By Evan Lorentz

One of the most fun elements of the Auto Assault TCG (or any other trading card game, for that matter) is designing your own decks. If you're familiar with the Deck Builder, this can be a very quick and easy process. If you're not, then you've come to the right place. This article will walk you through the process of creating your own deck.

Entering the Deck Builder

You can access the Deck Builder from three different places:

• The Login screen
• The Main Lobby
• The tabs on the right side of a specific lobby screen (the Casual Games, Tournaments, or Trade lobbies).

When you first enter the Deck Builder, the top area of the screen will show your collection, while the bottom area will be empty. This bottom area is your deck - at least, what will become your deck. Note the three tabs at the top of this "deck area." The first is for your vehicle, the second for your missions, and the last for your "draw deck." These tabs each access a different "page" of your deck, and you must put the cards you add to your deck on the right page for it to validate correctly.

Choosing a Vehicle

The vehicle tab is highlighted when you first enter the Deck Builder. While you don't have to start a deck design by choosing a vehicle, it's probably the best approach if you're not used to the process. To help narrow down your collection to just vehicles, make use of the filters at the left.

There are three ways to add a card to your deck:

• Double-click a card to add one copy
• Drag-and-drop a card from the top window to the bottom to add one copy
• Right-click a card, and select from the pulldown menu the number of copies you'd like to add to the deck. (In the case of vehicles, however, you can only have one in your deck.)

Cards can be removed from your deck in the same three ways.

Decide on which vehicle you'd like to be the centerpiece of your deck, and add it to the "Vehicle" page now.

Searching for a Specific Card

You may already know the name of a card you want for your deck. You can quickly search for it by clicking on the large field at the bottom of the filter area (it says "Search text" until you actually use it for the first time.) Type in all or part of the card name, then click "Search" (or press "enter").

For example, if you already know you want Aegis PTR as the vehicle for your deck, you can skip all that other filtering by simply typing its name into the search field. That card will appear all by itself in the collection area, and you can then easily add it to your deck. You don't even have to type the full card name. Searching for "Aegis", "PTR", or even just the letters "ae", will pull up that vehicle. Partial searches like this can be very helpful when you can't remember the full name of a card you're looking for.

Choosing Missions

It's time to move on to the next step and choose missions for your deck. Once again, it's worth mentioning that you're not required to pick missions after picking your vehicle, but you'll probably find this the easiest approach if you haven't built your own deck before.

First, click on the Missions tab in the deck area to set things up so you're looking at the right page.

The collection area is probably still showing vehicles. To fix that, click on the "Reset" button, in the Filter area.

Now, click on the "Card Type" button as you did before, selecting "Mission" from the pulldown menu.

There's one more thing you can do to help narrow your search. You've already selected a vehicle at this point. All your missions have to match the race of that vehicle - you can't put a Human mission in a deck with a Biomek vehicle, for example. So to filter out any missions you can't use, click the "Match Vehicle" button in the Filters area. Notice that the lights beside the "Faction" and "Class" buttons have now switched on - they've automatically been set to the Faction and Class of your vehicle, and you're now looking at only the missions that go with it.

You'll now need to pick exactly four missions for your deck. Each must be a different difficulty: a 20, 40, 50, and 60. You don't have to put them in your deck in any particular order, as long as you end up with one of each.

Searching Missions by Difficulty

Because you have to select one mission for each of the four possible difficulties, you may want to narrow your collection even farther to make comparisons easier. Fortunately, there is a tool you can use to do just that.

At the bottom of the Filters area are two pulldown menus, both labeled "Cost." Click on either one, and you'll see a long menu of options appear, listing different aspects of a card. Right now, you're looking for mission difficulty, so select "Difficulty" from the pulldown menu by clicking on it. That button will now show "Difficulty" instead of "Cost."

Next, click on the "less than" (<) sign to right of the word "Difficulty." You'll see a pulldown menu of different sorts of mathematical comparisons you can ask the filter to make. In this case, the "equal to" (=) filter is most appropriate, so click to select it.

Now, look at the "0" entered in the field to the right of the equal sign. Click on it, and you'll get a cursor where you can enter any value you like. In this case, type in the difficulty number of the mission you need. (For example, "40", if you're trying to decide which mission to include as your 40.)

Before the search you've set up will work, you have to click on the light to the right of the parameters you entered. Once you do, any cards that don't fit your criteria will disappear from your collection area.

Building Your Draw Deck

Alright, you now have two of the three "pages" of your deck finished. We've saved the biggest one for last.

Click on the "Draw Deck" tab in the deck area. It's also a good idea to clear out any filtering you did while choosing your missions, by clicking "Reset" in the Filter area.

The "Draw Deck" page is where you add maneuvers, units, gear, and tactics to your deck. There are no fixed number of any of these you're required to add - just so long as you put at least 50 cards total onto this page.

If you're feeling a bit lost about how many of each card is a good idea, you might want to visit this article that talks about strategic considerations in deck building.

Using the filters here will really help speed the process. Selecting one "Card Type" will let you focus one at a time on each of the cards you're adding: maneuvers, units, gear, and tactics. And remember, any time you reset the filters, it's probably wise to click "Match Vehicle" right away to filter away any cards that don't go with the Faction and Class of the vehicle you've selected.

The two "attribute" pulldown menus (which return to reading "Cost" every time you click "Reset") are especially helpful in this process. You can use them to help you view only maneuvers of a certain speed or faster, units with a certain damage value or higher, cards with a certain cost or cheaper - any sort of search you can imagine.

A Word on Units

There's something extra worth saying about adding units to your deck. There are over a dozen different unit factions in the game, and you can include any or all of them when you're building your deck. The "Match Vehicle" button leaves all of these options on by default.

However, many units will work more efficiently with each other when they're all part of the same faction. (Especially if you make use of the tactics that some of the unit factions have.) Once you've decided to go with a certain unit faction, you may find you want to include only units from that faction. In this case, the "Match Vehicle" button isn't the right approach for you.

Instead, after clicking "Reset," click on the "Faction" pulldown menu, then click the specific unit faction you're interested in. (For example, you may want to view only Thugz.) Any selection you make here will filter your collection area to show only the units of that faction.

Validating Your Deck

Once you've selected all the cards for your deck, you should double-check to make sure all your choices are legal. At the top of the Filters area is the tab "Save & Options." Click on it, and the Filters Area will be replaced with a new array of choices. Click on "Validate Deck."

A window will appear on screen, showing the results of the validation test on your deck. If it's ready to go, then all the columns will have a green box saying "OK." If there are any problems, you'll get one or more red boxes with an "X" in them. It only takes one of these to make your deck illegal. Fortunately, it's easy to tell where you went wrong - just click on any red X to get an explanation of the deck validation error.

You can click "OK" to then close this window.

Saving Your Deck

You may have saved your deck already in the process of working on it. (Maybe several times along the way.) In any case, you definitely want to save it now.

You can click on any of three options:

• "Save" is the most direct option. If you're working on a completely new deck, you'll be asked to name it. If you're modifying an existing deck, saving will write over the old version of the deck.
• "Save As" works just like in many other programs. This is the option to choose if you've been modifying an existing deck, but want to keep both the old and new versions intact. You can give the new incarnation a new name.
• "Save As Online" is useful for people who log on to Auto Assault TCG from more than one computer. You're able to save a limited number of decks to the game server rather than on your local computer. You can then access those decks using any computer you log on from.

Start Your Engines!

There you have it - the process of building a deck, step by step. For more information on a few other features not mentioned here (such as Deck Statistics), just refer to the online manual.

And good luck with your creation!