Am I missing something? (Geralt:Aard)

[Strollin]

Am I missing something? (Geralt:Aard)

Again I have searched the forums for a similar thread but I havent found anything so I apologize for a doublepost.

Anyway I've had plenty of games now (playing as Monsters, Eredin weather to be exact) where all my cards that I played were wiped just by playing geralt:aard and throwing them back to another lane that was covered by weather. My deck has almost only weather-immune effects, however the immunity is only for the rows they are played in, none of them has immunity for all types of weather. You could argue that you can just use archgriffin to clear the weather effects on your rows but then again why should I put griffins into my deck when most of my units are immune to weather or even profit from weather. Especially (ancient) foglets are affected by this. Why should you ever put those cards into your deck when the enemy can just abuse your fog to destroy your melee row? (Which is really painful for Eredin decks the most).

My biggest problem with this card is that it has almost no way to counter or react to it. But unlike cards like scorch or epidemic etc. it affects too many cards imo. Its basically like a joker cards that usually gives you a free win if you play against weather decks. Even Geralt:Igni can somewhat be countered if you just pay attention to not exceed the damage threshhold or just to make sure that your cards have different numbers. I know there are already cards that can change the whole game in just one turn even if their opponent has twices as much strength but I feel like its pointless to play weather decks if you just hurt yourself with it everytime you face someone who plays Aard (which quite some people do).
I mean if Aard was changed to something like just pushing cards back (so that you can react to it) or if that would be too weak, apply the 1 damage after 1 turn or before they were weakened by weather feels more balanced.
Its just a card that you would usually pick up if you are playing against (the already relatively weak) Monster faction and maybe to some extent against Skellige decks. So its just a card that hurts the weakest faction at the moment that also has the least card advantage options, which seems to dominate most of the games.

Any ideas, suggestions?

(Please show Monster decks some more love :c)

 

[LadyAly]

Well - you could use him very well, too. To shove a whole melee line into your foglets is pretty decent choice. You can even shove a buffed foglet line into your rain line.
I do not think he is OP and since he is a neutral card every faction can use it . I do not get your point, really

 

[Strollin]

Because he would occupy a gold card that I want to use otherwise. Really there are already enough removals for low damage cards like epidemic, lacerate or even draug. My point is that because its a neutral card and everyone can use it, I face more matches where I would suffer from it rather than benefiting from it.
This is really a problem that I have using monster decks, which like I said arent in a healthy spot atm imo.

 

[Ugralitan]

Or you could specialize on Frost/Rain weather and try to control middle row with other means. Drowners especially are very good at dealing with some problematic cards.

 

[Strollin]

Or you could specialize on Frost/Rain weather and try to control middle row with other means. Drowners especially are very good at dealing with some problematic cards.

Which leads back to my first post, that (ancient) foglets arent worth it atm

 

[Ugralitan]

Which leads back to my first post, that (ancient) foglets arent worth it atm

Well there is also the fact that Woodland Spirit can field 16 strength battalion alone when used with Foglets. Those Foglets also help in thinning the deck. I am not sure about their unworthiness. And when left unchecked Ancient Foglets can really add a lot.

Aard is a one-shot opportunity for your enemy to destabilize one of your rows. If you have the initiative/card advantage, you rarely feel the burn since you can keep your highest melee characters after Aard-calypse.

 

[AlkamlBan]

I don't get though why it should deal 1 dmg. I mean Aard (unless you get the Shock Wave mutation in TW3) doesn't deal dmg and even if it did it would be much better to first deal the dmg and then push them to prevent a 1 card tide-changer. Throughing all units on 1 row (apart from gold obviously) to a weather and getting them down to 1 strength is 1) Not counterable 2) Extremely powerful as it is since it makes you lose tremendous amounts of strength and the units go back to the graveyard.

What I am trying to say is that if it just pushed them and didn't kill them then you would be able with a Dim Bomb to get back some of the strength you lost but sending them to the graveyard imo is too much.

 

[Strollin]

I don't get though why it should deal 1 dmg. I mean Aard (unless you get the Shock Wave mutation in TW3) doesn't deal dmg and even if it did it would be much better to first deal the dmg and then push them to prevent a 1 card tide-changer. Throughing all units on 1 row (apart from gold obviously) to a weather and getting them down to 1 strength is 1) Not counterable 2) Extremely powerful as it is since it makes you lose tremendous amounts of strength and the units go back to the graveyard.
What I am trying to say is that if it just pushed them and didn't kill them then you would be able with a Dim Bomb to get back some of the strength you lost but sending them to the graveyard imo is too much.

Basically this, or nerf the damaging ability but set the base strength to a higher amount so that it doesnt get too weak.

 

[ElProfeto]

lol, i've long felt the aard card should deal the damage first then kick back but w/e. i totally feel your pain Strollin, i play the same deck basically, i've been persuaded to ditch the foglets for the shrooms to stop people boosting the poor infantry or hawker support or w/e. yes you get the 16 but holy eff how many times have i been dealt a foglet on the 2nd or 3rd turn, its a waste. a problem i'm running into is the counter to aard, which is play all your cards on the siege row, especially w/ ST or SK. and seeing as how we're running a weather system, i imagine you do not have scorch. which because weather only deals damage for the round, when they resurrect/revive its at the boosted number. see my post on damage and death, talking about this.

