pig of the puddle [Boar of the Sea]

[Treamayne]

One thing I haven't seen anybody mention, with regards to Wild Boar of the Sea, is that you can also play the pirates early (without the Pig), and whenever you get the Wild Boar triggers, a Priestess on one of the already discarded Pirates will discard the rest of them. So you can get Pirate discard triggers on two turns as separate events without risking that you draw any of the two remaining originals. I don't see much need to have Pirate Captain, War Longship and all the other "set-up" cards in opening hand. I'm not going to go as far as to say it is a good card, but it bears play-testing as I don't think it is as bad as this thread makes it sound.

 

[Almaron22]

Ship is basicly an 8 power gold. To get any more value out of it, you need: a rain card, a pirate in your hand AND something to synergize with discard. Thats 4 cards. Not only that, but you really want to thin your deck before you draw.

You don't need to have a pirate in your hand, as you can always resurrect a pirate from your graveyard if you already played them earlier.
I like the card, dunno if it's good or not but it sure is interesting

 

[nestalim]

There is some pretty absurd combo to do with this card, but it is not good enough.

 

[TheShift]

Oh, how the little piggies will grunt when they hear how the Old Boar suffered.



sorry..could not help myself

 

[TheWalkingHawking]

I'm sorry, but this Boar of the Sea card wins competition for most useless gold card ever created. Hands down.

1. It does anything at all only when it is under rain - so you must stuck your deck with rain cards (otherwise not having that much synergy with Skellige)
2. It then produces some effect, but you can only make any use of it if you play some war longships or such...
3. ... which are third row and not rain-immune. Er, what?!

So you're complaining because a card that Synergizes with others is meant to be played along the cards it synergizes with, makes a lot of sense.
You're also mentioning War Longships and ignoring Pirate Captains, which just got buffed to 5 strength and are immune to weather and we're also getting Clan Tordarroch Armorsmith(4 Strength, Agile, Loyal, Bronze, Immune to Weather. Reset all units on the row to base Strength), which will be a resurrectable Clear Skies, as long as you don't plan to buff over their base strength the units on the row, in case you really feel like playing War Longships instead of Pirate Captains, but honestly, it feels like you only mentioned War Longships to have one more reason to complain.

If I wanted to produce such an enormous battery of discard, shooting at the end of first round - I'd use Ermion instead (plus the usual suspects - Donar, Birna), thank you ery much.

You want to play both in any discard deck. Also, Skellige finally has some real choices on silvers for their different archetypes, so anybody running Wild Boar will be running at least 2 of Aeromancy/Merigold's Hailstorm/Skellige Storm and probably 1 Torrential Rain.
Honestly, we're getting variety and all people do is complaining, i have to admit people is rather good at that.

Oh my, Lugos? This poor bastard completely annihilated by everything, from Triss to d-shackles? And he will get a whole additional point of strength for every turn you watered your Boar? Splendid. Looking forward to meeting your deck, fielding them both...

Lugos will gain base strength, making him immune to Dimeritium Shackles, it will still be a high risk, high reward card, but i can see him being played again next patch, although he could go back to 1 turn timer.

Well, may not be the most useless one, but definetly up there. Actually it and succubus are both of really questionable value. Ship is basicly an 8 power gold. To get any more value out of it, you need: a rain card, a pirate in your hand AND something to synergize with discard. Thats 4 cards. Not only that, but you really want to thin your deck before you draw. As so - those 4 cards are needed in your starting hand, sine you really dont want to draw pirates.

As Treamayne mentioned, you can actually discard your 2 pirates early as always and leave the rest for the combo, bringing back one with a Priestess.

So skellige, who naturally benefit from dragging the game for 3 rounds must commit at least 4 of their cards in round 1

Clan An Craite Warrior got buffed to 9 strength, so Crach got buffed too, Bran's ability got reworked and will be used in turn one most likely, Clan Brokvar Archer and Hunter got buffed to 5 strength, Pirate Captains got buffed to 5 strength too and are no longer vulnerable to Aard, Skirmishers got buffed to 6 strength, with the nerfs to ST and NR ridiculous loops, Skellige will definitely be able to fight for the first round, so, the first part of your statement remains true, but we're not gimped on turn 1 anymore. We're also getting our own version of Reaver Hunter, but i didn't mention it because Pirates will take their place in any deck containing Pig of the puddle Boar of the Sea.

