While I have only been constructing decks and playing EVE for a couple of months, I have a wealth of experience from playing a whole host of other CCGs, from Magic to Shadowrun, Babylon 5 to Warlord, and one key fact is true for all of these games as well as EVE: if you gain an early advantage you are more likely to win.

In EVE, this advantage is gained by getting your ISK production up and then building ships as quickly as possible. Cards like Veldspar and Interstellar Trade Post allow you to generate income safely from home without worrying about your opponent disrupting it by warping in ships to target your miners, and once you get one or two outer regions in play, Slave Mines allows you to gain income without having to waste ISK on locations, (it also works well in combination with the Bantam in terms of both card draw and generating some income from mining).

The Khanid Kingdom and Metropolis are great outer regions, as they allow you to control what your opponent does, and with the right ships in play (ambushers and patrollers), they will be safe from most of the more offensive ships your opponent has. They do this in different ways. With The Khanid Kingdom out quickly, your opponent has to decide whether to give you part of his income so that he can activate his ships’ commands (reducing his ability to bring more cards out and increasing your income), or ignore their orders, either way you win. Metropolis is good for buying you time either because things have not gone your way or because you just need that little extra time to get a fleet ready to attack their home region. Putting four to five of your low-cost ships in this outer region will prevent your opponent from making attacks on your home region as she will be unlikely to want to waste her income unless she can destroy you in one blow, or be forced to attack a region that should be well protected with mainly ambushers. This should give you the time to regroup, plan and gain control of the game. This then should leave you in the position to strike when you want at the opposing star base.

Once you have the income coming in, your next concern is the ships. As speed is your key to gaining board advantage, you don't want to be waiting for the large battleships of your faction to turn up in order to win the game. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the battleships cost a lot more. This means you are spending between 10 - 15 ISK on one ship when you could be putting 2-3 into play or, even worse, saving up the ISK to get one out when you should be putting ships like Burst, Atron or Kestrel out that will help defend your regions with their abilities and, when needed, warp into your opponent home region as part of a sizeable fleet and win the game.

The second drawback to these ships is the time it takes to assemble them. While Assembly 2 does not seem too bad it does give an opponent the chance to drop a couple of quick and cheap ships and go on the offensive, which could leave you with not enough ships to win and a race to see who can rebuild their fleets the quickest. Assembly 3 ships are a red light to any decent player who will take the two turns to drop as many ships as he can in order to win the game or just wipe out your fleet. While there are ways of bringing the large ships out more quickly (e.g. Lonetrek, New Assembly Technique and Junkyard Dock) these cards are not the best use of your resources. Waiting for the big cruisers and battlecruisers to come into play could lose you the game when the smaller frigates and destroyers could have won it for you.

Starbase structures also have an important, if subsidiary, role to play. In a deck that is using small ships, Scrap Metal Garage and Advanced Shipyard are important cards. Just having Advanced Shipyards in play not only improves your base defense by one point (as does the Scrap Metal Garage) it can pay for itself in one turn by allowing you to bring even more ships out even faster. That 1 ISK per ship can easily allow you to get an extra ship into play, and that could be the deciding factor in the game. By putting Scrap Metal Garage into such a deck, you are acknowledging that you are going to lose ships, but with this card those ships are going to buy the ships still in your market. And with enough extra ISK in your wallet from this card (which one or two ships can give) you then have the choice of pulling that extra card instead of taking your income, once again boosting your chances of winning.

In the end, the odds are the first player to make a credible strike at the opposing star base is going to win, and dropping 4-6 ISK ships quickly and easily means you are more likely to do that whilst protecting your assets than if you are relying on the heavier hitters coming out.

Steven Redpath, aka stevetheone