Note that I will be assuming that you've got a mild grip on the universal game mechanics, e.g. taking turns, turn priority, and resource count. With that in mind, let's get the easiest card types out of the way quickly.

Note: I may update this guide as bugfixes may change how certain cards work (or break, or give you +42 morale, or some other crazy easter egg).

These are the building blocks of every deck that does not commit suicide (or maybe it is, but hey, Shirazius don't have time for that!).

Characters may have one, two, sometimes even three abilities, or constantly gain power/defense when attacked/an enemy is destroyed/a card is played/the character attacks the enemy fortress. The possible abilities are far and wide, differing from faction to faction. Note how Unique Characters can have tons of abilities, or a really helpful ability, but can cost a lot of Resources in one turn; this lessens the ability of you (or your opponent, should they choose to play a Unique) to use other cards and abilities that turn.

Unlimited/Infinite/Zerg-Rush-like characters are usually characterized by a low morale cost denoted in red next to the resource cost, have low health, have no abilities, or have abilities that only act as 'support' abilities that use your Graveyard (Endless Horde, Unending Drone). Note that these are great to play in the first several turns before players have the Resources to rush out a bunch of units or abilities. Their usefulness may slightly diminish later on, where the Unending Drones are more of an Unending Meatshield in your Defensive Zone.

Characters can also sometimes interact specifically with Locations and Artifacts. Cartographer, for example, will go ahead and draw a location card from your deck for you.

Abilities are usually one-use cards that have Abilities similar to character abilities, and can be used to a similar extent.

Many abilities (such as Verore's Annihilate...) can tear through an opposition's key cards, summon characters from your deck, damage all cards on the field, heal your cards, and manipulate where enemy cards are. Note that Abilities that can do a load of damage or take cards from your enemy also have proportionately high Resource costs.

I find it best to save Ability cards for the mid- and late-game, where one can effectively "bluff" that you've got several Winds of War cards ready, when you in fact only have Daode's Protection or a weird mixture of cards.

Note: Ability cards can upset the playing field tremendously, and pave the way for your Characters to attack your enemy's health directly. It may instead, however, be more advantageous to have a card such as Aleta, Immortal Traveller spawn a Verore Death Worshipper or Conscript Militia. Timing and practicality are necessary in Ability vs Character decisions.

So you've probably heard of these after doing all the Campaigns and some Academy stuff, but Location and Artifact cards tend to not be used as often as Characters and Abilities.

Location and Artifact cards both sit in your Support Zone and usually don't move out of the Support Zone. Often, they may provide your units with a specific bonus in a specific zone; Others may directly create units, and others still may open up different routes to victory.

Note that the Resource cost of Location and Artifact cards varies, along with purities; More often than not, you'll have to have a double-pure or triple-pure deck of one faction if you want a specific Location or Artifact card. This is okay to most people, as we all have our own distinct playstyles that may benefit more from one Artifact instead of the other.

I've found it better to play Artifacts and Locations in the mid-game. It's also kind of uncommon to find people running anti-Location/Artifact cards in my experience, so i've had plenty of breathing room for an extra Wall of Jinhai or Pyr. Cartographer is a decent Character to play if you really need to pull something extra in on your turn.

Warning: Certain factions may have only rare, super-rare, or otherwise have no Location/Artifact cards whatsoever.

The Neutral faction is, by far, the most flexible and easiest to incorporate into any deck - Your deck usually doesn't need any Neutral purity to run Neutral cards anyway. However, running entirely Neutral is not recommended - Neutral is meant to be more of a utility than a competitively played faction, even though there are cards out there (read: Aleta, Immortal Traveller and Conscript Militia) that can really ruin someone's day.

Recommended Skill if used as one-pure or no-pure:
Any
Recommended Skill if used as full:
Master
Usual Playstyle:
Utility
Card Styles:
Summoning, Utility, Meatshield


-- Not much point in triple-puring a Neutral deck. Unless you're just trying to humiliate or troll someone. Either way, it's still good to have a couple Neutrals hanging around, such as the Golem or Wealthy Noble.

The Verore thrive off of the death of their enemies, and have cards that directly kill things - The most annoying of which is probably either Mass Death or Annihilate. What the Verore lack in flexibility, they make up for in subtlety - along with the sheer novelty of being able to wipe out enemy characters as you please.

The Verore Death Worshipper is any rush- and defense-based Verore deck's bread and butter; They start off pretty weak, but if more than a couple enemy units die, the Worshippers get to the point where only an Artifact-based or super-powered-up Overcharged Soldier from the Genesis faction can take the horde of Verore down.

