New Player Guide

Content
- (1) Introduction
-- (1.a) Tutorial
-- (1.b) First Deck
-- (1.c) Gauntlet
-- (1.d) Forge
- (2) PvP
- (3) PvE
- (4) Deck Lists
- (5) Deck Building
-- (5.a) Archetypes
-- (5.b) Card Evaluation
-- (5.c) Deck Iteration (Theory Crafting, Testing, Adjustments)
- (6) Tips & Tricks

(1) Introduction
Eternal as you probably already know is Collectible Card Game without trading aspect. Only interaction you do with players are PvP, Challenge, Matches or friendly Spectates. But Eternal is not only about PvP it has plenty content other then that, there is PvE content as well as Puzzles. We will get to details for each of the game aspects later in this post.

(1.a) Tutorial
In case you are familiar with a CCG genre you can skip tutorial, but by the time you read this post you probably already finished Tutorial. You can skip Tutorial when you introduced to Talir, you will be given Time deck and rather then playing through all steps of Tutorial you can Esc -> Skip tutorial, but this is possible only when you will be introduced to Time deck, so you need to play games till this happen. Don't worry you will be given all rewards by skipping, 5 starter decks and 3 Booster packs (Amount of packs can variate). Also by registering Dire Wolf account you will be rewarded with additional 3 boosters.

(1.b) First Deck
After finishing/skipping Tutorial you will be navigated to main menu of the game and you will get one of 4 Quests that has booster rewards. First one will be Gauntlet. For gauntlet finish you will be rewarded with pre-constructed deck of two colors and quest rewards as well as Gauntlet rewards and Gauntlet Rank up, but we will speak about Gauntlet later. So what to pick as a deck to enter Gauntlet with ? You can go with one of five pre-constructed starter decks or build your own. At this moment your card pool is restricted and you don't want to spend your Shiftstones to craft cards (will be explained later in the post). So we will work with what we have to this moment.

First Deck those cards you will have no matter what you open in boosters, so you can go with it.

It's a good time to explain how you can use Eternal lists in game and vice versa. By clicking on the Export Button at the top of the site you can export whole list and Import it in Eternal, you will just need to go to Cards section at the top bar in game and Click on Import Deck button, then on Import From Clipboard (left option), you will get whole list imported. To export your list to EWC site or as a plain text you will need to click on Magnification Lens while you editing your deck and there at the left bottom of the screen will be Export button.

(1.c) Gauntlet
Gauntlet is a PvE format that allows you to play 7-10 games (depends on your Rank) vs NPC Piloted Decks. Power of decks you play versus defines your Gauntlet Rank and tier of deck inside a rank. There are 5 Gauntlet Ranks: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond and Masters. Also there are only 3 tiers of NPC Piloted Decks, Bronze, Silver and Gold(Boss). Easiest to win is Bronze Rank + Bronze Tier deck, hardest will be Masters Rank + Gold (Boss) deck. Your rank will be reset with new major set release as of now we got Set 5 release on Jan 2019. It is free and a mandatory to get to Masters first to get all possible free boosters. But will go through gold farming and collection increase later in this post.
So we choose deck we want to play with and play through first Gauntlet. By finishing Gauntlet you will get pre-constructed two-faction deck, it's a random what deck you get but after getting first one you will get quest each 4 days for a new one.

(1.d) Forge
Forge is a PvE format that allows you to build a deck from proposed cards, your deck total will contain 25 cards + 15 Sigils assigned automatically. Entry Fee is 2,500 gold but first entry will be payed with ticket you get from finishing Gauntlet. Forge has a nice trick to manipulate colors you need to improve pre-constructed deck you get. While first pick you will be able to choose one card from 3, each card will be of a different color. Pick card that is in colors of the pre-constructed deck you got. Second pick will be also 3 cards with different colors you pick here your second missing color, from this point all next picks will be in this two colors or a colorless one. In case you didn't get your second missing color during second pick you need just select card of the same color you get during first pick.
Example: You get Rakano pre-constructed deck as a Gauntlet reward.
At the Forge as a first pick you have Justice, Shadow, Primal cards to pick from. You pick Justice one and it doesn't matter what card it is. As a second pick you get Time, Fire, Primal cards in pool. You pick Fire one and it doesn't matter what card it is. From this point all cards will be F,J,FJ,Neutral colored. In case if your second pick looks like this Justice, Shadow, Time, then you pick Justice card and on pick 3 you fill get Fire card in pool.
Also worth of noting that Forge allows you to control colors in which you get Rares/Legendaries.
So we get our pre-constructed Rakano deck and get increase for our collection with Forge cards we picked and can continue after we finish first Forge. Next quest will be 5 Casual games to win.

