By Evan Lorentz

At the center of every Auto Assault TCG deck is your vehicle. Each vehicle belongs to one of three factions (Biomek, Human, or Mutant) and one of 12 classes (4 different classes for each of the three factions). Many cards in the game have faction and class requirements, meaning you can only include them in your deck if they match up with your vehicle. In choosing a vehicle, you’re gaining access to certain cards no other deck can use, while setting aside others to be explored some other time, in some other deck.

Today we’re going to throw the spotlight on the Lieutenant, one of the four Human classes. After a quick overview of what they excel at, you may be better able to design a killer Lieutenant deck.

The Lieutenant is one of the "Officer" classes of the game (much like the Biomek Mastermind class and the Mutant Archon class). Above all else, an Officer is meant to be in charge of other people. In the Auto Assault TCG, that means units. You may find a splash of unit-oriented cards scattered throughout the other classes, but nothing to match the variety and scope of an Officer’s choices.

With the cards Evacuation and Extend Shielding, the Lieutenant player is able to rearrange his own units after playing them, and grant them protection in combat. With Forced March and Command Transmitter, he can attack with them an additional time, and then unswerve a high-speed unit to save for defensive purposes after it does.

With Decoy, the Lieutenant is able to turn the tables and move an opponent’s unit. Intel Downlink gives your vehicle an accuracy bonus that only gets better the more units you command. Or if your opponent gets the best of you, the Lieutenant can use Annihilate to wipe the board clean of units entirely.

Though you’ll find unit-centered tricks (both similar and different) among the Mastermind and Archon cards, the Lieutenant can differ from them by stocking Human cards they won’t have access to. Non-class specific Human cards include Interference, Shield Sciences, Gauss Cannon, Basic Star Iron, Orchestration, and Quantum Methods, among others. These cards show off two of the Human strengths: shielding and "stacking the deck."

The Humans are masters of deflector shield technology, and thus enjoy cards that grant varying degrees of "damage reduction" in combat. Being able to shrug off damage your opponent deals you can keep you from losing momentum in a game, and it almost always comes in handy. After all, you can’t win every combat you get involved in.

Though maybe with Humans, you can try to. Another major Human strength is in "stacking the deck" by putting a card on top of it. The best time to use this ability, of course, is when you’re going into a combat. You can take the guesswork out of whether it’s a good idea to play a tactic, or swerve something for accuracy – you know in advance exactly what combat bonus you’re going to draw because you put it there.

So in short, if you play Lieutenant, you’re playing to be tricky and manipulative. You can manipulate your own units, or your opponent’s. You can manipulate your combat bonus pulls. And you can manipulate your shields to shrug off enemy damage.

And as your shifting and slipping around, you’re challenging your opponent to keep up with you.