Michael: Hello there! Today I wanted to do a bit of showing off but also be helpful cause like it’s not fun to just show off (it is).
I will get right into the article cause I feel it’s better with headers, but the general gist here is I will show you some memory tricks you can use to memorize decks more efficiently.
WHY WOULD I MEMORIZE ANYTHING?
Memorization is quite boring, let’s be real. However, in WHU, it gives you a huge boon to know stuff.
If you memorize every card in the game, it becomes impossible to surprise you. Every trick your opponent can pull will be expected. No more surprise Uneven Contest‘s because you didn’t think Delving against a CtC player was necessary. Heck, the mental factor of reading your opponent’s hand out loud to them is not only super stylish for you but also quite intimidating to your opponent.
In addition, it helps you build better decks. We have all autopiloted through Underworlds DB before and then are playing our deck and focusing for Great Strength only to realize we left it at home. If you knew every card, it would be much easier to spot.
HOW TO MEMORIZE INDIVIDUAL DECKS
Before we get started with this section, I want you to go pull a random deck from the Staggerers Nemesis repository – ideally one you haven’t seen before.
Now you’ll memorize it using techniques I do 🙂
I will show you how I do it using a deck I want to use for the Austrian League Finals (against Leonchampion aka Ben)!
note from me in the future: it went horribly, stick to not-RF stuff
This is just a draft, but good to memorize anyway. That way the final is easier to do.
Firstly, how can we look at this deck? 35 cards, is one way. Or 6 Surges + 7 End Phases + 11 Ploys + 11 Upgrades.
Or, for the objectives:
- 3 RF Surges
- 3 RR Surges
- 5 RF End phases
- 2 RR End phases
But we can keep splitting this. For example, the surges would go like this:
- 2 RF ‘Charge in enemy territory’
- 1 RF Hold surge
- 3 RR Attack surges
This is WAYYY easier to memorize than all the individual card names. Based on these descriptions, you can now for sure whether or not you should focus for something or if you can deny an opponent’s card.
For end phases, my strategy is a little different. I like to split them by glory:
- 2x 1 Glory
- 4x 2 Glory
- 1x 3 Glory
- (this is easy to memorize cause you know your decks glory total and ideally you derive it from that)
Now, I simply memorize only the important stuff. If you are putting 1 Glory cards that you need to work for in your deck then something’s up. 1 Glory EPs should ALWAYS be scored if you focus into them.
For 2 Glory EPs,
- 2 RF Cards
- 2 RR Cards
What are the default two RF 2 Glory End Phases? Bloody Momentum and Arena Mortis! What are the default RR 2 Glory End phases? This one’s harder, but you know at least one of them is Realmstone Raid. Roused Violence is a close second. For two glory end phases, you should be able to map the names to the card text (or at least have a general idea). For example, don’t go focusing for a 2 Glory EP when you scored both RR stuff and cannot get all fighters to Charge cause you know your last two RF stuff are charge based.
And for 3 Glory cards, you simply should know what they are. No way to make it simpler haha
See what the strategy was? First, we grouped everything up into little ‘piles’. Then, we keep splitting the piles over and over and over until we have 13 very easy to memorize cards. In a game, you simply make the ‘piles’ in your head and then go from there!
Try and see if you can do that for your deck 🙂
the end phase ‘piles’. much easier to memorize than 7 individual cards!
For the ploys, the strategy is similair. First split the cards into piles. I like to do this by deck first.
5x RF Ploys
6x RR Ploys
Now, split each one individually. I’ll start with RR:
4x Emberstone ploys
2x Not emberstone
I mean, it’s wayyy easier to memorize two non Emberstone ploys. Why would I take a non Emberstone ploy in RR unless it helps me raid or is literally the best survive ploy in the game? Now I instantly know two of the cards are Raider’s Rapture and Manipulated Fate.
For the Emberstone Ploys, it’s harder. You kind of have to know the Emberstone deck and what ploys you want there. Personally, I know I always have A Step Ahead and Misstep cause they are universal, I really like the Guard ploy on two dodge guys, and Raider’s Premonition is the best one so…
I know the last paragraph wasn’t really helpful but I want to take a short break to address how it shows just how important it is to build your own decks. You can remember the thought process you have behind picking each card, and that makes it way easier to memorize.
Now that we have (most) RR ploys done, we can go to the RF ones! Let’s start by splitting them into archetypes.
- 2x Mobility (Push Through, Diving In)
- 3x Give Charge Token (everything else)
Well, that’s a lot simpler to memorize. You really don’t need to go any further. You need to get somewhere? Have you not played a ‘mobility’ ploy yet? That means there’s two in your deck, so you know the odds of a Focus hitting them!
The general idea with ploys is also to split them by deck, then by archetypes. For ploys it’s quite easy because a lot of them tend to have repeating archetypes and if you are throwing 10 different archetypes in your deck then we have different issues to talk about. Also, remember, archetypes can be as stretch as you want. I put RECKLESS ATTITUDES in ‘Give Charge Token’ because it forces an enemy to charge! The idea with the archetypes isn’t to have perfect categories for your card collection. It’s to make your life simpler by having to memorize only 3 archetypes in a deck rather than 10 individual ploys.