(2) PvP
PvP in Eternal represented in scope of three formats Casual, Ranked and Draft. Casual and Ranked are free to play and similar in way you play it. Differences are instant rewards and seasonal rewards. In casual you get Bronze chest for each win and 2 Bronze Chests for each third win. In Ranked you get one Bronze chest each win and 2 Silver Chests for each third win. You will stop getting Silver chests after you get 6 silver chests (3 Rounds of rewards, 9 Wins total), from that point you will be rewarded with 2 Bronze Chests. This will be reset daily and you can again get 6 Silver Chests per day. Another aspect of Ranked is actual ranking same as described in Gauntlet Section there are 5 Ranks with small exception, Bronze 3-1, Silver 3-1, Gold 3-1, Diamond 3-1, Masters X-1.
Where you get rewards at the end of the season (at start of the new Month) depending on your placement in the ranking table. You can see rewards as well as Ladder board in game for Ranked section. Many people find this as most valuable activity of the game, but not in scope of my own preferences. It's a competitive environment and you need to be prepared to face opponents with decks that cost 100k+ Shiftstones.
Draft is same as Forge except you will face players that drafted deck same as you. Draft same as Ranked has ranks with same rewards for rank placement you ned season with.
Chests
Bronze - one Common/Uncommon & 50-100 Gold.
Silver - one Common/Uncommon & 150-250 Gold.
Gold - one Booster & 300-500 Gold.
Diamond - one Booster, Premium Random Card of Random Rarity, 1000-1500 Gold.
Note that you can randomly upgrade your Chest to higher tier when you open it, amount of upgrades is not limited, so it is theoretically possible to get 3 upgrades for Bronze chest to get to Diamond one. But chances are lower then 1% for this to happen.

So we won our 5 Casual games and can play Ranked to this point.
Important!: You will get Draft quest, but do not play Draft at this point. You will have no free ticket to enter and Draft cost you 5,000 Gold, it is a waste of Gold at this point due to high cost event, little-to-no knowledge of cards.

(3) PvE
This will be main source of cards/boosters for F2P players if you are willing to invest 50-100$ into game you will get huge boost to your collection and Shiftstones.
So we will get in details what is "bread & butter" for F2P players.
Gauntlet -> Forge cycles, you play Gauntlet till Masters, this should be your priority for starting point. But to get good gauntlet deck you will need to increase card pool. Getting 2,500 gold total you should spend them on Forge and for particular deck force particular colors. This way you end up with cards you want/need for deck upgrade and increase your card pool.
After getting to Masters in Gauntlet you still can farm it, so it will be your main source of Gold, coz it's free.
Other good source of gold and way to get better understanding of game mechanics is to play Puzzles, you will get rewards in scope of Gold and get knowledge/interactions that you probably didn't know exist in the game.
So farming gold in Gauntlet and spending it in Forge is way you should go until you get descent 50-80% amount of commons/uncommons. From this point you can start accumulate Gold to buy Campaigns another PvE format, there you have pre-defined pool of cards that you can get only in particular campaign. You can't craft them. Main reason why you should go for Forge instead of straight buying Campaigns is that:
- Campaigns cost lot of gold.
- You need solid deck or even couple of them to be able to finish it.
- Cards prom campaign are sometimes staples and highly used, but they require support from other powerful cards too, that you need to craft/get from boosters, so by it's own cards you get from campaigns are not cards that you can put in any deck and you will increase winrate immediately (with one exception Vara, Vengeance-Seeker, you just put it in any Shadow deck).
Other good gold investment is Theme Decks that you can by in store, they cost 2,500 gold and contain 1 Legendary (Set 5) as well as some rare cards that can be used in your future decks. Commons and uncommons will be used coz there are some good ones.

