Some decent EVE CCG action last night, with my much revised Minatar deck. One opponent, playing Caldari, and I managed to consistently have the upper hand for most of the quick-fire two-player games we got through. I think I'm getting there with the deck design stuff; 52 cards this time, most of which were small, quick and cheap Frigates, allowing me to get a usefully high throughput of assaulting ship pretty much from the word go.
This does rather seem to be the winning strategy in general as far as I can tell, and does make me wonder why the bigger ships are in there at all. During one game, the Caldari showed me a Raven Battleship card he'd drawn into his hand, both of us aware of how limited it was. It's a powerful card, certainly; 11 Attack, 14 Defence, Patrol 5 and can instantly return to help defend against a starbase attack, for a cost of 1 isk. Most starbases only have 7 Defence (without addons), so the ship is more than capable of one-hitting the enemy for complete victory.
Trouble is, it costs 13 ISK to play, and takes three turns to Assemble. If he'd drawn that card into his initial hand, it would still have taken at least four turns of not playing any other cards but Locations and Outer Regions, to be able to afford it, and then a further three turns of it being 'built', making it at least seven turns into the game before he could come at me with it. Since the most expensive of my chosen ships is 5, and only takes one turn to build, I can get up and running much quicker than that, and two of those ships, Rifters, attacking his starbase unopposed, will win. Most of my ships are even cheaper and quicker to get going than that.
I expect I have similar Tempest and Typhoon cards available too, if I look hard enough, but it all makes me wonder if there's value in any deck having these behemoths in, given the swift and brutal nature of the average two player games so far. Perhaps these kind of big hitters are more useful in the three-player games, where it seems more about cold-war arms races, rather than lethal early assaults.
On the whole, my deck worked well, although I was a little starved for income at some points, so perhaps a few less Frigates and a few more Locations might help get my ships out faster and earlier.
My Card of the Night worked well during one game, massively adding to my power; Central Fleet Command. It's a Starbase Structure add on that costs 5 to play, and adds +1 Attack to every ship you control, that shares it's racial origin with your chosen starbase. Since I only have Minmatar ships, that meant All Of Them, and since I go with lots of little ships, this helps me tremendously, as opposed to a deck full of few already-powerful ships.
The most annoying enemy card of the night (apart from Stubborn Mechanic - always irritating!), was actually The Khanid Kingdom outer region, Cost 2, Income 1, Locations 3, and if occupied, everyone else has to pay it's owner 2isk, every time they want to activate a command on a ship. Most of my ships have the Ambush command, which is vital to defence, given their low normal defending scores. Having the Caldari consistently play, and hold, Khanid made my already strrained budget unable to cover the new costs of setting Ambush active, and the game he won was done so largely because I couldn't ambush him like usual.
All good fun, and save a bit of minor tweaking to help ease up cashflow, I think my deck is pretty much there. It's down to the Caldari, and the Amaar, to come up with decks that can beat it now!