So you’ve played a couple games of rivals (or walked a new player though the process up to rivals) and now you’re ready to try your hand at the Nemesis format. This opens up new avenues of play, a higher level of competition, and expands your pool of cards to work with, but it requires you to develop a new skill: Deckbuilding.

If building your own nemesis deck seems too much for you at the moment, there are plenty of places you can check for builds others have made. You can simply do what is called ‘net decking’, wherein you copy what somebody else has put together and don’t have to figure out what to include on your own. This is a fine place to start from, and once you’ve played a Nemesis deck a few times you might get a feel for what you like and what you would want to swap out – so it can certainly be a deckbuilding gateway. If you’re interested in net decking, or simply want to get some inspiration while you build your own, check out The Battlemallet Nemesis Deck Repository, The Wunderworlds club deck page, or UnderworldsDB

General Nemesis Theory
In Nemesis you will want to pick a warband (and their rivals deck), and pair it with one other universal Rivals deck. An improtant skill that’s going to affect your success is choosing a complimentary deck to go with your warband. Some Universal decks such as Toxic Terrors, Tooth and Claw, or Fearsome Fortress can work relatively well with most warbands. Others, however, might not work very well depending on what you pair them with. For example, don’t pick Seismic Shock if your warband has no wizards, and you probably want to skip Beastbound Assault if you don’t have access to fighters who begin the game as beasts, minions, or companions.

Once you’ve chosen your warband and your Rivals deck pairing, it’s time to start smashing them together. People have different approaches to how to begin, so I’ll simply offer mine and you can tinker away as you see fit. The only hard rules are that you must have 12 objective cards, no more than 6 of which can be Surge (score immediately). You must have at least 20 power cards, and can’t have more gambit cards than upgrades. In practice, this usually comes down to picking 6 Surge Objectives, 6 End Phase Objectives (I try to keep the number of ‘score this in the THIRD end phase’ to 1 or fewer), 10 Ploys, and 10 Upgrades. There is a lot of theory as to why this is the smoothest and most consistent/competitive card selection, but suffice it for this beginner article that this is probably the card mix you should aim for to start.

I usually pick objectives first because it sets the tone for what I’m ‘trying to do’ and then grab power cards that support that plan. Others may choose the best power cards and then try to choose objectives that those can score but this may be a little more difficult (you may include more illusions than you otherwise would if you know you’ll need to score an illusion based objective card, or include more domains/explorer cards for daring delvers, for instance)

While putting together your Objective deck, look for objectives that support the warband’s playstyle and are consistent to score. Everybody has a different risk tolerance, but it usually feels better (and will serve you better across a multi-game match or event) to score 1 glory easily and often rather than try and fail for 3 most games.

After you’ve chosen your Objective deck, it’s time to move on to Power cards – make sure when you select these that they both appear to be useful and powerful in their own right, bit they also support your gameplan that you designed when picking your Objectives. A deck that is focusing on getting kills in enemy territory might enjoy upgrades that increase damage, or gambits that allow for rerolls. An Objective deck that is focused on holding feature tokens might prefer defensive upgrades, or ploys that put their fighters on guard, among other options.

Let’s Build a Deck Together!
To illustrate the above general principles, let’s make a deck ‘live’ on this page. From the latest release Wyrdhollow, we will try out Domitan’s Stormcoven and the Seismic Shock Rivals deck to make a magical focused Nemesis combination. This is a great starting place because all three the fighters in the Stormcoven are wizards, so you’ll have more opportunity to attempt spells and score magic based objectives. For my overall gameplan, I’m going to try and keep our fighters back where they are safer, and look for how to cast plenty of spells that score me points and disrupt my opponent’s gameplan. I’ll still want to get some attacks off and taken enemies out of action, but I’ll be doing more reactive ‘counterpunch’ rather than invading their territory aggressively. Having only 3 fighters I’ll shy away from holding objectives, especially if they’re in enemy territory. This could be called a passive or ‘control’ playstyle as opposed to ‘aggro’ or ‘hold objective’.

Objective Cards
Let’s start by dividing Objective decks into surges and end phases. Let’s aim for 6 surges. Then fill out with 6 end phase that support that. Starting with Domitan’s Rivals deck, I like Channel the Storm because it rewards me for inspiring my fighters, which will be easy enough to do, Conduit of the Heavens because it’s worth 2 glory and wants me to cast spells, Heavenly Alignment because it wants me rolling spell dice with a level 2 wizard which I will be doing anyway, and Scouring Arcs because it rewards me for kills so long as I used a spell. Looking at the Seismic Shock deck’s surges, I’ll grab Burnt Out because it will reward me for getting through my spell cards, and Spark of Creation because while it’s a kill surge that requires standing in a feature, it can be my fighter or the target (and doesn’t specify what territory). So far my surges have a theme of ‘cast spells, stay back (potentially on a feature token), and try to get a kill (preferably with a spell)’.