(4) Deck Lists
Make note that the whole (Budget) as well as a {Mid Budget} list has few purposes:
- Help you start playing lists that has been tested and showed themselves as a worth their shiftstone cost.
- Show you variety of approaches to choose what game style fits you more.
- Complete daily quests in factions.
- Some lists are suitable for Gauntlet grinding.
- Rank up to Diamond 3 at least.

What my lists are not suitable for or not intended by me to be used for:
- Competitive events like ECQ. You can use any list not only mine for that, but make note i haven't tested most of my lists in competitive environment as well as i do not invest time now to educate myself on current meta.
- Ranked in Diamond 2 or higher. I never tested budget lists in Diamond 2 + coz i never played in those ranks.
- All lists are not intended as your permanent "to go" lists. They are buffer for you to accumulate Gold, Dust, Cards and craft tier lists. Most budget decks are 5k shiftstone or less, so if you don't like it you just get another list (not necessary mine). Budget lists are your starting point in an Eternal Card Game journey not even a mid point and totally not an end game lists.
- It's not intended by ME for you to craft Commons & Uncommons. Coz at the current game state rate of craft vs dust is 50:1 for commons and 100:2 for uncommons. Get your commons uncommons from Store pre-constructed deck coz they has good value behind them. From Forge games you will get most commons/uncommons eventually. It's ok to craft 800 worth of dust commons/uncommons but not the whole list, coz one legendary cost you 3200 to craft and 5k is almost 2 legendaries. If you lack of 800+ worth of shiftstone cards for the list, just replace cards you missing with cards you have with same cost, type, faction requirement and fit to gameplan intended by list. Section (5.b) contains updated lists of cards i found useful on a budget.

All decks you will see here are my own brews with lots and lots effort done to them and you will se why in section (5) Deck Building.
Budget Decks - decks that are best for new players with poor to no collection. All of them do not use Campaign Cards, Rares/Legenadaries and shifstone cost is around 5k.
Mid Budget Decks - decks that are fit to players that know what type of deck they want to play and have above average knowledge of the game and mechanics, you will need to craft Rares here there are not many of those but some of them are not widely played, where most of them are safe to craft. Also there are no restriction for campaign cards.
Competitive Decks - decks that designed for experienced players, with great card pool.
All my posted decks with (Budget) & {Mid Budget} tags have 50%+ winrate, [Competitive] tag means 70%+ winrate. Winrate calculation for competitive decks based on 50+ matches in [Silver3-> Diamond 1] environment. Budget/Mid are based on 30 matches in Casual.

(5) Deck Building
So lets get to another important topic, coz CCGs are not only about playing deck, it is also about building those decks.
So Eternal deck rules:
- Deck must contain at least 75 cards, can be more that 75 cards total thou (i would not recommend to go above 75, unless you know what you are doing).
- Deck must contain at least 1/3 of cards as Power cards but not more then 2/3 of cards as Power cards.
That is basically all restrictions.

(5.a) Archetypes
- Aggro
- Tempo
- Midrange
- Control

Aggro:
Low on curve deck with main plan to finish game as early as possible when opponent is not stabilized on board.
Someone say that aggro finishes game by turn 5, it's not really true, you can finish game by turn 5 if all things align, but it's not even in 30% situations.
Deck Design:
- 28-32 Units
-- One Drop: 8-12
-- Two-Drop: 12
-- Three-Drop: 8-12
- 8-10 Buffs
- 8-12 Utility Cards
- 25-26 Power Cards

Tempo
Deck that wants to play as efficient as it possible, that means that your curve suppose to be build the way you have/get no excess power left each turn. Other aspect of tempo plays can be bounce spells, you bounce heavy drops back to hand when opponent play it, this way you break opponent's temp.
There are no particular rules in building this type of decks, you need to calculate chances to have card exact turn you need it manually. Good example of this type of decks will be: Maul & Scream and most Ramp decks i build utilize each point of power with max value.

