Cactus Game Design Message Boards

I might be wrong about this but my first thought is that you should focus on which special abilities work well together. To some degree brigades are secondary (within reason) and identifiers come much, much later unless a special ability cares about it.

For cards that require an identifier (like, if used my a musician) I like to have a minimum 3 valid targets in a 50 card deck. Any less and it’s just not reliable enough.

As Gabe said how special abilities work together is the most important with brigades being a part of this or secondary.  However, when it comes to deck building for a newbie who is still getting used to the game I'd say to just have fun with it, pick a theme that you like (Judges, Syrians, whatever) and go with it.  Most of the time the themes are designed to function well together with their respective abilities, brigades, etc.  When you become more proficient in how the game mechanics and strategies work add in and delete some cards from your deck and try out different combos, etc. 

This is why I build those construct decks (like the ones you purchased from me before) because all of the cards work really well together and they're perfect for beginners who are into the game and are beyond the starter decks level.

20% initial building 80% playing/tweaking.

Definitely true. I had a red warriors/Romans (gray defense) that I used pretty much since the beginning and I tweaked it many times to a point that it worked really, really well and won me some tournaments and several casual games. This is still my core deck that’s my fave and will continue to improve it.