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Best Back 4 Blood cards to add to your deck

Here are our choices for the best Back 4 Blood's cards to have in your custom deck from Pep In Your Step to Two Is One And One Is None.

Best Back 4 Blood Cards: Three cleaners can be seen fighting an ogre.
Echo Apsey's Avatar

Published:

Back 4 Blood 

 Developer Turtle Rock Studios discontinued support for Back 4 Blood in February 2023, though it is still playable.

Back 4 Blood‘s card system is a dynamic and varied mechanic that ensures each run through a mission or campaign will be different depending on which cards are selected. That’s why it is key to ensure you are building a deck with some of the best cards that will help you out on your run.

With dozens and dozens of cards to choose from (you can find all Back 4 Blood cards here), across multiple categories from damage boosts to passive bonuses, it can be hard to nail down just what to include in your deck and what to gloss over.

Now enough talk, let’s get into the details about Back 4 Blood’s best cards:

Best Back 4 Blood Cards

The best Back 4 Blood cards you need to have in your deck are:

Broadside (Brawn)

  • Precision kills have a 20% chance to cause Ridden to explode, dealing 15 damage to other Ridden within 4 meters

This card is a great way to deal a lot of damage and control the space in front of you. Ridden are almost always clustered together and having the chance to wipe some of them out with each kill is a great bonus.

Combat Training (Discipline)

  • +5% bullet damage
  • +1.5 bullet stumble damage
  • +7.5 melee stumble damage

This is one of the simpler cards on the list, but it is useful to start out with, especially after the changes to its effects. The simple increases in damage don’t sound all that exciting, but it’s hard to complain about more damage.

Cross Trainers (Reflex)

  • +20% stamina
  • +20% stamina regen
  • +3% move speed
  • +5 health

One of the best all-around cards on this list, Cross Trainers is a permanent buff to some of your most important stats. This card allows you to move much faster which will mean you can survive for longer, especially on some of the higher difficulties.

Defensive Maneuver (Brawn)

  • When you take a hit for 15 or more damage, gain 25% Damage Resistance for 3 seconds.

Chances are you will be hit quite a lot, especially when you play on Veteran and Nightmare difficulties. Therefore, this card is a great passive buff that will almost always benefit you. It is less of a necessity on Recruit difficulty, but it is still nice to have.

It’s worth pointing out that this card was introduced as Evasive Action but later renamed to Defensive Maneuver with a slight change in effect.

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In The Zone (Discipline)

  • Precision kills grant 5% reload speed for 5 seconds (stacking up to 10 times)

In The Zone is one of the best offensive cards in the game. Landing precision kills one after another has the potential to boost your reload speed by 50%, which can be the difference between life and death, especially when you are using LMGs and shotguns.

Mandatory PT (Reflex)

  • Team Effect: +10% team stamina
  • Team Effect: +10% team stamina regen

Team cards are just as important as cards that buff your stats and Mandatory PT is a fantastic one to choose early on. More stamina is never a bad thing, and you can even regenerate your stamina quicker with this card.

Marked For Death (Discipline)

  • Mutations you ping are highlighted and your team deals 10% increased damage to highlighted enemies.

This card is a huge boon and ideally should be in all of your squad’s decks. While playing you should always be pinging mutations and this allows them to show up through walls and take more damage from your bullets. If everyone is running this, then your team are far more powerful.
Back 4 Blood Best Cards: One of Back 4 Blood's tougher Ridden can be seen screeching.

Miraculous Recovery (Reflex)

  • When you use a Medical Accessory, it has a 25% chance to have 100% increased effect.

This is less of a priority early on, but as you get into the later acts in the game and harder difficulties Miraculous Recovery is a nice bonus card to throw into your deck, as it has a chance to give you free health. What a boon!

Pep In Your Step (Reflex)

  • Precision Kills grant you 8% movement speed for 5 seconds.

Back 4 Blood is all about killing zombies, killing more zombies, and killing even more zombies. So, anything that gives you a bonus for doing just that is valuable. Pep In Your Step is great because landing precision shots or headshots isn’t too tricky, especially on Back 4 Blood’s Ridden which have less health. This means, that if you are able to land those headshots once every five seconds, or consecutively one after the other, you will almost always move 10% faster than you would without Pep In Your Step equipped.

Ridden Slayer (Reflex)

  • +20% Weakspot Damage

Much like Pep In Your Step, stronger Ridden die faster if you shoot their weakspots. Therefore, being able to deal more damage to those spots is a valuable bonus. With no other prerequisites, Ridden Slayer is a great card and will help with your long-term survival, especially later into the campaign when you are facing more varied groups of Ridden. Even after nerfs to the bonus it offers, it’s still a great choice.

Second Chance (Brawn)

  • +1 Extra Life
  • +15 Health
  • +25% bleed out resistance

Second Chance is by far the most basic card on this list, but the bonus it offers is a valuable one. The addition of extra health is nice, but the far more valuable part of this card is the extra life, allowing you to keep fighting for longer. This card is one of the most valuable when playing on higher difficulties, especially following buffs to its effects.

Back 4 Blood Best Cards: Three cleaners are advancing on their objective.

Smelling Salts (Reflex)

  • +200% revive speed

There isn’t too much to say about this Back 4 Blood best card, but chances are you will go down a fair bit, especially when you are playing harder difficulty levels. So, this card is a must-have for any deck tackling anything above recruit.

Superior Cardio (Reflex)

  • +20% Sprint Efficiency
  • +20% Stamina
  • +5 Health

As you progress through Back 4 Blood’s campaign you will take on more and more ridden as you attempt harder difficulty levels. With Ridden swarming you on these difficulties, sometimes the best option will be to run instead of fight. Superior Cardio is perfect for this as it will mean you can sprint for longer and potentially make it to the next safe house, rather than being left behind stuck in a pack of Ridden. Changes to its effects saw both buffs and nerfs, though it’s in a good spot.

Two Is One And One Is None (Brawn)

  • Grants the ability to equip a secondary primary
  • -25% weapon swap speed

As one of the only cards on this list with a negative effect, Two Is One And One Is None is a must-have if you are keen on having a more flexible build. The decrease in weapon swap speed isn’t great, but the extra value of being able to run a rifle and shotgun or sniper and SMG is second to none.

That rounds out our list of Back 4 Blood’s best cards you can pick. Now, just check out Back 4 Blood’s best weapons and you’ll be good to go.

Echo has years of experience writing about PS5, Xbox, and the best games and franchises that console players love. They joined The Loadout in 2021 as a staff writer and worked their way up to be the site's guides editor, before departing in 2023. They've written hundreds of guides on games such as Call of Duty, XDefiant, Spider-Man 2, Starfield, and many more. They were also the custodian of The Loadout's various PS Plus games and Xbox Game Pass games lists, informing subscribers about any new, departing, or interesting games that they could play. In their time writing, they have attended industry events like Gamescom and WASD. Additionally, they have conducted interviews with the teams behind Lords of the Fallen, Blue Protocol, Dying Light 2, and more since beginning their writing journey at university.