 

[BlutmagierRoy]

I think the problem with Aard lies in its strength against basically every deck. There is almost no bad outcome if you plan to use it with Coral or even with weather-synergy cards in a monster deck.

However, it really wrecks monster decks focusing on frost and/or fog. You basically can't win if you don't immediately clear any weather affect spawned by your opponent. The opponent will simply play cards and force you to commit to a large board (which is always in one row in that decks) and kill it. In most cases nothing survives and you can't even get use of your faction ability. First Light on the other hand is counter-synergy with your actual game plan, as you want to spawn weather, not remove it. I actually play two of them just because of Aard, but it's a dead card in most matchups and then there are those games where you play against Aard and don't draw it.

You can't use Aard in every deck but if, it just gets frustrating for your opponent. It's like a Mega-Scorch with a much harder counterplay.

 

[Strollin]

I think the problem with Aard lies in its strength against basically every deck. There is almost no bad outcome if you plan to use it with Coral or even with weather-synergy cards in a monster deck.
However, it really wrecks monster decks focusing on frost and/or fog. You basically can't win if you don't immediately clear any weather affect spawned by your opponent. The opponent will simply play cards and force you to commit to a large board (which is always in one row in that decks) and kill it. In most cases nothing survives and you can't even get use of your faction ability. First Light on the other hand is counter-synergy with your actual game plan, as you want to spawn weather, not remove it. I actually play two of them just because of Aard, but it's a dead card in most matchups and then there are those games where you play against Aard and don't draw it.
You can't use Aard in every deck but if, it just gets frustrating for your opponent. It's like a Mega-Scorch with a much harder counterplay.

Overall I think either the cards that interact with weather (like aard) need to be changed so that you have more options to react to those cards or weather itself as a mechanic needs some massive rework. Right now its just like a win/lose mechanic where you either win because you remove/abuse it or you lose because you cant remove it and your units suffer from it.

 

[ElProfeto]

blutmagierroy, don't forget about the arch griffin that debuffs the weather on a row.

 

[rhysclifford]

It can be a little OP when an entire line of any power is pushed back into a weather effect and instantly killed, I have seen this happen a lot against monster decks

 

[Tamacountry13]

I've out played plenty of people using Aard like using my commanders horn on my drowners instead of my two 10+ ancient foglets. Most people I see who use it are greedy and play it as late as possible, you can use it to your advantage and remove the fog before the push

 

[Strollin]

I've out played plenty of people using Aard like using my commanders horn on my drowners instead of my two 10+ ancient foglets. Most people I see who use it are greedy and play it as late as possible, you can use it to your advantage and remove the fog before the push

You cant really do that when you
a) play with eredin and make use of fog units (solution to that would be stop using fog units, which again is no real solution imo) or
b) either dont play with many drowners/don't pull enough drowners in that match to make the horn worth it.

 

[Lexandre]

yeah this is pretty sad how weather-immune monster cards are getting destroyed by weather just for being in the wrong row

interactions with row moving such as Aard and Drowner are kinda interesting but its just getting silly how every newly introduced game mechanic makes monsters worse

 

[mfool123]

Monsters can weather everything, it puts them on their toes, try a absorbing strategy if the weather thing ain't working out

 

[Strollin]

Monsters can weather everything, it puts them on their toes, try a absorbing strategy if the weather thing ain't working out

Yea lets just ignore many synergies and cards Monster decks have to offer just because weather mechanics and cards around it are broken /s
Srsly tho I just had another match playing against someone who aarded my whole buffed frontline into fog that HE spawned...
meanwhile SK, NR and ESPECIALLY ST keep spamming cardchains with single cards like crazy yet apparently that seems to be Okay.

I still regret focusing so much on Monster decks after I pulled my first legendaries for them, seeing how weak they are and nothing gets changed for them :/

(Monster weather decks using first light too confirmed? kappa )

 

[mfool123]

You have one very valid point, it's extremely hard to back away from a deck/strategy once you've invested all your hard earned strap/ore, just to wish you started somewhere else....why don't you aard people back or use aard to your benefit with your weather cards? Also if you play more siege characters aard is practically useless.

 

[Strollin]

You have one very valid point, it's extremely hard to back away from a deck/strategy once you've invested all your hard earned strap/ore, just to wish you started somewhere else....why don't you aard people back or use aard to your benefit with your weather cards? Also if you play more siege characters aard is practically useless.

Because it would waste one of my gold spots (I already have 4 valuable gold cards that are better if the weather mechanic wasnt that broken). Its stimply not worth it, either my enemies remove weather effects when they think its bad for them, they resurrect them when they are Skellige, convert them to gold when they are NR or they simply dont spawn many units when they are ST (or use card advantage to win anyway).
Its simply not worth it, if anything its a card simply designed to counter monster decks that are already the weakest faction anyway.
I just had so many matches where no matter what cards I drew I kept losing because my enemies - even if they had like 3 cards less then me - were able to pull out 30 strength or even more with a single card due to the endless loops all decks seem to have... except of Monsters of course

Anyways, I will start crafting some ST cards, I'm simply tired to wait until Monsters and the whole weather mechanic gets fixed while other factions just get better with every patch...