Now it’s on to the end phase cards. Again starting with Domitan’s. Let’s pick up Fulminating Bulwark since I can hopefully control my positioning in my own territory and won’t be relying on dice to score it, and Thunderstruck since I aim to be plinking people with spell damage, and hopefully taking some out of action. In Seismic Shock I’ll take Manipulating the Realmsphere since I plan on spamming spells anyhow, Places of Power since I can sit on a feature in my own territory, Sorcerous Treasure Hunter since I can stack my favorite fighter with upgrades and keep them on a feature in my territory, and finally Touching the Realm which will require two surviving fighters, but at least again I can stay in my territory. To summarize the end phase plan (none of which are third end phase cards), I want to stay in my territory, stand on feature tokens, and cast spells. Pretty consistent with the theme from the surges.

Note that I have 4 surges from Domitan’s and 2 from SS, but 2 end phase from Domitan’s and 4 from SS. You do not need to have a 50:50 split of cards from the two decks, though my build has happened to work out this way.

Upgrades
Let’s more onto Power cards! Let’s grab some upgrades that support our scoring plan – hopefully they assist with spell casting, staying alive, and staying on features in our territory. I’ll need 10 total upgrades. From Domitan’s deck, I like the look of Blades of Azyr (lets me hit more consistently with physical attacks), Lightning Lash (adds the ability to mess with my opponent), Master of Ancient Lore (increases my odds of getting spell cards), The Crown of Storms (makes my spells much more reliable), The Liber Fulminus (makes hiding in my territory easier to do), and Scrolls of the Spell-Seeker (which again makes spellcasting more reliable). With 6 upgrades already taken, I’ll need 4 more from Seismic Shock, so we can select Arcane Sensitivity (to assist with getting on tokens while we cast spells), Iara’s Repelling Shield (which will help me stay on the features I want to be on), Quintok’s Unseen Hand (which lets me cast a spell at very long range, though for no damage) and Sorcerous Might (so that I can potentially do more spell damage). Let’s review the theme – these upgrades will let me cast spells more consistently and more often, while staying on objective tokens more reliably, Have better range to aid in staying in my territory, and also put a little more damage into the mix. This fits the goal of the Objective deck.

Gambit Cards
Finally, on to the Gambits. Remembering that we cant to sit back and hurl some magic, let’s choose from our options. In Domitan’s deck, We might want to try Blaze of the Heavens (to get a spell and do some damage), Celestial Blades (which is both a spell AND increases our accuracy for later), Howling Gales (which is a control piece with no range restriction that can allow me to cast a spell and disrupt my opponent’s plan) Positive Charge (which helps me get around the board and increases accuracy), and Thundershock (which can both deal damage and reduce an enemy fighter’s effectiveness to help keep me alive). Moving over the Seismic Shock, let’s pick up Abasoth’s Screaming Idols (which can cast a spell, deal damage, assist with scoring Spark of Creation, or disrupt enemy scoring), Celestial Conduits (which increases accuracy if I’m standing on features, which I intend to), Channeled Power (which can auto-succeed if I am on an objective and helps cast other spells later), Localised Quake (a spell that can mess with my enemy’s hold or get them away from me) and Mindwipe (lets me cast a spell which I can choose the difficulty of, and either mess with my enemy’s hold plan or move a token under myself). Reviewing the theme here, I can cast lots of spell cards, increase my ease of casting, do some damage, protect myself, and get on feature tokens. Generally on brand here, if a little less focused than our other sections.

Now we have a 32 card Nemesis deck! After we play a game or two with it we may want to go back and make some changes – maybe a card doesn’t score as consistently as we had hoped, a ploy’s conditions just don’t arise often enough, or we find that we never purchase an upgrade when it’s in our hand. It’s time to make some swaps! If you want to see the deck I have cobbled together in a more cohesive or visual way, here it is in Wunderworlds

Conclusion
While the above framework is simply my approach to building a nemesis deck, it’s a good branching off point for you to build your own decks. And I hope it’s shown you that putting your own deck together isn’t all that difficult! Choose a warband and a rivals deck to pair with it, decide on your overall goal, choose objectives to support that goal, and then power cards to help you score those objectives. Let me know what you think, and get out there and build some decks. Should any of you decide to give the above Seismic Stormcoven deck a spin, let me know how it goes! Until next time, I hope you enjoy spending your glory in the Nemesis format.