This is a guide that seeks to help beginners understand which cards (or not) they should be choosing during a run.

However, two caveats before we begin:

• I am not an expert, I generally play on Hard. There are players in the LBOL Discord who are highly knowledeable L7 masters, but I am definitely not one of them. For true wisdom, seek them out (Discord link is on the store page)
  
• This is a beginner guide. This game is deep and there are many exceptions to these principles, especially when you start to spec into other character's colors and cardsets. So this guide aims to illustrate beginner principles, not technical exceptions or advanced knowledge. In fact, many of the cards mentioned in the guide might not even be the best, I'm using them more to illustrate concepts/keywords than saying "this is the best pick".

With that out of the way: to explain deckbuilding, I'll use Reimu A (Red Reimu) as an example to illustrate what kind of things every characters deck will probably need in some form or another.

Reimu A is a great character to start learning the game as her cardspace is built around the idea of "balance", that is, dealing out damage and block in equal measure to steadily build towards victory. Her two main concepts are Firepower/Spirit and Yin-Yang Orbs[lbol.miraheze.org].

Yin-Yang Orbs are extremely good value cards because:

• YYOs provide 8 damage and 8 barrier, barrier being a superior form of block that doesn't disappear after your turn if there's some left over from enemy attacks
  
• YYOs are accurate, which means they ignore graze, something enemies do a lot to defend themselves
  
• YYOs have retain, which means they will stay in your hand if not cast, allowing you to have tools to deal with what the next turn throws at you
  
• They have no coloured mana cost which means they don't clash with trying to play your coloured cards

Secondly, she also has cards that gain Firepower and Spirit, which are permanent buffs that increase your damage and block/barrier by 1 for each of the above respectively. There is also Temporary Firepower and Temporary Spirit, which gets cleared at the end of your turn but is still very powerful and actually fuels several of her cards.

For convenience, I've put the checklist which I describe below in detail. Your should be aiming to hit all 6 main concepts: ODDPUR: Offense, Defense, Draw, Passive, Upgrade and Removal.

However the specific sub-concepts are sometimes dependent on your character and the way your build is leaning.

• Offense
  
  • Single target
    
  • Graze-breaking
    
  • AOE
    
  • DOT (Optional)
• Defense
  
  • Block
    
  • Graze
    
  • BOT (Optional)
• Draw
  
• Passive
  
  • Setup
    
  • Buff / Debuff
• Upgrade
  
• Removal

• Pick cards that fill a gap in the above major concepts. No card draw? Pick a card draw card. Fights taking too long? Up your damage, and so on
  
• Make card reward choices to balance out offense and defense, don't keep picking defensive cards at the cost of offense, and vice versa
  
• Focus on card removal at shops, starting with basic cards, later on cards that no longer serve their purpose
  
• Focus on card upgrades at gaps, focusing on your key synergy/combo peices

So with that all said, what cards should you pick on a run?

To build an effective Reimu A deck and indeed any winning deck for most characters, you want to basically think about having at least one of the following card concepts in your deck. Every enemy you face will test most of these mechanics in some way, so if your deck is lacking a lot of these concepts, you are almost certainly going to have a bad time. For instance, if your deck is all single-target damage cards, you won't be able to efficiently deal with encounters which have a high enemy count. If your deck is too aggressive, you'll keep taking damage and be unable to keep pace throughout the act.


Self explanatory, you need some form of consistent damage. There are various types of damage that your deck will probably need. The main idea is that the longer a fight goes on, even if you have good defence, if your damage output is not high enough, you'll be out-scaled and ground out to 0 or low HP which can be run-breaking.

Either in the form of block/barrier, again pretty self explanatory - you need a way to protect your HP so you aren't too weak to fight elites and bosses. Think of HP as a resource you can spend throughout a stage, and block is the way to manage that resource. For instance, it might be worth taking a bit of damage on a turn you know will turn the fight in your favor. But for the most part, you want to be consistently avoiding damage.

Finally, you want to minimize the number of cards in your deck as much as you reasonably can. A low card count means you'll cycle through to your best cards more frequently and guarantee a higher chance of having a good card to play each turn. For this reason, I recommend always trying to aim to have enough money to use the Remove option at shops, so you can get rid of those basic starting cards which you want to replace with better commons, uncommons and rares. For this reason, you shouldn't be picking every single card reward either - you'll just bloat your deck up with cards that have no synergy and you won't draw the "centerpeice" cards your deck needs to work properly. A good deck is generally a minimal set of powerful cards that interact with each other in positive ways and cover a wide range of enemy scenarios.

As with everything in this wonderful game, there are exceptions to this rule and you can make builds that take advantage of increased hand sizes, and so on.

