The first thing we can do is break the available quest pool up into three broad categories.

1. Quests that replace themselves cheaply (draw one card)
2. Quests that put you ahead on cards, but ask you to meet a certain condition.
3. Quests that provide a reliable utility effect.

Each deck would like to play a mixture of these effects, as each effect has merit in certain game states. Utility effects can let you re-use powerful and unique effects. Cheap quests are useful in the early turns when you have either nothing better to do or when you “under-drop”- that is, play a card with cost less than your total resources. The second category of quests have an obvious use of putting you ahead on raw materials.

Then comes the question of “how many quests do I want?” The baseline number that seems to have been established is somewhere between 14 and 16. It is worth noting that this number is significantly lower than I would have thought it to be when I first learned this game. Coming from a Magic background, my first experience with quests was one of pure awe. They are pretty amazing at keeping you brimming with action as the game progresses from early to midgame, and at pushing you ahead in the late game. Ideally, I would love to hit a quest every turn of the game as long as I had relevant plays to go with them. Doing this would necessitate approximately 20-24 quests in a sixty card deck. Of course, we don’t live in an ideal world, so 20+ quest decks don’t really work. If you draw too many, you have to spend too many early turns digging for allies and abilities that affect the board. So what some players figured out is that you can cut some quests for cards that are marginal in some matchups but devastating in others. If you play approximately eight to twelve of these cards, you can almost always have a painless resource drop even when you don’t have quests (draw your removal vs. a solo deck, draw your Natural Order vs. a deck lacking good targets, etc). This gives you a tremendous edge when you draw these cards in their intended matchups, and it has become the unspoken default strategy. Some take it further than others, trimming to twelve, ten, eight or even fewer quests in an attempt to fit in just one more silver bullet. It’s a continuum, and you need to determine where you want your deck to be on it when you determine how many quests you want to include.

So then, let’s look at a very simple quest base:
4 Dr. Boom
4 One Dranei’s Junk
3 Finkle Einhorn, at your Service
3 Orders from Lady Vashj

You may recognize this as the questbase I used in my Desecrator deck from Continentals. Now it’s obviously nothing groundbreaking, but let’s take a moment and consider what proportions I use the three types of quests in. This particular quest base is very heavy on category one quests (they comprise more than half of the total). The reason for this is obvious when you look at the other cards in the deck – there are many inexpensive plays available, and as a result more opportunities to fill in your curve. This helps you avoid the cardinal sin of rush decks – leaving available resources unspent. This again should be obvious, as your strategy essentially asks you to take your first ten or fifteen available resources and use them to gain an insurmountable edge. Marksman Glous in particular plays well with category one quests, and his inclusion as a four of basically necessitates the use of at least eight of this type. Why these two? Basically they are both “best of breed” for the goals and composition of the deck in question. The deck intends to kill the opponent far earlier than the damage from Boom would be relevant; similarly, it is composed almost entirely of cards that are retrieved by One Dranei’s Junk, adding an additional resource cost for some reasonable card selection and a negligible chance of failure. Completing two Junks in a game compared with two simple “draw a card” effects puts you four cards closer to the Rak or Twig that can swing the game in your favor. The category two quest I chose is similarly the best of breed – the gold standard for category two quests has to be counterattack!, which costs three. Costing two is already a significant advantage. Combine this with the fact that the condition it asks is one that my deck is already pre-disposed towards, and you have a clear favorite. The only curious thing is choosing to run only three. This is simply a numbers game, as I determined that the marginal utility of having the fourth Orders from Lady Vashj (and the same applies to the fourth Finkle) did not outweigh the cost of removing certain elements of the deck (twelve one drops, four maindeck natural orders, etc).