Midrange
Deck that aims for mid game and in most cases contain removal pack, basically it is deck that consists of value cards, not necessary cards that have synergy or interaction with each other.
Deck Design:
- < 28Units
-- Two Drop: 0-4
-- Three-Drop: 4-8
-- Four-Drop: 8-10
-- Five-Drop: 8-10
-- Six+ Drops: 0-4
- 6-10 Removal
- 10-14 Utility Cards
- 27 Power Cards

Control
Deck that built around card advantage and control of the situation. Your role in those matches is to evaluate threat and always have answer for opponent plays. Win conditions in this decks are not about quantity but about quality.
Deck Design:
- 12-16 Win Conditions (can be units or relics or combo plays) with cost 5+
- 8-12 Removal
- 4-8 Mass Removal
- 4 Cycling (e.g.: Strategize, Inspire e.t.c Cards that do something and replace itself with a card)
- 4-6 Card Draw (card draw considered ONLY card that draws you two cards)
- 0-17 Utility Cards (e.g.: Rain of Frogs, Dark Return e.t.c.)
- 26-28 Power Cards

(5.b) Card Evaluation
It's hard to say what card is "good" or "bad" coz it is rely on other cards you have. We will define rules which you can use to evaluate cards in isolation.
Coz i came to Eternal from MTG i will use same ruler as MTG uses, "Grizzly Bears". It's a common 2/2 unit for 2.

So we now have our average unit to start with. It's basically reads as (Z+Y)/2 = X; where X cost, Z power, Y life.
What units considered as "good":
- X/X+1 & Skill
- X/X & Two Skills
- X+1/X+1
But there are always exceptions, units that Draw you cards or interact with opponent are better even having X/X stats.
For example Magenta Wisp is good example of X/X for X + Skill, but here you can kill 2-3 drop units in some cases even 4 cost units like Vara, Vengeance-Seeker. Example of great stat wise unit and good skill is Teacher of Humility. Also there are build-around cards that looks bad by themselves but provide more advantage if have support cards in deck. Examples will be Seasoned Spelunker, Longhorn Treasurer and more. Those cards are average or below average cards in their slots but in certain conditions they can be good or even great.

Here are budget cards I found most useful in each color. Main board represents cards that you can put in any deck that has faction. Sideboard represents maybe units that needs build around to be good-to-excelent.
Units
Shadow Units, Primal Units, Justice Units, Time Units, Fire Units, ohLy-Wjq-LE

(5.c) Deck Iteration
So having all this knowledge you are willing to build deck so lets see what steps you should do to get successful deck built:
Theory Crafting
Create a concept in mind of what you expect to do from your deck. Fill deck with all evaluated as "good"/"excellent" cards that you own or not. (You have this filter in Game)
Then start trimming to get reliable curve that aligns with deck plan. To evaluate chances of draw cards on exact turns you need you should use Hypergeometric Calculator. This tool is widely used to build decks.
Metrics you should check:
- Chance to Draw top curve sigils on exact turn you want to play it.
For example we have top curve as 4 and 27 sigils in deck, we need to see chance of drawing 4 Sigils by turn 4, this is calculated as:
Population size - Total Amount of cards, in our case 75
Number of successes in population - Total Amount of copies card we calculate towards, in our case 27
Sample size - How many cards we have drawn, in our case its starting 7, if we go first we have 3 draws for 4 turns, if we go second 4 draws for 4 turns. So total is 10(11).
Number of successes in sample (x) - This is amount of copies we are aiming for, in our case 4.
So we have inputted all data and calculate chances, what we aim for is Cumulative Probability: P(X > x), this is our chance to draw 4 Sigils on turn 4. So we get 52% / 61% chance to draw 4 sigils by turn 4 on play / draw.
So what metrics you are suppose to aim for and what values are considered consistent enough (spoiler 100% can only be considered as consistent, rarely to never seen).
- Chance to get X power by turn X. (For each turn)
- Chance to have Y influence by turn X.
- Chance to have X power by turn Y. (Relevant for Control decks that want to play removal as Fast and be sure they got power card to be able to play Wincon and have power to play protection card, also in case you want to play multiple cards per turn off the curve)
- Chance to get X cost card by turn X.
- Chance to get X card off the top by turn Y.
- Chance to get unit off the top.
- Chance to get removal off the top.
- Chance to get proactive card with cost X by turn X. (Relevant to decks that have both proactive and reactive cards mixed or for decks that want to balance rates for Unit::Buff proportion).
You can also calculate values for opponent, for example you can rely on information you have and make a guess. For example we see that opponent played one Torch on turn 3 and we can guess that he is playing 4 Torches total, so 3 left in deck + hand. Assuming that you can or cannot play 3 life unit.

