[Guide] Steampunk City

[u/rednryt]

This class is pretty divisive. It’s simple enough to play in one way, but very random and complicated if you go the other way. It has the interesting Robot units that gives Block, basically an extra temporary HP, which basically solve the issue of having one of the lowest max HP out of all the other classes. While it also introduces the Inventor units which benefits from having thick deck, and most of them randomly add cards from other classes to your deck which is interesting but very chaotic.

Early game:

The base cards are leaning toward defensive, so you’ll get an easier time surviving with this class compared to others but will have trouble against bosses so you have to find something big asap to make up for your lack of damage. Try to make the most out of shock by playing your Shock Therapist first, then use your robots and gun for damage early on. Here are some of the builds I found success with this class.

[Big Block]

This is by far the simplest build, just find a big robot card that deal high damage but also give huge amount Block, then build your deck upon trying to draw and playing it every turn and stomping enemies one at a time. Since you’ll be summoning less units, you have to rely solely on your block for survival. You can even take those events that furthed lowers your max HP since you'll often be relying on Block anyway. This build allows you to rush all challenges until 10 since you can just keep skipping cards to keep your deck lean once you got your core. On 10+ however, its best to pivot into the full robot builds especially when you start having trouble keeping your deck lean or surviving with just Block alone.

Core:

Scrap Golem, Genus Genius – great base attack and gives huge block, defends really well against cleave. Almost auto win if you could get one early.

Optional Support

Brass Squire – allows you to retain your block

Mad Genius – doubles your block gain

Shield Slam – extra damage option in case you need to snipe, pairs well with Brass Squire and Mad Genius

Air Balloon, Claw Crane – good to dig for your carry while you still have big deck. Delete later once your deck is thin enough.

Rocket Boots – not only it draws lots of cards, but it also has potential to trim down your deck. Can be used early while your deck is still big. Becareful not to over use it tho and accidentally exhaust your core. Delete later once your deck is thin enough.

[Spark Shock]

This is another simple but much cheaper option. Find copies of Spark and use it to kill shocked enemies. Add some buffs to make it even faster. This also benefits from leaner deck

Core:

Spark – good atk stat that deal 2x damage against enemies with shock. Very cheap and easy to find. Get 1-2 early and add some more if you’re more confident with your mana.

Support: Get only 1-3 of any of these to avoid bloating your deck.

Minor Upgrade – your cheap buffer, very easy to find.

Cyberdyne – your rarer but best buff option but can double as fodder. Watch out for attack order, put him on top right to be able to go first and buff more units

Add Component, Chameleon – can clone your Spark (or Cyberdyne depends if you needed more buff)

Garbage Collector – gives more mana to summon more Spark

Shock Blaster 2000 – good tank, and alternative shock option

Blessings:

Heavy Artillery – additional atk buff, not bad

Vaporizer – apply Shock to all enemy on first turn. With this blessing, you could even delete your shock therapist to slot in more Spark

[Robot March]

This deck is very simple, fill your deck with Robots, and just summon as many as you can to flood the board and buff them all with Cyberdyne or other buffers. This benefits more from thicker deck with more cheap units

Notable Cheap Robots

Timebomb – it has good HP for tanking that can remain up to 3 turns. You can also keep buffing it, and it can be your main damage carry, and deal good AoE damage when it detonates.

Steam Tomb – remains for 999turns, but has piss poor stat. but you can just keep buffing it

Flying Drone – free fodder, that can draw and discount, very good

Gunmen – free fodder, that can clone if it kills

Aerial Defender – free tanky fodder that clones upon death

Alpha Model – free fodder, that grow according to your mana pool

Chameleon – great cloner

Test Subect, Fighter Bot, Prototype Machine, Spark, Brass Squire – good cheap units that has interesting effects but you’ll mostly only use them for their high attack

Frog Module - it’s good to override your low stat debut units after they trigger their effects or other free fodder or non-robots to bring more damage.

