girls Deck Building Step by Step Guide

Sword Girls Deck Building Step by Step Guide by Forever

Hello everyone.

Now that we have the cool deck builder “swogitools“, a lot of people are building decks because it’s fun and the only thing to do right now while waiting. Often those people didn’t play in CBT. Therefore I would like to share my point of view regarding good deck-building in SG. Since Vita seems to be the underdog faction, I will make a lower DP Vita deck in this example, using only the cards that will be available in the upcoming open beta. The intention of this Guide is to show newer players something about the thought process behind creating a deck. The resulting deck itself is not really important in this case.

Disclaimer: The Guide uses the card names of Hikki’s translated card list. Some of the names will be a little different when the game is released here. Thanks go out to him, pocketdragon and swogitools for making all that fun possible.

Creating a concept:

First of all we need a concept for the deck. After this, everything you do should support this concept. In the example we want to make a basic & homogeneous deck relying on buffs to overpower the enemy followers fast (good for dungeon grinding).

The search for strong cards that will support the concept:

First of all we need to find strong cards. In this case strong doesn’t mean the card has a powerful effect, but an effect that will be powerful in our concept, while having an appropriate Point value for its effect.
Especially while searching for spells you don’t have to limit yourself to one faction. Normally there is no problem using a few spells from other factions in your mono-faction deck, too. In this case we will make a pure Vita deck, because the green in the faction’s crest is soothing.

Anyway, we are looking for strong buffs to win the game fast:

Size: 2	Uniform Modification
	Two random allied Vita followers gain Atk equal to twice their Def and lose Sta equal to half (rounding down) their Def.

This sounds awesome. With a DEF 3 Follower we get +6 ATK while only loosing 1 STA. So now we need Followers with DEF 3 (or at least 2 DEF) in our deck:

For once there is Sita’s Friend Rosy. She gets +2 STA every time she is attacked! I really like this card. DEF is powerful, even more so with her ability. If you can buff her a bit, she will be a nightmare – for the other side of the field.

There is also another card with 3 DEF:

Size: 3	Student Council President Celine
	Before defending, a card in your hand with “Student Council” in the name is moved to the top of your deck. If this happens, this card gains +1/+2 Atk/Sta.
4- 3 – 6

This is a card with a sub-factional keyword in it: “Student Council”. While we were looking through the available Vita buffs we found a card that uses the very same keyword: Court Trickster, a buff that gives +3 ATK and +3 STA to two Vita Followers if one of them is a “Student Council” and the other is not. To use a card like this, it would be wise to use a 50/50 Follower-Mix of Student Council and non-Student Council cards. Since Celine also needs Student Council Girls to support her tea time cake buffet, a 50/50 mix will help our overall concept.

We said before that DEF is a powerful stat, so it would be great if we had something against it. There is a Follower that snowballs heavily while facing cards with lots of DEF:

Size: 3	Cook Club Ace
	Before attacking, this card gets Def=0. This card’s Atk/Sta is raised by the difference between this card’s Def and the defending follower’s Def (maximum 9).
4 – 0 – 9

The only problem with her is that she is a bit weak initially. Since our concept is buffing, Cook Cake Ace is the right girl in the right deck. So far the only buff we can use on her is Court Trickster, though. Luckily we have spotted a very intriguing buff:

Size: 1	Wall Climb
	The first allied Vita follower in your field is moved to slot 5 if it is empty. If this happens, then that follower gains Atk/Sta equal to the sum of the Sizes of the cards in slot 2 and 4 of your field.

It’s our first Rare worth a whopping 13 Points, but with a lucky hand this card can seal the deal. Let me explain: We want our potentially devastating Kitchen Soldier Ace to get an initial start buff. Play her in Slot 1. Play another size 3 Follower in slot 2. Play Wall Climb in Slot 3 and another size 3 Follower in Slot 4. You will now get a +6 ATK and STA buff for the Ace of hot & spicy food. Awesome!

Of course this means our deck will need primarily size 3 Followers.

Attention: She is now in slot 5. There is a Rare that will be very common in a lot of decks (not only Academy ones) and could really hurt your Follower there: Sister’s Letter. You can block that card’s effect by playing a size 4 or 5 in a lower slot. Remember Rosy? Good thing she fits our concept. If you get her while having a beefy Follower in slot 5 and the field size to play her, you probably should do that.

Picking a character:

Picking a character is an important part of your concept. Sometimes the character is even the basis of you concept. In this example we go with Gart, the little bird Miss, since she is strong, but still rather easily obtainable by grinding through her dungeon 10 times. You know you want her, right? Riiight?

Tip: You don’t have to use a character from the same faction as the majority of your cards. If it fits your concept or you will use certain cards that require your character to be of a certain faction, go ahead and be unfaithful.

Size ratio and spell-to-follower ratio:

Now you know some cards you want to use in your deck. The next question is how many copies of each card and what else to round off the deck.

1. The ‘tankier’ your Followers the more spells you need. Since we need mainly size 3 Followers (with a lot of DEF though) in this example deck, we should probably go with a spell-to-follower ratio of around 14 to 16.

2. The sum of the sizes of all Followers should exceed your character’s Life by aprox. 1,5 times. This is because of popular cards like Shrink and cards that directly send Followers to your grave. You need to adjust that rule when you have some sort of Life heal or card recycling in your deck.
The reason behind adjusting the sum of Follower-sizes is that you don’t want to deck out before getting low on health, but you also don’t want to die without ever having seen most of your deck. Both cases mean you used the 30 card slots of your deck in an inefficient way.

3. The card size mix should enable you to get an average hand that will let you play two Followers and one or two Spells. We want to use a lot of size 3 Followers in this case plus size 4 Rosy. Our spells will be mainly size 2 and 3. This will allow us to play two size 3 Followers and one or two spells. Alongside Rosy we can still play another Follower and even a size 3 Spell. Celine approves! A lot!

The search for other cards that are useful in our concept and help us reaching our ratios:

We said we want 16 Followers and 50% need to be from the Student Council: 3x Celine, 3x Amy and 2x Fran.
This leaves 8 non-Student Council Followers: We want 3x Hot Cake Ace and 3x Rosy. That leaves two slots open: I will use Lotte because her effect can be useful sometimes and she is size 3. You could also use everybody’s Darling Layna.

Regarding Spells: 3x Trickster, 3x Uniform Mod, 2x Wall Climb. That leaves 6 slots. 2x Shrink is a pretty obvious choice now, since ep EX1 and 4 will feature the Dress UP mechanic and the popular Darklore Faction has some mechanics to create literal Monster-Girls (3rd Conundrum). Shrink can save the world – again.
4 slots left: Since we are using 8 Student Council Followers and we want to win fast, adding 3 copies of Student Council Kick makes sense. Just ask Hikki: This card is probably the most awesome card in all of the heavens and seas until, well …. Double Student Council Kick in EX2.
For the last spell I went with an arguably weaker Rare: Empowering Chant. Nevertheless it is only size 1 and can fit as a 2nd spell in many fields. Moreover you can directly target Chicken Wing Ace or Rosy with it and they will really love that +5 STA.

Finished !!!!!

This is the end of this little Guide. I hope it was a little bit helpful and you will have a lot of fun at constructing your own decks.

Link to the full deck: >>> (^.~) <<<