Succubus is even worse.

I can see her being really useful vs NG, given their high Strength values and spies. She can also make an awesome combo with the new Decoy. Let's say ST plays Yaevinn, you play Succubus and, as the timer is at 1, you Decoy Yaevinn, and voilà, you got your CA and a 17 Strength Yaevinn. I'm pretty sure she will be a staple in Monster decks.

Triss is on a bright sight of new golds, as her effect just might be powerfull enough to let her see play. Sure, sometimes she will meet a cinycal elf and cause a ragequit, but a turn 1 Triss just may give you a free round, even if she hits like 5 units in your starting hand - thats a sweet 20 extra power.

Triss looks scary as fuck, with the changes to NR they will have to mix their classic "loop creatures" with high strength ones who are hard to remove, NR decks are extremely susceptible to board-damaging spells, such as Chironex, Tremors and Harald(i can't count the times i've removed ~80 strength on turn 2 with Chironex+Harald), and she also provide a full-side one-time protection against weather, not to mention a lot of Skellige decks will run Tremors, making them very risky on that matchup. One thing is for sure, Harald doesn't like her.

As a side note - Nilfgaard is gonna be the most popular deck for a while, and seeing a bronze caretaker guys among their ranks makes me feel like devs have some personal score to settle with Skellige.

Yeah, that looks ridiculous, i'm overall pretty happy with the changes to Skellige, not because of the buffs, but mainly because every archetype will finally be playing different cards, every hero has been brought back to life and, we're getting our own version of Archgriffin, so we're not forced to run First Lights anymore in most decks(running too many spells hurts Skellige decks' consistency badly),and with the changes to Udalryk, Ocvist, Sigrdrifa and Decoy, we will finally have some real choice on silvers.
I got my Queenguards, Discard/Weather and Selfwound/Warcry decks ready for monday already, but that creature, and NR's Dethmold(banish a non-gold unit from your opponent's graveyard), are the things that i'm afraid of, mostly, since we will have 3 matchups where our graveyard is anything but safe, instead of 1.

You don't need to have a pirate in your hand, as you can always resurrect a pirate from your graveyard if you already played them earlier.
I like the card, dunno if it's good or not but it sure is interesting

That makes you waste a Priestess of Freya, which purpose is mainly bringing back creatures benefiting from being played from graveyard, on a creature which purpose is to discard others, not to be played and still doesn't guarantee you won't draw 2 with Ermion or at round 2, won't draw and discard 2 Pirates with Donar or even 3 with Birna, so, forgive me, but i disagree, you really want a Pirate in your starting hand.

 

[rams142857]

So you're complaining because a card that Synergizes with others is meant to be played along the cards it synergizes with, makes a lot of sense.

I'm complaining that a card that is meant to be played along the other cards antisynergizes with them. But you understood that.

You're also mentioning War Longships and ignoring Pirate Captains,

I'm writing about the interaction of Boar and War Longship. Generally speaking, damaging (and hopefully destroying) the opponents' cards is a stronger effect than buffing one's own - fewer counters to that. So if bringing Boar means not bringing War Longship, then this is a very serious minus for the Boar. But you knew that.

You want to play both in any discard deck.

So, the fact that Boar is incomparably weaker than Ermion is not in dispute, you just claim that Ermion plus Boar is better than Ermion alone. Well, I strongly doubt this claim. Boar comes with too heavy a luggage. Ermion works always, even without any supporting cards he is a very useful card. This means the discard deck with Ermion can also do many other things.

But adding Boar (and trying to get anything out of it) means adding a lot of things that do not really fit the deck. In particular, weather - cards that will be useful once, but we have to take many of them (or the opponent will FL Boar into oblivion). Further, we have to concentrate on captains, even though war longships are more generally useful (for one thing, they are also useful in a round you do not discard anything).