So the first thing you can easily do to determine what card to choose: make sure you're not picking too many damage cards over block, and make sure you're not picking too many block cards over damage, whilst also making sure you use the Remove function at shops and during events to slim your deck down to your best cards, to create an efficient, well oiled machine that expresses the intent of your deck.

General damage cards that deal high single target damage. Your deck starts with the basic card Hakurei Amulet[lbol.miraheze.org], but you can get better cards like Binding Border[lbol.miraheze.org] and Fist Of The Hakurei[lbol.miraheze.org], so Hakurei Amulet is one of the first things you want to replace.


A lot of enemies will buff themselves with Graze, nullifying your attacks. You need a card that either deals multiple attacks, or has the keyword Accurate. While accurate is the more efficient here, multiple attacks are also a way to clear graze, and multiple attack cards are also strong single-target damage by proxy. Reimu A starts with Youkai Buster[lbol.miraheze.org]which does exactly this, and gives the enemy a damage debuff to boot! Again, Yin-Yang Orbs[lbol.miraheze.org] have accurate which makes them good in this category.


Cards that deal damage to multiple enemies at once, which you need to not get overwhelmed by encounters with summons or multiple creatures. This is always a great early game choice, as many AOE cards can win a fight on the first or second turn if set up correctly. Evil-Sealing Circle[lbol.miraheze.org] is the basic pick for this.


Cards that passively deal out damage somehow. Note that some characters are better at this than others so it's an optional pick. For instance, this isn't exactly Reimu's wheelhouse, as it's better done with things like Sakuya's Time Pulse or characters that deal Poison, but the main idea is that you set up some kind of passive damage engine using cards like Permanent Border[lbol.miraheze.org] that ideally scales over time, which effectively frees your mana base to play more defensive and support cards while your damage engine whirrs away in the background.

Again, speaks for itself. You need sources of consistent block so you can prevent damage. Taking a lot of damage in a fight compromises your run because it makes elite and boss fights much harder. And if you can't do Elite fights, you are missing out on money, better cards and Exhibit rewards and will simply fall behind the curve and be underpowered for later acts. Block helps you manage this HP resource. I don't have a particular recommendation here because most non-basic block cards will give you decent block and usually something extra - pick the block card that gives you something extra where you might have a gap (e.g. Cleansing Ritual[lbol.miraheze.org] gives you decent block and removal in one package).

One point of graze will nullify the damage from an incoming attack, making it very efficient. Note that many enemies especially in later acts will deal their own "accurate" attacks that ignore graze, so graze does need to be mixed up with block. Tiny Hitbox[lbol.miraheze.org] is Reimu's go-to here, although I recommend upgrading it ASAP as the vulnerable keyword makes it a bit awkward to use.

A generally superior form of block that remains if there's any left over at the end of your turn, or refers to any block that gets generated each turn passively. However, this is not always a surefire choice for all characters. This is represented well by Reimu by the Barrier keyword, but there are other cards that will give you future block, or generate block based on cards you play. This is fantastic because it means your block requirements for your future turns are reduced, which allows you to play more offensive or setup cards. Alternate ways to achieve this is using cards like Edge of Fantasy[lbol.miraheze.org] which generates block on card exile (something that Yin-Yang Orbs do, so this is a YYO synergy card).

Is a more nebulous concept, but it is generally represented by Ability cards, which are typically one-off cards that are exiled after cast but provide the player with some kind of passive generation of offense, defense, or resources. This can be things like slowly increasing firepower, or providing a DOT engine, or generating block, gaining more mana, and so on. The main idea is that these are cards you want to play early on, and while they won't have an immediate impact, they will help you to acheive tempo* and provide benefits which reduce your burden of attacking/defending because some of that work is being done for you passively.

An example of a setup card for Reimu is Hakurei's Providence[lbol.miraheze.org] which grants you Divine Favor each turn, giving you a boost to damage and block. Because Divine Favor is a buff, when you lose it, that will synergise with other Reimu cards like Reverse Boundary[lbol.miraheze.org].

Setup cards combo really well with certain exhibits that will grant the Innate keyword for cards (guaranteed to be in your hand at the start of battle) and exhibits that give you block and graze on your first and second turns (allowing you to play these setup cards and not worry about taking too much damage).

You can mix up buffs and debuffs, or go full buff, or full debuff. But effectively have a means to debuff your opponent, e.g. to reduce their damage output, or have a means to buff yourself, e.g. increase your damage output. In Reimu's case, cards like True Majesty[lbol.miraheze.org] can weaken all creatures in play, or you can generate firepower and spirit with Dance Of Sacred Sakura[lbol.miraheze.org].

