THE DEFECT
The Defect has some of the strongest Power cards in the game, and has incredibly good passive damage. It has an intriguing starting relic, Cracked Core, which is your introduction to one of the Defect's primary mechanics, Orbs.
Orbs float about the Defect's head and have passive abilities. They also have an ability when "Evoked" or consumed for a one-time effect. The Defect can increase the power of Orbs by gaining Focus, the same way that Strength increases the power of Attacks.
Cracked Core lets you start each fight with one Lightning Orb, which deals 3 damage to a random enemy each turn. Without help from Power cards and relics, the Defect can have up to 3 Orbs in play each turn. Because Orbs are such a unique part of the Defect's kit, we'll go over the different effects briefly.
- Lightning Orbs: Deal 3 damage to a random enemy each turn. Deal 8 damage to a random enemy when Evoked.
- Frost Orbs: Gain 2 Block. Gain 5 Block when Evoked.
- Dark Orbs: Store 6 damage. Deal damage to the lowest-health enemy equal to the damage stored when Evoked.
- Plasma Orbs: Gain 1 energy at the start of the turn. Gain 2 energy when Evoked.
The Defect has cards that can Evoke its Orbs, but it can also Evoke Orbs simply by generating more Orbs than it has capacity for.
Below are three of my favorite Defect strategies.
Power.dek
As mentioned, the Defect has some of the strongest Power cards in the game. Its Power cards tend to feed each other very well. You can build an extremely good deck with almost nothing but Power cards.
The Power.dek strategy has two major payoff cards: Storm and Heatsinks. Storm allows you to generate Lightning Orbs each time you play a Power card. Heatsinks draws you cards each time you play a Power card, which hopefully draws you into more Power cards, which generate more Lightning Orbs and draw you more cards... Wash, rinse, repeat.
Another important payoff card in this strategy is Force Field, which gains you 12 Block, and which costs less and less energy as you play more Power cards. Once you've played 4 or more Power cards, Force Field is hefty 12 Block for 0 energy. Combine this with Hologram, which gains you Block and returns a card from your discard pile to your hand, and you can rapidly and repeatedly generate a lot of block while your Lightning does its job.
Static Discharge causes you to generate Orbs whenever you take damage--this is particularly powerful against enemies who attack for small amounts of damage multiple times, as they can end up taking way more damage than they've dealt.
There are some great Skill cards for this archetype, too. White Noise generates a random Power card for you. It will almost always be a good card, and it will cost 0 energy to play that turn. Amplify doubles your next Power card. So if you Amplify your Storm, you'll play Storm, then play a copy of Storm and immediately gain a Lightning Orb, and from then on, all Power cards will generate 2 Orbs!
Because your primary damage output is from Lightning Orbs, Electrodynamics is a huge pickup for this deck. Instead of holding your breath and hoping that the Lightning will strike the target that you need to die, Lightning Orbs will start hitting EVERY enemy. This massively increases your damage output when facing multiple enemies.
One card I would discourage you from using is Hello World. It adds random Common cards to your hand each turn. This usually just fills your hand and deck with junk that does not fit your strategy. It IS a cheap Power, so if you're desperate for 1-energy Power cards, it's not completely useless, but I would recommend avoiding it and just picking up cards that contribute to your strategy.
If you are interested in having random cards added to your hand, though, Creative AI specifically adds Power cards to your hand every turn, AND those Power cards are not limited to Common cards, which means you can strike gold and hit some really good cards. This is a much better card for Power.dek. You can guarantee that you'll trigger your Storms and Heatsinks each turn, and occasionally you'll hit really strong Power cards like Echo Form, Electrodynamics, or Biased Cognition.
Hologram is a good pickup for this deck, especially if you can upgrade it. Hologram lets you repeatedly replay Force Fields and other defensive cards, or scoop up a Power card from your discard pile that you didn't have the energy to play the previous turn.
Panache and Sadistic Nature can be decent cards for this strategy, if for no other reason than they're 0-energy Power cards that can trigger your payoff cards like Storm and Heatsinks.
Blizzard!
The Blizzard! deck is just so fun and satisfying when you can assemble the pieces for it. The big payoff card is the eponymous Blizzard, which deals 2 (or 3 when upgraded) damage to each enemy for every Frost Orb you have generated during the fight. Combine that with a whole bunch of cards that generate Frost Orbs, and you can build up a high amount of Block each turn, while dishing out increasingly high damage with Blizzard.
This strategy is surprisingly difficult to assemble. It is VERY easy to pick up cards like Cold Snap, Coolheaded, or Glacier to generate Frost Orbs while providing useful effects. Strangely, I've found that it's difficult to consistently acquire a copy or two of
Blizzard to tie the deck together. Blizzard is an Uncommon card, which means it's less frequent, but should come up more often than I feel it does. I bring this up because it can be difficult to force this archetype. If the cards just aren't coming, you'll have to be willing to pivot into a different strategy.
Having said that, this deck really doesn't need a lot to do well. Pick up a copy or two of Blizzard, snag some cards that generate Frost Orbs, scoop up some ways to boost your Focus, and you've got a strong defensive deck that will quickly ramp up to dealing 30-40 damage a turn to each enemy.
Forethought is a good colorless card for this deck. You need time to generate Frost Orbs before playing Blizzard for value. Forethought puts a Blizzard on the bottom of your draw pile, so you can play your Frost cards before finally drawing Blizzard and playing it for 0 energy.
All For One
This is perhaps my favorite archetype. It's just so much fun when it comes together!
The idea behind this deck is to play a lot of 0-cost cards, like FTL, Beam Cell, Go for the Eyes, upgraded Zap, and the almighty Claw. These cards deal small amounts of damage on their own, but have useful effects, such as debuffs, card draw, generating Lightning Orbs, or ramping into more damage as the fight continues. Dig for more 0-cost cards with Scrape if you must.
Once your discard pile is full of great 0-cost card, hit an enemy with All for One. This will bring all those nice little cards back to your hand for another round of fun. Apply more Vulnerable and Weak, deal more damage, draw more cards, charge up Claw, and have a ball.
Hologram, as always, is great for this deck. Recur copies of Claw to charge them up, or bring back All for One for more fun and happiness!
This archetype absolutely needs All for One to get through the later acts, but works pretty well early on just on the strength of its attacks. You'll probably want some card draw, like Machine Learning or Coolheaded, and keep in mind that your damage output can be incredible, but you won't always have good defense on the turns when the enemies hit your hard.
There are plenty of good colorless cards for this strategy, like Flash of Steel, Finesse, Bandage Up, and Good Instincts. And of course, Panache, mentioned in the Shiv section of the Silent, is incredible, as it is very easy for this deck to trigger it once or twice in a turn. Sadistic Nature is also good. You have a lot of ways to add Vulnerable and Weak with Beam Cell and Go for the Eyes, so Sadistic Nature will trigger regularly.
Other Ideas
The Defect can get a lot of mileage out of its Orbs. I have absolutely done well with Big Orb decks, which just continually generate Orbs with Chaos, Rainbow, etc., constantly cycling through the different effects to get a mix of offense and defense.
Dark.dek can be really fun, focusing on generating Dark Orbs and Evoking them for big damage.
Thunder Strike can be a massive payoff card when you're generating a lot of Lightning Orbs. Late in the fight, you can easily cap enemies for 70+ damage.
Don't discount Fission in a lot of Orb-related decks. It CAN look bad, because it clears out all your Orbs, but it also draws you a lot of cards and gives you a burst of energy, so you can immediately play more cards, generate more Orbs, and get your important key cards into play.
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