One of the key defining aspects of Back 4 Blood is the deck building system, which has players forming a deck of 15 character defining and game changing cards that they take with them into any given level. These cards can often mean the difference between life and death for your squad, so we thought it’d be a good idea to get some tips from the team at Turtle Rock themselves when it comes to deck building in Back 4 Blood
1. Determine Your Playstyle
One of the most important factors to take into consideration when building a deck in Back 4 Blood is what kind of role do you want to play on your team. As you unlock more cards, you'll start to see themes throughout all of them. There are cards that grant bonuses to stamina, reload speed, and movement speed that are designed for those who want to play a more "Assault" kind of role; there are cards that improve a player's ability to heal others that are suited for a support role; cards that grant the whole team extra inventory slots that can make a player into a sort of mule, so to speak; and so on.
Once you start unlocking cards with supply points, try to make a number of different decks that allow you to play as different roles, so you can not only find the one that suits you the best, but also fill a role that is currently not in use on your squad.
2. Reload Speed and Stamina are Great for Beginners
If you're a beginner, and you don't have very many cards to experiment with to make specialized decks, two things that are just universally important are reload speed and stamina, so gravitate towards cards that provide bonuses to those two things. The advantage of a fast reload speed is obvious: It affords you less down time between your shots and allows to keep firing more often, but the advantages of stamina are a little less obvious. Stamina is not only tied to your sprint, but it's also tied to your melee bash attack, which is invaluable for getting zombies off of you, or even killing them outright if you have the card that adds a knife to your bash attack. Having a lot of stamina will also save your life in certain sections of certain levels that basically require you to run away from the pursuing horde.
3. Look For Cards That Increase Your Inventory
When you start out, unless your character has an inherent bonus that lets them carry additional items of a specific type, you're only able to carry one of every type of item, which means, you'll likely find yourself having to leave behind crucial pieces of equipment. You can avoid this by adding cards that add +1 to your inventory slots, allowing you to pick up another identical item. These bonuses stack as well, and there are even cards that can add +1 to the entire team's inventory, but those typically have with a significant drawback. And speaking of those drawbacks…
4. Beware of the Negative Effects of Cards
Many cards that are extraordinarily powerful are typically balanced by having a detrimental effect. Like for example, the "Box of Bags" card that was alluded to in the above tip, which provides the whole team with +1 Support Inventory, will penalize the person with the card by taking away 10% of their health. It's a sacrifice that can certainly be worth it, but it also must inform how that player approaches the game. Maybe that player can take on the role of being a "Mule" that uses a deck that's dedicated to giving benefits to the entire team, but is less useful as an individual in an actual fight.
5. Some Examples of Universally Useful Cards
As mentioned above, it's important to build a deck based on your playstyle, but that said, there are also some universally great cards that every deck should consider. "Inspiring Sacrifice" is a card that grants your whole team health over time when one teammate gets incapacitated, which not only takes some of the sting out of getting knocked down, but can also be just the boost a team needs to survive a tough fight and live to fight another day. Another card, Overwatch, can be an absolute lifesaver by giving 5 temporary health to any ally within 10 meters of an enemy shot and killed from 15 meters away. And finally another really good card is "Marked for Death," which highlights pinged special zombies and causes your whole team to deal an extra 15% damage to them. Since all roles should be calling out and pinging special zombies, it's definitely a card that can fit in any deck.
6. Cards With Big Trade Offs That Are Worth It
Like the aforementioned "Box of Bags" card, many of the cards with significant drawbacks are actually worth it if you're able to play around their detriments. One such example is Adrenaline Fueled, which reduces your stamina regeneration by 75%, but increases your stamina itself by 100%, while also giving you the ability to regain stamina by killing enemies. This may sound like too high a price to pay, but with the right build, it can keep you constantly mobile as long as you're continuously killing enemies, which makes the reduced stamina regen a mostly non-issue. Another card that's super valuable in any healer deck is "Rousing Speech," which disables your offensive items, like grenades, molotovs, and pipe bombs, but in exchange, you get 150% increased revive speed and 50% less trauma damage when you revive someone. Considering how slow revives are normally, and how much trauma damage a revive can inflict, this is a tremendous boost to the healing capabilities of one player, and while not being able to use an offensive item is a bummer, it's also a flaw that can be made up for by someone else on the team.
7. The Order of Your Cards Matters
Finally, it's important to know that the order you place your cards in your deck makes a big difference. Cards at the top of the deck will be given to you earlier in the run, with the card at the very top being your starting card that you get for free. So make sure to think about which cards you'll need early on in a campaign, and which cards you might be able to do without until much later. Cards that are core to your build you'll definitely want to keep closer to the top, while cards that are great to have, but are less vital to your playstyle should be closer to the bottom of the deck.
And those are the seven deckbuilding tips that the team for Turtle Rock has for players jumping into the Back 4 Blood Open beta. Stay tuned for more Back 4 Blood content all throughout the month of August as part of IGN First.