I'm just curious what "counts" people run when building a deck. For example:

You're building a curve combat deck. It curves from 2 to 7 in standard fashion (let's say 30 to 32 characters). Ignoring special "weird" cards for the team's affiliation, what counts do you shoot for under support card categories?

# of attack pumps?
# of def pumps?
# of tutors?
# of board control cards?
# of another "staple" card type I'm overlooking?

Yet another "Spud is bored at work" discussion thread. I was building a deck last night with very uncomplicated beatdown effects, and I started wondering if there's a "correct" number of tutors, pumps, etc to run in these kind of decks.

Blech. Entertain me. Go.

My math actually tends to get pretty complicated, as far as what off-sets what and which cards get counted as what. In general, though, this is what my decks look like;

Characters: 26-34, depending on availability and threshold of tutors and whether I'm playing 1 drops.

Tutors: Shoot for at least 4. More than that drops the character count quite a bit as I take out high drops with the assumption that I'll draw into either them or tutors.

Combat Pumps: 10-16 in straight combat curve. More in short curve aggressive decks and less in weenie (heavily fill-dropping) decks.

Board Control: 4. I don't think I've ever built a deck without 4 Finishing Moves or available analogs. More if this is some sort of theme for the deck, possibly less if there's some repeating effect (like War Wagon or IG Sattelite). Notably, recovery effects fill this slot as well for me, so if I have 4 Children of the Atom I might not decide to run extra copies of Finishing Move.

I tend to hold out somewhere around 3-6 slots for tech, whether in the form of generics (Only Human, Pathetic Attempt) or team-stamped (BGYT). If I'm building control, this and the combat pumps tend to get switched.

In curve decks I generally run 8 tutors (Mobilize/Enemy and 1 team-stamped tutor) if at all possible.

The counts for the other types vary wildly depending on the type of deck. For example, in some decks I've run 12 or more attack pumps, while in others I've run as little as 2.

I really don't think rules of thumb are very useful for other types of cards besides characters and tutors. What you should do when building a deck (IMHO) is figure out how you are going to win on evens and on what turn, how you are going to win on odds and on what turn, then figure out what cards you need to include to meet those goals consistently.

QFT

(i do agree with 8 search cards)

Thats what is so great about this game there in no cookie cutter lay out for decks some people might do some what of a basic lay out but Hoops hit it right each deck will work individullay

Batshido's formula is pretty good.

I used to think 4 tutors were enough in a curve deck but w/out card draw you have to run 30+ characters to hit stuff. My magic number right now is 7, 3-4 Mobilizes, 3-4 TeamStamped. That can bring my character count as low as 26 depending on how high my curve goes.

For aggro decks, 18+ ATK pumps... no DEF. I favor turn-length pumps so it's usually 4x Flying Kick, 4x Crackshot, 4x Combat Reflexes and then a mix of Beatdown, Big Leagues or Blinding Rage. If I'm running non-concealed, I usually run defensive ATK pumps like Nasty Surprise... or the best one... Break You (I'm so happy they reprinted that). Usually if I'm running the hitbackondef tech... there will be removal like Batshido said.

I'm not a good control/stall player so I can't help at all in that department. It's all about the BEATDOWN for me.