Claws Of Power How to Build a Deck

A “deck” in Claws Of Power is the set of cats you bring into a fight and the order you spend dried fish on them. It is not a five-card gacha hand and it is not a 4-2-1-1 slot puzzle. The November 2025 developer post says there are already 30+ different cats whose skills counter each other. You win by choosing when and what to summon.

Role, cost, and timing — not a formula

Think in three layers:

1. Cost curve. Bacon Jack is a 1-cost melee the whole community spams. A Qiang is a glass cannon who must hide behind a body. Blue Fatty is expensive for Chapter 1 but almost immune to knockback. If your deck is all 1-costs, AoE deletes you. If it is all 4-costs, you get poked to death before the first fatty lands.
2. Job. Someone has to hold the line (Blue Fatty, Garfield’s three-hit shield, Nuba). Someone has to deal damage from behind (A Qiang, Solo’s piercing arrows, Chi Wulang’s 200% opening slash). Someone has to break formation (Xiao Fu’s knockback, Fat Meow’s flying pounce, Masashi’s teleport behind the first enemy).
3. Answer cards. Wu Ji’s slingshot stun, Nuba eating low-HP units so “on death” effects never fire, White’s damage-reduction aura for melee teammates. These are the cats you swap in when a stage keeps killing the same role.

The developer’s own warning: do not send cats the instant you can afford one. Save, then send a wave. A deck that only works as a trickle is a losing deck.

What’s actually in Claws of Power?

Skill examples that actually exist

From Garlic Sprouts’ TapTap posts, not from a breed-name generator:

• Masashi (ninja) — on first contact he teleports behind the enemy and keeps walking. Use him to skip a tank wall and hit the backline or the base. The YouTube experiment “can we win by only attacking the enemy base?” is the same idea taken to an extreme; see How to Unlock Hidden Stages for that video.
• Garfield (shield) — blocks three hits. Quiet work on both push and defense.
• Nuba (ogre) — stun attacks, and if an enemy drops below a threshold he eats them and heals. Anything that relies on dying in place hates him.
• Solo (bow) — arrows pierce with damage falloff. The developer called him a “problem child” because he came out stronger than expected.
• Chi Wulang — first slash is a huge 200% crit. Put attack and crit gear on him and the opening hit can delete a mid-game unit (the equipment post quotes 30+ damage as a scary example, not a guarantee for your save).
• White — melee teammates get a damage-reduction aura (March 17 notes).
• Xuebao — deployment cost reduced by 1 in the August 23 patch. He is a curve-breaker when gold and fish are tight.

Build around one of those identities, then fill the holes. A Masashi deck still needs a tank because he leaves the front empty. A Chi Wulang deck still needs someone to live until the crit lands.

Equipment is part of the deck

Each cat has 1–2 equipment slots. The same item feels different on different cats. The developer’s examples:

• Cheap Bacon Jack looks weak late — until you give him extra HP and ATK and he becomes a tiny gremlin.
• Chi Wulang with +ATK and +CRIT turns that 200% opener into a deletion tool.

The August 23 patch added one extra slot for A-Dai, Fat Cat, Xiaofu, and Big Orange, and buffed the upgraded Jack Fusion Device. If those four cats are in your deck, they can carry more gear than the rest of the roster. Details: Equipment System and Jack Fusion Device.

A practical Chapter 1–2 list

Job	Early pick	Upgrade pick
Cheap body	Bacon Jack	Jack Hero via fusion item
Ranged	A Qiang	Solo
Tank	Blue Fatty	Big Ju (heal on low HP)
Disrupt	Xiao Fu knockback	Masashi teleport
Stun / utility	Wu Ji	Nuba

You will not own every name on night one. The Deck Builder only lists cats we can source from official posts. It will not pretend there are 38 legendaries named after gemstones.

Test on the lane, not on a tier screenshot

Steam patches keep changing numbers: Xuebao cost −1, Jack Fusion HP/ATK up, extra slots on four cats, Hard Mode gold doubled. Re-test after you patch. If a stage still fails, you are probably fighting too far from your base or leaking fish on 1-cost panic summons — go back to Getting Started before you scrap the whole roster.

When the campaign opens up, fold in hidden companions Cook, Jimmy, and Spring Roll (luck-themed) from How to Unlock Hidden Stages. They are extra tools, not a new deck-building genre.