Note that the Verore lack in major Locations and Artifacts, but make up for it in raw Character and Ability power. Recommended for beginners, intermediates, and those who just want an instant "I Want This Character Ded. Like So Ded"-ability.

Recommended Skill if used outside of Triple-Pure:
Intermediate
Recommended Skill if Triple-Pure:
Intermediate-Advanced
Usual Playstyle:
Invulnerable Rushing
Card Style:
Summon, Utility, Rush, Invuln

The classic fire-and-forget-later faction. Their ability to put up a great early- and mid-game rush can topple any regular deck that isn't oriented around defense, but the Flame Dawn are weak in their Morale Cost.

As the Flame Dawn, you should always get a Pyr, Fortress up ASAP - This will constantly spawn units in your Assault zone for no Resource cost. This, coupled with your battlefield manipulation abilities, can make it easier to do a bunch of damage to your opponent's health early on.

Note that the Flame Dawn actually have a bit of a higher skill wave; meaning that you'll probably take a long time to perfect your Flame Dawn strategy. You'll still usually be weak against Morale-based and some defense-based decks, but who cares? You're probably playing Flame Dawn for the early wins or the immortal flying Aberrion anyway.

Skill Recommended if used as Triple-Purity:
Intermediate-Advanced
Skill Recommended if NOT used as Triple-Purity:
Beginner-Intermediate
Usual Playstyle:
Early Rush
Card Style:
Rush, Invuln, Battlefield Control

Put units in Defensive Zone, put a Glorious Warrior in Defensive all the way to the right, and spam Daode. Pretty much sums up the main winning strategy of the Descendants during the campaign's first few missions, and could hold up in the actual game - If the game did, in fact, give you a Daode card as a reward for completing the campaign! Pfft, who needs Daode, right?

Your primary Abilities and Characters revolve around making your health relatively impossible to one-hit while lowering the enemy's Morale after every turn with Glorious Warrior. Some of your cards benefit from being with other cards, others benefit directly from being on Defense, and some of your Uniques can make it seem like a Medic from Team Fortress 2 is constantly trying to Ubercharge his teammates. Ao Shun, in particular, is a great damage absorber - Ao Shun almost literally can't die from Character cards. Ever.

Note: Unfortunately, since the Campaign missions don't seem to give you a Daode (at least that's how I got), you're pretty limited in your Descendants strategy and will usually just end up using Descendants as more of a Utility for their Wall of Jinhai. Miscellaneous Morale-based decks that aren't mostly made up of Descendants cards can still take a load of advantage of Glorious Warrior spam.

Recommended Skill if Triple-Pure:
Advanced
Recommended Skill otherwise:
Any
Usual Playstyle:
Defensive, Morale-based
Card style:
Defense, Invuln, Morale-based

A technomancer's favorite friend, Genesis Industries offers distinct upgrades for their Characters mainly through the use of Abilities or Locations in order to turn the battle around in the late-game.

There are a few different ways to go about Genesis, but a fairly effective simple take on it is to simply have Aleta, Immortal Tinkerer, Secluded Constructor, and Overcharged Soldier in your Command Zone. Proceed to spam Unending Drones and Bad-Bots, which are then used as a sacrifice to make your Overcharged Soldier stronger. Note that this strategy works okay for the mid-game and sometimes for late-game, but may require some prep with Unending Drones early on.

Warning: Playing with Genesis Industries as a major faction in your deck can end up turning Infinity Wars into a game that relies more on the luck of both your draw and your opponent's drawn cards, so use Genesis wisely. A popular combo is Flame Dawn and Genesis, since Flame Dawn can put up an excellent early rush to secure a foothold for Genesis' bigger Characters.

Recommended Skill if Triple-Pure:
Advanced-Master
Recommended Skill otherwise:
Intermediate-Master
Usual Playstyle:
Late-game gamble
Card style:
defense, utility, late-game-stompy-robots-of-doom

Where trolls and beginners go to die; Warpath is the all-game version of Genesis Industries that relies sometimes more on their number of units rather than singular power. Morale, however, can be a major weakness for the Warpath if given the right conditions.

A popular tactic with the Warpath is to put up a One Of Many and then a couple Caretakers: This allows for an endless supply of Characters, but also make you weak to Morale-based decks. Another option to try is to rely on a few powerful Characters and the Warpath's numerous abilities; It can be devastating to have all of your enemy's units suddenly destroyed by your own before the turn even ends.

Warning: Warpath is not for conventional players that prefer their Characters and their Unique Character abilities instead of regular Abilities and really expensive Characters.