Testing
So having all things done from theory perspective it's time to test your draft. I would recommend test your deck at least for 20 Casual matches before you will do anything to your deck, even if you think that you have straight improvement right now. Twenty games is not enough to get full picture of the deck but enough to see what cards were useful what your deck missing (interaction with opponent, card draw, cycling, utility cards) or what cards excess. Having all that you can make adjustments to deck and continue with your Proof Of Concept deck or simply POC. This way you move from Draft Deck to POC.
When you are satisfied with adjustments you made i would suggest to play 50 (100 even better) games in environment you are aiming for. If you want to build highly competitive deck you should play vs considered good-to-best players in one-to-one matches that will play desired Meta deck that you test with, this way you will have grid for your win-rate vs specific decks and can make final adjustment to be satisfied with. If you are not aiming so high (ETS Cup, Eternal World Championship) or you don't have players that fit requirements you can go for specific Rank to test your deck. In other cases you have Casual.

(6) Tips & Tricks
This section contains both Deck Building and Actual play tips.

User Interface:
First thing first is to make sure you TURN OFF auto pass system. It's annoying how it can show that you have Fast play providing more information for opponent. If you will always have to click continue it will provide less information for your opponent.

Deckbuilding:
DO NOT spend shiftstones for crafting commons & uncommons if you are an F2P player, you can get those in Forge for "free". I wouldn't suggest to craft rares too, unless they are in small quantities. Think twice before you craft legendary, coz in the end that will be your most poferfull cards and if you are not planning to play with them, it's a waste of shiftstones. I wouldn't suggest to dust any card, only excess ones, even if someone told you to do so, in the end you can only blame yourself for this action. Make decisions when you have answer to the problem from all perspectives. Play strategies on a budget if possible, then craft non budget versions of the decks. This way you can preserve yourself from disappointment of non interesting for you deck.

Removal:
- Balance amount of removal you have in your deck, go even on Conditional and Unconditional removal.
Conditional removal in most cases have less cost or hard restriction. Where unconditional cost more and/or played during your turn.
Examples:
Unconditional: Deathstrike and Slay
Conditional: Annihilate, Defiance

- Play more flexible removal. Removal that can aim not only units or that has additional use.
Examples: Banish, Rindra's Choice, Eilyn's Choice

- Prioritize fast removal over regular one.

- Play Fast removal only on opponent's turn and when attacking units declared, if you expect buff to be played on attacking unit you can play removal even in response to buff card played, this way you will get two cards for one.

- When constructing deck try to go on decimal proportions. What i am trying to say here is you should build deck in color proportions like for two colors you go 50/50, 55/45, 60/40 e.t.c. try to achieve those numbers unless it hurts plan, coz this will result in better consistency.

Power Base
When constructing power base make sure that you get right proportion, even ideal one. So get lowest dividers for rates you have, example is 60/40 Rakano Aggro (FJ) colors, lowest dividers will be 3 and 2. To get right proportion on colors you just sum up those dividers and divide total amount of sigils you expect to have in aggro it is 25 or 26. So in case of 25 we also want to have 5-10 dual colored power cards. So we add 3 Seat of Glory, 2 Rakano Banner and we lock 5 sigil slots with those duals and we left with 20 slots, so 20/5 = 4 this way we get rate, then simply multiply 2 by 4 and 3 by 4 and you get necessary rates for your deck. In case we have 26 Sigil slots and intense influence requirements we can go for 11 "duals". 4 Seat of Glory, 4 Rakano Banner, 3 Diplomatic Seal. Then we will be left with 15 sigils slots, in this case 15/5 = 3 and rest slots will be filled with 2*3=6 and 3*3=9 sigils. If you want to add hard depleted power cards count before if this doesn't hurt your chance to get X power on turn X. Also if you want to add Waystones and you play Seats consider having at least half of power base as base sigils.
In general Power Base should be separate guide. But i wanted to include base highlights.

Hope this guide was helpful for you, if it was then don't forget to hit that like button.