Let us examine another questbase from the same tournament:
4 The Fel and the Furious
4 Information Gathering
4 Counterattack
2 Deep Sea Salvage

You probably also recognize this as belonging to Markoff’s tournament winning Warlock deck. He also chose to play heavy on the category one quests, playing eight. It’s worth noting that I consider Information Gathering not as a category two quest like it’s completion cost, but rather as a category one quest which its effect mirrors. Now it obviously has some upside to offset the additional resource investment and the “your turn only” restriction, but it still only draws you one card for three resources. You’re paying a lot for those bells and whistles, as you can get the same one card yield for one third of the resources from another inclusion, the fel and the furious. Clearly Markoff determined that this quest would be active more often than not, and it’s cheap cost made it very attractive. What is more interesting is the fact that he chose this particular quest above other available (and reasonable) options. Why not Forces of Jaendar? Swift Discipline? The Sigil of Krausus? On the surface, all of these appear very similar to Fel, asking only a single resource and a not very implausible condition to draw you a card. The answer I believe lies in its ability to be completed early without hindering your plays. Sigil asks you to leave a resource available on their turn and give them the option. Discipline asks you to deal with the boar or risk playing the worlds worst The Spirit Polluted. Forces asks you to have your extra resource ready now, and play under curve in order to activate it. The Fel and the Furious only asks that you either damage yourself (which Markoff’s deck did not do), or plan to be on the defensive not only in Control v. Rush matchups, but in Control v. Control as well. Counterattack, the gold standard for category two quests, joins the team as a four of, leaving only two slots for utility quests. Rather than play something like Chasing A-Me, Markoff opts for the more flexible but less objectively powerful Deep Sea Salvage. To me this seems to be a direct result of the lack of available slots for utility quests. Since he only has a few to work with, he wants to maximize their, for lack of a better word, utility. He also chose to play fourteen quests, cramming sidedeck material into the maindeck with the additional space.

One more:
4 A Final Blow
3 The Missing Diplomat
3 The Cipher of Damnation
2 Sunken Treasure
1 Corki’s Ransom
1 Big Game Hunter

This belongs to Matt Spreadbury’s wonderfully inventive Zaritha deck. Breaking them down by category, we see six category one quests, three category two quests, and five category three quests. Matt had determined that A Final Blow was the premier category one quest available for what his deck was trying to accomplish. He could not afford the life loss of boom, nor fulfill some of the requirements for others. A final blow fits nicely alongside his whopping 28 equipment, painlessly filling in your curve and replacing itself. The other category one quests are Alliance Staple Corki’s ransom, and a lone copy of big game hunter. To be perfectly honest, if I had built this deck it would simply have been two copies of Corki’s, as the return to hand aspect allows it to play almost like a category three quest in that you have a predictable outcome every time you complete it (you now have a quest in your hand!). Still, redundant copies of it are pretty miserable, and with the wealth of options available I’m not totally shocked matt opted to play a singleton Big Game Hunter over the second one. Big Game offers a distinct advantage in that it digs four cards deep in search of your silver bullet card. His category two quest is an interesting one, in that it does not ask for a specific board condition to be met as most of it’s ilk do, but rather places a deckbuilding restriction on you. It asks for variety, and lots of it in order to be completed consistently. Still, revealing the cards you draw is a fairly insignificant drawback for a deck that plays on the board as much as this one, and two cards for three resources is the deal we jumped at when we looked at counterattack, so if the deck can successfully complete it a reasonable portion of the time we must look at it as a top tier card. Matt’s utility quests are split as close to down the middle as they can be, as each brings something worthwhile to the table. Sunken treasure plays backup for Gifts from the Past as protection against removal, while also interacting splendidly with retainer’s blade to create a “Vanquish quest.” The Missing Diplomat allows access to an array of utility singletons, or just makes a five cost steelsmith should that line of play appear more promising. Only three can be played due to the very real possibility of running out of targets should the game go long.

Now I’m sure someone is going to the forums right now to cry out how obvious all of this is to them, and how stupid I am for endeavoring to write it all out. To them I ask how obvious it was when they first began playing this game. Perhaps they are not the intended audience. Additionally, I find some value in categorizing and codifying this type of thing, as it allows you to more easily identify new power quests immediately and get a jump on your competition. The differences between the quests that were chosen and the ones that were left on the sidelines are quite miniscule, and previous staples can be dropped almost immediately if a new card can fill its role slightly more efficiently (looking at you, Torek’s Assault). Being conscious of these decisions will help you grow as a deckbuilder, and I think having the category one, two and three language in the public consciousness can only work to elevate our level of thought about this great game.

I was going to finish with some decklists missing their questbases, to be filled in by the readers in the forums, but I think I’ve belabored my point quite long enough, so I will skip that for now.

Until next time,
Phil