Recommended Skill for Triple-Purity:
Advanced-Master
Recommended Skill otherwise:
Advanced
Usual Playstyle:
All-game power
Card Style:
Rush, Utility, Abilities, Mid- and Late-game, Big-stompy-expensive-things-that-can-shoot-magic-laser-beams.

Braaiiinnsss. The Sleepers evolved from a nanovirus-based plague, and revolve around using Graveyard mechanics to give their currently-living units a bit of a pick-me-up. Note that Sleepers are also kind of weak to Morale, but are easier to destroy if Grave Rob is incorporated into a deck.

Endless Hordes are a staple Character for a Sleeper deck to use. If your zombie's friends die, it kind of makes sense that a classic horde of zombies would come back and take revenge, right? The Sleepers' Unique units also have a few interesting Abilities attached to them, and Patient Zero can one-shot any annoying enemy Characters later on. Sleeper decks also synergize well with Descendants of the Dragon decks - The low morale cost of the Descendants combined with an intermediate/low morale cost from the Sleepers along with the Sleepers' abilities, plus Xi, who Respects The Dead can make for a very formidable hybrid deck.

Warning: If you prefer not to lose Characters all that often, Sleepers may not be for you.

Recommended Skill Level if Triple-Pure:
Intermediate
Recommended Skill otherwise:
Beginner-Advanced
Usual Playstyle:
Sacrrifices for friends, by friends.
Card style:
Morale-based, invuln

Those wacky guys that can steal the Cards you have in your Hand, use the Cards that are in their Hand purely for their intended use, or sacrifice those Cards to profit their own Characters. Meant for those tricksy hobbitses that just can't resist messing with their opponent in the mid- and late-game.

Cressil the Mad and a couple other late-game Exiles cards can steal your opponent's hand, while your early- and mid-game cards can buff one another's power/defense. This is supposed to be beneficial, but due to how the Ritual Master's mechanic works, is not very viable after you've already set up a few Characters on the field. Some other Characters possible for Exiles to use can also cause you to draw extra cards from your Deck. Certain Exile decks can actually be purposefully made with the intention of making only a few, but very powerful Characters.

An alternate strategy involving Exiles and other Factions in your decks could be to specifically empower your Characters even further; It's easier to buff a couple Characters from another Faction that are already pretty powerful. However, should you choose to mix your Exiles deck with other Faction's cards, you'll lose access to the cards like Cressil the Mad that let you mess with your opponent's Hand.

Warning: Due to the random and tricksy nature of the Exiles, it might be better to learn how to outbluff your opponent first. Deploying The Insane into Support from your Hand is more defensive than deploying directly from Command.

Recommended Skill if Triple-Purity:
Intermediate
Recommended otherwise:
Intermediate-Advanced
Usual Playstyle:
Random cardstealing 4lyfe
Card style:
Utility, Sacrifice, Invuln, Cardsteal

Oh wow, these angels are just as hostile as the angels from Supernatural! Not too surprising; If given any kind of berth during the early-game, an Overseers deck can rip an opponent's health to shreds.

Overseers cards usually revolve around preventing Sleeper decks from gaining any major advantages, and can revolve around rushing all of their Angel Characters into the Assault Zone - should they manage to play more than a few cards capable of Flying, their direct counter cards belong to the Neutrals, Genesis, and the Verore. Combining these flying abilities with an Aberrion card from the Flame Dawn can make some people go so far as to quit, too.

Note that the Overseers also have a few pretty fun cards, including but not limited to their Abilities and Locations. It's great to be able to directly draw a Unique from your deck every time you draw that Ability, huh?

Warning: Should you be unable to assemble a deck involving the Overseers that does not profit during the early-game, you're probably going to get killed by a Flame Dawn deck.

Recommended Skill if Triple-Purity:
Advanced-Master
Recommended otherwise:
Advanced
Usual Playstyle:
Late-game flying tank army of doom.
Card style:
Fliying-oriented, mid- and late-game, utility

If you're that one guy that's just messing around with the few Star Trek cards you still have access to, well... This is more of just a tribute. It seems as if the Star Trek factions are like hybridized, lesser versions of the main factions, and don't seem much more useful than Neutral decks.

Should you actually be trying to do this seriously, here's some good advice; Ensign spam and your cards that have to deal with converting the enemy's cards to your side (or deal a morale cost - either style works) will eventually cause the opposition to rely more on Abilities instead of Characters themselves.

Warning: Without hybridizing, Star Trek decks are mainly just for the giggles and laughs, just like Neutrals. Only people with both skill and luck can probably win with an all-Star Trek deck.