* Tempo is a concept from board games where you're controlling the game by being just ahead of your opponent at all times in terms of resources, forcing them to lag behind the back foot. This could be opposed to something like aggro, where you're seeking to overwhelm the opponent as fast as possible, but have a limited window to do so before you run out of steam.

Not much to say here, but having a source of card draw is important for two reasons:

• It greatly increases the chance of getting a card into your hand that is best suited for the current turn
  
• It helps counteract bad card advantage when you pull a bunch of bad enemy cards

In short, you get card advantage. Options. Options means high-value turns.

The general idea of cycling your deck as fast as possible means you're getting to your best cards often, so having a way to enable this is key. Maiden's Waltz[lbol.miraheze.org] is ideal for this as it also provides a source of upgrade (see below).

This is an often underrated concept, but look for cards that have the Exile keyword, for example, Cleansing Ritual.[lbol.miraheze.org] You might think that taking a card out of your deck for the entire fight is bad, but consider these three things:

• Many enemies strategy revolves around filling your deck up with bad cards. This means you draw useless/harmful cards, and it stops you playing the cards you want to play. So being able to clear these away is essential
  
• For a large part of the game, your deck will include basic starter cards that, while useful, you ultimately want to remove. So removing them in-battle means your deck size is reduced and you're drawing your more powerful cards with increased frequency
  
• Finally, some of your cards will be strong in some fights, and weaker in others depending on who you're up against. You can use exile to take them out of the fight, allowing your strong cards for this particular fight to appear more frequently. An example of this is when you go against a boss who has no summons, that AOE card suddenly becomes a very inefficient damage source

An amazing card for this if you spec Reimu into green mana later on is Half Human, Half Phantom[lbol.miraheze.org], which allows you to remove two bad cards or alternatively generate graze, making it highly flexible.

Like removal, I think this is an idea that is is overlooked by beginners. The temptation is in your runs to upgrade your cards at both shops and gaps. Having permanently upgraded cards in your deck is great; however, if you always upgrade at shops and gaps, you may be putting yourself in a position of weakness, because you can only choose to upgrade OR remove, and sometimes at gaps you also need to take HP regen so you're ready for the elite and boss fights. Thus, blindly trying to upgrade all your deck's cards can put you in a position of weakness over time, and not all cards benefit equally from upgrades.

So, how do we get around this? By picking cards that upgrade your cards for a battle, which is especially powerful in the early game. For Reimu, look out for something like Maiden's Waltz[lbol.miraheze.org] which will upgrade your deck in battle and give you the edge in the early game, but is also a useful late game card (when more of your cards are permanently upgraded) since it generates barrier as well. In summary:

• Resist the temptation to always permanently upgrade your cards, especially at shops - rely on upgrade cards to do this for you in battle in the early game, it takes a long time to get a permanently upgraded deck so upgrading in-battle is a huge power boost for little cost early on
  
• Remember that after you defeat a boss, you have a chance to remove non-basic cards from your deck, so if your upgrade cards aren't as useful in later acts due to your deck being permanently upgraded, you can get rid of them (in fact, this option is specifically designed for this, getting rid of strong early act cards in favor of late act cards)
  
• An under-performing deck where you're not finding the right card picks early on can be "carried" by powering up the deck in battle, allowing you to be a bit riskier with your choices to steer your deck towards the build you want

Use Reimu A to learn all the basic concepts of the game, and use the checklist above to get familiar with the kinds of cards you should be adding. Make sure to remove cards and upgrade cards where appropriate, and don't lean too heavily into a specific type of card. Have fun and experiment, LBOL truly shines when you start going "off-piste" into other parts of the color pie, so these concepts are only to give you a basic grounding before things get really crazy.

Winning consistently

Finally, just to say, every decision you make during a run is important, especially on harder difficulties. If you find yourself losing in the later acts a lot, consider this example:

• You made some poor turn choices and took on too many fights in Act 1, causing you to lose a bit too much health
  
• This meant you had to decline an Elite fight, and missed out on some strong card choices and a exhibit that could have sync'd well with your deck
  
• Your deck was thus slightly underpowered going into Act 2, and again although you played without mistake, you still had to take more damage than you hoped and again this put you behind on certain decisions such as using the gap for healing instead of upgrades, and so on
  
• Eventually by the time you reached Act 3, you'd missed out on some great run-winning opportunities due to being on the back foot, and didn't have enough power to beat the final set of encounters

The point is, you actually lost the run in Act 1 due to some suboptimal plays/mistakes/decisions, and at that point were basically playing a doomed run. Something to reflect on that your early choices can have cumulative effects later on. I think beginners forget this just because as long as you beat the Act boss, it's all fine since you get all your health back - but decisions do carry over and this is what seperates better players from worse ones.