Back 4 Blood has finally entered its closed alpha. Unlike any other game, Back 4 Blood has a different approach, especially when it comes to its card and deck system. If you’re one of the players who have been wondering how this thing works, this guide will give you the details that you need.
What Are Cards and How Does It Work?
Cards are basically the same thing as Mods from Warframe or Perks from Call of Duty, if you are unfamiliar with either of these games then hopefully I can explain it anyway.
Simply put the Cards have text that specifies “bonuses” or “specific powers” that are active in-game. These Cards are only activated when chosen and you get to choose one card after you have chosen your player character and your Deck. You will get to choose from three different Cards three times on a new game, then during every new chapter in Act 1 you clear, you get to choose another one.
These Cards can have “bonuses” or “powers” such as “+ 75% Fire Resistance, Kills with fire grant you 3 Temporary Health” or even “Turns your Bash into a Knife that counts as a melee weapon”.
There are currently 61 Cards in Total.
When you go to your Deck in-game you will see a Default Deck, now what you see here is 15 Cards the game has selected as its Default Deck (one Deck is made of 15/15 Cards, duh).
There are 4 different categories of Cards indicated by name and colour and are as follows:
- Reflex – Blue: These are the Speed, Stamina and Weakspot cards and also offer you a specific card that allows you to chose to start the game with: the UZI (SMG, Full-Auto), Reflex offer more of a Utility-based playstyle.
- Discipline – Red: These are the Accuracy, Healing and Ammo cards with the extra choice of selecting a specific weapon out of three to start between the AK47 (Assault Rifle, Full Auto), the TAC14 (Shotgun, 3 Shells as Semi-Auto) and finally the M1A Marksman Rifle, Semi-Auto). The discipline offers more of a Support based playstyle.
- Brawn – Green: These are the Melee, Resistance and Health cards with the additional card called Arsenal that is Unique: “Arsenal, Talent. You can equip a Primary weapon in your Secondary slot.” Yes, that means you can now carry two Assault Rifles or Shotguns if you’d like to. Brawn offers more of an Offensive playstyle.
- Fortune – Gold: These are the Inventory, Currency and Extra Utility cards and give you some nice Quality of Life bonuses. If you look at the different guns in the game you will see that the guns use the same system of categories as well as these Cards.
Building Your Custom Deck
So with the previous information, this section covers how to build a Custom Deck.
Click CREATE DECK and look at the right, the First Card you choose will always end up in LOADOUT CARDS which is the Only Card in the entire Deck that is Always active when you start a match. Under that you have DRAWN CARDS, these are the Cards you can choose between at the start of a match and on the next Chapters in Act 1 as you progress.
Now you just add cards from each section for whatever Deck you want to make. For example, to make a Pistol Deck one could choose some of these Cards:
- Starting with RESOURCEFUL in the Fortune category for that sweet unlimited pistol ammo!
- Then either add RIDDEN SLAYER or RECKLESS STRATEGY in the Reflex category for some extra damage against Mutants (always aim for weakspots).
- Always take MARTYR, this Card is OP and will help with tight situations. Also, grab either FRONT SIGHT FOCUS or QUICK KILL depending on if you want to Aim Down Sights or not. You can find these Cards in the Discipline category.
- Now you can fill in the remaining 11 Cards with whatever you feel like. Want to be more Supportive and Team Oriented, grab every Card that has the name TEAM or help with Healing/Reviving, or if you want to be more Offensive and Speedy get some Reflex and maybe some Fortune Cards. If you want all the Brawn Cards then do it, the limit is 15 Cards, so go nuts!
And that’s everything for this Back 4 Blood card system guide. Feel free to explore and build your deck depending on your playstyle. For this guide, we would like to thank Bodjonar for this detailed information.