Skill Recommended if Triple-Purity:
Master
Skill otherwise:
Advanced-Master
Playstyle:
Diplomacy by not actually attacking the enemy.
Card style:
Utility

So now i'm done quickly explaining the different Factions' main playstyles, let's take a look at a ragequit farm: Instantaneous kill cards.

Now, obviously, most of these cards are from the Verore, but I should be telling you how to deal with them. Their simple counter is to just not push all your Characters that ever existed into your Assault and Defense zones. There's not much you can do against Annihilate, but on the upside, that's probably one of the strongest triple-purity cards ever, and since only three of an Ability card can be put into a deck, you can only see Annihilate a total of three times. You'll also be able to imply that your Verore opponent can't use "GIVE HIM A JETPACK!" and have a super-flying-Worshipper with twenty power going into your health every turn if they're playing the Annihilate card (or have the three purple signs under their portrait..).

Some direct card counters are:
Caretake of the Young
(someone whose name I forget), the Insane
Pyr, Flaming Fortress
Any card that can be beneficial in the Graveyard

So you see, Sleeper decks might actually benefit from the Verore casting their Mass Death - implying their Endless Hordes are on the field. Genesis decks running a ton of Unending Drones, both in the combat zones and in the Support Zone, are pretty much unaffected by Mass Death - After all, Genesis decks would still probably be upgrading as many of their units as they can; until the Worshippers that have a ton of power from those Unending Drones' deaths start kicking down your Health.

Cards that create other cards... I wish I could take these seriously, but they're just so easy to use. Aleta, the Immortal Traveller, for instance can spawn any Unlimited character you so please, making it easy to suddenly field a bunch of Verore Death Worshippers wherever you go.

Note that cards that create other cards are also fairly weak to the same insta-kill cards in the previous section, such as (but not limited to):

Mass Death
Verore Death Ray
Verore Death Worshipper (after some killing has been done)
Annihilation

...Most of those cards are from the Verore, and it's not too easy for Verore to be taken seriously if they're running a Vandalize or Rift to the Old World card instead of an Annihilate card; this makes it appear as if the Verore deck's Annihilate has less value than these other Neutral cards.

Point-in-case: Killing a bunch of units and making a bunch of units cancels out.

Some unique characters can just be a real pain to get rid of. Patient Zero, for example, can just get rid of whatever Characters you've played instantaneously. These kinds of characters can be fairly annoying, but are weak against constant barrages of characters (or Annihilate).

Some Uniques also have the annoying global presence of being Immortal, so long as they're in a certain zone, or another character is in the same zone, or if another set of cards has been specifically played to upgrade that Unique. The zone-oriented Uniques can be disposed of with one of the Flame Dawn's battlefield manipulation cards, and Uniques that rely on certain special conditions are countered by getting rid of those conditions altogether.

In short, countering Uniques means that you have to be ready to counter that Unique specifically - which only sometimes happens and can be really difficult, depending on the Unique.

Countering people that counter you can be even more difficult than normal countering. Whatever you've done, you might've angered someone into playing a near-indestructible mutant deck consisting of the Descendants, Genesis, and Flame Dawn all in one weird bubble that can synergize with itself very easily given the right cards.

But i'm supposed to be telling you how to counter people that counter you, not highlighting how counters can counter people in the first place, so here it goes:

Decks that are meant to counter everything are equally weak to everything - usually - and are also often weak to early- and mid-game rushes. For this sole reason, if you have experience in a Flame Dawn-like deck of yours, then push that deck into your matches instead. As soon as the countering counterer is crushed by an all-too-early zerg rush of yours, they will likely stop playing for the day; if not then for much longer.

Note that countering counterers specifically for the sake of countering in itself is a double-negative, and will likely merit other people's reporting of you 'abusing' the game's mechanics like any other triple-purity deck before promptly ragequitting.

Hmm, I actually had to look at Office Word for a moment before deciding that the title was actually working...

Anyway, a load of people tend to have this weakness against early-game rushers. Oh no, that bully just knocked your sandcastle over; but there are better, more structurally sound ways to build that sandcastle.

Let's say your opponent is going full-on Flame Dawn Aspirant on you, has Pyr, the Flaming Fortress up, and is just sending wave after wave of Aspirants. The obvious Verore counter would be an Annihilate (or rift to the old world, you coward!) and then Mass Death-ing all of the Aspirants. An alternate solution would be to incorporate cards that are highly defensive early on into your deck; Spamming Invincible Defenders and Daode are a direct counter against early rushes.

Warning: Changing your deck specifically to counter rushers will likely leave you with very little power after that mid-game, so you may want to check your card arrangements for any holes in your deck's overall plan for victory.