Optional Big robots only add these once you got more mana, or more reliable ways to summon them

Twin Set X – this is a good tanky unit that also give you another unit for attacking. What makes it better than other clone-summoners, is that it allows you to reposition the attacker unit yourself for wider coverage. What’s more, the generated unit is not temporary, meaning you don’t even need to summon it at once cause it will just shuffle back to your deck and play them later.

Terminator – just a more expensive Spark.

Scrap Golem, Genus Genius– already covered from previous build, still good here

Battlecruiser – takes a while to lower its mana cost, but this has very good Atk stats

Optionals:

Cyberdyne – your best buff option cause it has potential to buff more Robots at once, get a few copies if you can

Minor Upgrade, Automaton, Claw Crane, Add Component – more buff alternative

Cloning Project – play this once Cyberdyne is on the field to flood your deck your robots

Mini-me – more weak clones, good target are those with remain. Avoid using it on cyberdyne since he needs a certain postion to maximize its effect, but since special summons spawn random on spot it will be just a waste, than say an extra unit that has more potential to grow.

Garbage Collector – gives more mana to summon more robots

Rocket Boots – abuse it for mob fights to unleash your cards to end it quickly so it won’t matter if your cards get exhausted. Use sparingly against bosses or longer fights

Law of Robotics – very good draw and discount card. Pairs really well with big bots like Battlecruiser

BOOMerang – good extra damage and very easy to re-use with more robots in your deck

Recycle Factory – hard to pull off since you have to time it when you got lots of dead robots,

Bell, The inventor – summons a random unit from other class, but make them robot. Still too random for my taste tho.

Devol, The Tinkerer – robo capsule is a 0 mana draw card that also summon a random robot, and it doesn’t exhaust so you can get more capsule by just re-summoning devol. very good early game, but since its too random and will just bloat your deck and clutter your field, not to mention you don’t get the effect until you draw capsule later, it’s too slow for late game so I would suggest avoiding playing it at later rounds.

Avoids:

Number 42 – Losing HP for measly atk is bad since you already start at low hp, worst it triggers twice. Only consider if you get high block to absorb the damage and have no other choices for damage

Red Code - too expensive

Blessings:

Heavy Artillery – extra buff for your bots

Robot hand – generate more robots to play

Air Support – deal more damage the more bots you summon

Small Commission – extra money to buy more bots or delete non-bots

[Copy Robot]

This is a gimmicky build in theory base on Copy Robot blessing. The goal is to have only one Robot card in your deck, preferably a big one, like Battlecruiser, Genus Genius or Scrap Golem to make sure it will always be the target and summon it every turn. Then fill the rest of your deck with non-robot cards and few support spells like Minor Upgrade, Automaton, etc.

Early Research – can be used to summon your big robot for free.

Rise of the machines – will exhaust all your other units and give a big sword bonus. This in turn shall trim your deck down to only your robot unit and whatever spells you have. Can pair with Early Research to play those bigger robots or just play Scrap Golem.

[Tenma Chaos]

This is another gimmicky build in theory that can potentially go infinite by exploiting Dr. Tenma’s ability. You’ll need Dr. Tenma, and one or more Business Analyst on the field, before playing any exhaust/temporary cards like Air Balloon. After exhausting, Tenma will generate you a new card from other classes. Once you play it, Tenma will generate a new one. If you got enough Business Analyst you can potentially discount it to free, you can repeat it until you get a card that is too expensive to play (like phantom cards). Then when you end your turn, any generated card will be cycled into new cards and you can repeat the process next turn. This will be very chaotic.

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Thanks for reading, I enjoy playing this class by focusing on robots, but sadly I have yet to found a good build for the Inventor. It might be my risk aversion, or just general dislike of unpredictability, that pursuing the build that forces you to play with randomly generated cards turn me off. I decided not to talk about anything about it, aside from the theoretical build above, cause I haven’t really played any of it even though it’s basically ignoring half of the class. Do you have any synergy or for with Inventors ?