This thread is for discussing the art of constructing a good deck for the Dragon Booster TCG. Q&A posts can go here along with sharing ideas you've come up for specific strategies.

Deck Building Rules

Let's start with the rules. Dragon Booster is played with two decks: a Race deck and a Dragon deck. All your clear crystal cards, namely dragon, crew and gear, go in the Dragon deck. All the event and maneuver cards go in the Race deck.

The Dragon deck must contain at least one dragon card and can have up to 10 cards in it. You can have no more than two copies of any given card in it. This deck is not shuffled.

The Race deck must have exactly 60 cards in it. You can have no more than four copies of any given card. This deck is shuffled prior to the start of the game and is kept face down on the table.

That's it! As with just about all the rules, things are kept really simple. The fun begins when you decide what to put in your deck.

Getting Started

If you're not sure where to begin, a good way to start is to first pick the dragon you want to run. You might pick a dragon because you like the effect it offers or you might pick it because its stats will allow you to play the event cards you want to use.

Once you have a dragon selected, add gear and crew that work with it. For example, Wyldfyr's Battle Effect increases your sprint value when you play an event. If you plan to make use of that, then you'll want to mag Red Thruster Gear since this enhances Wyldfyr's effect by changing it from +1 to +2 each time you play an event.

Now here's where it really starts to get fun: If your running Wyldfyr, put four copies of Ancient Might in your race deck. If you've got the thruster gear magged onto Wyldfyr when you play this event, then instead of just getting the +4 sprint indicated on the card, you'll get the +4 from the card itself, an extra +1 from the thruster gear boosting your card, another +1 from Wyldfyr's effect because you played an event, plus an extra +1 from the thruster gear boosting Wyldfyr's effect. So that gives you a total of +7 for playing that one card which is a very nice boost.


All Decks

Decks are built around a specific strategy you want to employ, but even so, there are a few cards that you'll want in just about any deck.

Ancient Might is too powerful to go without. Use four copies.

Immense Power is another useful card. It helps tilt the odds that you'll have the maneuver you'll need on a particular turn. I use four copies in most decks.

Release the Dragon is good for replenishing your hand, though it has a side effect you have to be careful of. You'll probably want four copies.


Basic Strategies

The game designers gave certain dragons advantages for carrying specific strategies that mimic the show. For example, red dragons are about racing ahead and gaining points quickly. Green dragons are about bashing your opponent's gear and crew. Purple is about recruiting a very large crew (an army!). Black dragons are about stealing your opponents cards and gear and trying to exhaust their race deck before they can reach 30 points which means you will win. This strategy very closely mimics Moordryd's line in episode 2 where Cain questions how he can win if he loads his dragon down with ramming gear and such. Moordryd says "If I'm the last one standing, I still win." :) So you can actually build a deck to play that strategy!

And of course you can mix strategies.

So if you've got questions or have found a cool way to build a deck, then share it here!

Thank for the tips. This will come in handy.

Yeah, thanks these tips will really come in handy for me too! :)

Today's Tip: Building a deck with Phorrj

Phorrj is a fun dragon to build a deck around. His battle effect is one of the more useful ones if your strategy is to gain points quickly:

Obviously, if you want this effect to work most of the time, you will need to build your race deck so that it contains mostly maneuvers. Therefore, only put the bare minimum events in it so that the probability of the top card being a maneuver is almost certain. This way you can be assured of getting the +3 boost when you need it.

And since Phorrj is a red dragon, you can mag the Red Thruster Gear to add +1 to Phorrj's battle effect.

And since Phorrj is on the Dragon Flares crew, you can recruit Embyrr who also has a great effect. For effect to work well, you need to mag lots of gear quickly. So on turn 1, mag the Light Green Modification Gear, the Red Thruster Gear, and one other gear of your choosing. Also, put Gifts of Flame in your race deck which lets mag an additional piece of gear. By turn 2 or 3, you should have six pieces of gear magged which means Embyrr will give you a very nice +6. Now add Aerial Assist and you can use Embyrr's effect more than once per turn.

Using the above, you have the potential of gaining a lot of points quickly, hopefully before your opponent can launch a counter strategy. A Phorrj deck is very powerful against weak opponents. I've beaten players as early as turn 4 with this deck.

Thanks for the tips also!! :D

Wow, you're an expert.

i want to get started but i don't know how to find which U.S. stores have them. can anyone please lend a hand?

It's going to be really difficult to find the cards in brick and mortar stores at this point. You best bet is to order online. A number of places like amazon.com still have them. They're also on ebay from time to time. You can also get a starter deck directly from me for $5 plus the cost of postage to where ever you live.