HOW TO MEMORIZE EACH DECK
Well, everything mentioned above is genuinely useless if you don’t know all the decks by heart.
Long story short, the best way to memorize each deck is to just play the game and know all the cards. The best best way is to DECKBUILD YOURSELF PLS. People always take decks off of the Staggerers Deck Repository (don’t stop doing this btw cause like it’s rlly cool that people actually use it and we still update it and all that) but like if you want to memorize the cards, the best way to do so is to look at all of them over and over and over and over again. If you make 600 decks, perfect. We’d love to put them up onto the Nemesis Repository so others can use them as well so just shoot me a msg on Discord 🙂
Anyways, if you don’t want to spend a bajillion hours deckbuilding, here is the alternate route to memorize ever deck:
Start of by splitting the objectives and power cards (of an individual rivals deck) into ‘groups’ as mentioned in the previous section. Then memorize the groups.
That’s it. Done. It really isn’t rocket science despite what some players may say.
Objectives can be a little easier since they have objective values. Just try to sort most objectives into three categories: surges, one glory EPs, two glory EPs (and 3 glory EPs where applicable).
Naturally the three glory EP’s are the best to memorize. Here is every 3 glory EP in the game so far:
PnP has Strip the Realm (no treasures are held by enemies)
RF and RS have Unrelenting Massacre (everyone has a charge token)
Edge has Trial of the Tempered (everyone is Tempered)
HG has Pinned (drive someone back into an edge hex in friendly territory)
Technically, Blazing has Annihilation but it’s 5 Glory and it’s everyone is dead so I guess just don’t die.
2 Glory EPs are also very important to remember. My tip for memorizing 2 Glory EPs is to first memorize how many there are in each deck. The decks that have a 3 Glory EP always have 2x 2 Glory EPs, while decks without one have 4x 2 Glory EPs (this is true at least until Nexus of Power release).
1 Glory EPs tend to be either undeniable or unscorable (see Against the Odds vs. Emberstone Stash) so you don’t need to focus on them if you don’t want to.
Surges are important to memorize and arguably the hardest to do so. If end phases have about 30% of their pool ignorable (because they are one glory), you can’t really do the same for surges.
I don’t really have a tip for memorizing surges outside of deckbuild, deckbuild, deckbuild, so yeah, sorry about that. I guess you can split them by archetype as I did in the previous section but that will obviously take some time and is still pretty difficult.
TLDR for objectives – memorize 3 Glory EPs, memorize 2 Glory EPs, memorize surges. This will get you by 90% of the time. If the top 10% is where you want to be, then memorize everything!
Now for power cards:
As I said before, power cards are best memorized by archetype. There really isn’t a better way to do it. But I said I want to be helpful this article, so I’ll actually go through and give you some common archetypes 🙂
For ploys, the most common ones I can think of are:
- Mobility (Sidesteps, Hidden Paths, Confusions…)
- Accuracy Buffs (Determined Effort, Viscous Intent)
- PINGS (SUNDER THE REALM)
- Distractions (Lure of Battle, Mind Your Step)
- Save Buffs (Settle In, Manipulated Fate…)
Obviously not EVERY card will fit in an archetype. Go on, try slot Shoulder Throw into an archetype with at least two other Emberstone Sentinels ploys. Good luck. I also recommend making a separate category for ‘trap’ cards like Manipulated Fate, Twist the Knife, Wings of War and so on because those are always super important to consider.
For upgrades, here are the usual ones:
- Runemarks (Sharpened Points, Great Strength, Haymaker…)
- Accuracy Buffs (Accurate, Hidden Aid, Keen Eye…)
- Save/Health Buffs (Sharp Reflexes, Hidden Aid, Great Fortitude)
- Mobility (Great Speed, Duelist, Swift Step)
- PINGS (ROCK SPLITTING TREAD)
Ok, maybe the last one is a bit of a stretch but the other 4 archetypes will cover like 60-70% of the card field.
SUMMARY
Ok ladies and gentlemen, assuming you have been paying attention, you should in theory better be able to memorize decks. Obviously, everyone’s brain works differently and maybe this entire system is just a me-thing and I wasted a couple hours writing this but maybe it works for you!
Here is a quick TLDR of everything above, to summarize:
- For objectives, split them by surges and EPs and then focus on memorizing higher-worth EPs. Then move on to lower scoring stuff.
- For ploys and upgrades, split them into easily memorizable archetypes to make memorizing them a lot easier.
Long story short – force yourself to memorize less things by grouping cards up into little ‘boxes’ or groups and then ‘opening the boxes’ when you need to think of denying different sorts of things, or are focusing for a card.
I seriously hope this helped you out. If it didn’t, feel free to contact me (but don’t sue me pls) on the Staggerers Discord server where I’m always out and about. With that, I hope to see you again soon!
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