And all this for what? For a slim chance to add a few more pirates to the deck. Slim indeed: you have Boar in your starting hand half of the time (if you draw it later, it's hardly useful), and even then you need to have more rain cards on hand than the opponent has FLs. That is, even with 3-4 rain cards in the deck, chance that Boar will bring you even a single pirate is like 1/4 - and the negative effects of Boar you will feel whether it worked or not.

Those odds might still be acceptable if it had some strong effect when it worked. But putting one creature at the bottom of the deck (meaning that we need to play several other cards, which the opponent can counter as well, in order to have any profit at all) is, sorry, absolutely not enough. To get from 8 (strength of Boar) to the usual 12 under the condition that we get anything at all one time in four means that on average when we get something from Boar, we get at least 16 additional points plus four times the other costs of fielding Boar. Not gonna happen, which means Ermion plus Boar is worse than Ermion plus Geralt. And I can think of some cards that are even better than Geralt.

BTW, competition of silver weather cards with bronze FLs is most wasteful, so don't tell me that I will take aeromancy to make rain for Boar. If I know that I will want rain, I'm not going to waste the silver slot, I can cast rain from bronze. Yes, I know that in your dreams you have rain in your hand in the first round and the opponent has no FLs, so you can leave aeromancy for later - but reality differs from dreams.

Lugos will gain base strength, making him immune to Dimeritium Shackles, it will still be a high risk, high reward card, but i can see him being played again next patch, although he could go back to 1 turn timer.

I didn't even consider Lugos in this meta (half of the decks are ST elven merc with Iorvath). But yes, maybe it will have some use in the future.

 

[isnadtochiev]

Can't give you a direct source to that (too lazy to search for it) but you can check KBTs stream from yesterday on twitch. He shows pretty much everything that will come with the next patch there (one of those things being Eredin with 12 strength).

Thanks, ill do just that.

 

[TheWalkingHawking]

I'm complaining that a card that is meant to be played along the other cards antisynergizes with them. But you understood that.

And i'm telling you you got other cards to work with and tools to make that one usable, but you ignored it.

I'm writing about the interaction of Boar and War Longship. Generally speaking, damaging (and hopefully destroying) the opponents' cards is a stronger effect than buffing one's own - fewer counters to that. So if bringing Boar means not bringing War Longship, then this is a very serious minus for the Boar. But you knew that.

You're right about damaging abilities compared to self buffing, for the rest, same answer as above.

So, the fact that Boar is incomparably weaker than Ermion is not in dispute, you just claim that Ermion plus Boar is better than Ermion alone. Well, I strongly doubt this claim. Boar comes with too heavy a luggage. Ermion works always, even without any supporting cards he is a very useful card. This means the discard deck with Ermion can also do many other things.

They simply can't be compared, because they do way too different things, if you want to look only at the cons of the cards in discussion, you can draw Ermion mid-late game and have only cards you want to use in hand, making him a dead card until you got only 2 cards remaining in hand and a 6 Strength gold then, or directly draw him when you got less than 2 cards in hand.

But adding Boar (and trying to get anything out of it) means adding a lot of things that do not really fit the deck.

That's your opinion, mine is that all the cards you're complaining about are perfect for this deck.

In particular, weather - cards that will be useful once, but we have to take many of them (or the opponent will FL Boar into oblivion).

With First Light only removing one row's weather effect nobody is going to waste their First Lights to prevent boar from setting up this unreliable and weak-as-f*ck combo(as you say), and if they do, he has done his job already, no more First Lights for other rows, free way for Aard(or you don't plan to use Aard on this kind of deck either?).

Further, we have to concentrate on captains, even though war longships are more generally useful (for one thing, they are also useful in a round you do not discard anything).

And they're also vulnerable to Weather, while captains aren't, because, in case you forgot, opponent can use Weather too. We can keep like this all day long, it works both ways.

And all this for what? For a slim chance to add a few more pirates to the deck. Slim indeed: you have Boar in your starting hand half of the time (if you draw it later, it's hardly useful)

First, a properly constructed discard deck draws its entire deck 99% of the games.
Second, you're wrong, you don't need it in your starting hand at all, in fact i would wait for the opponent to use at least one First Light either to get a Rally effect or bait him to dispel another row's Weather effect if i consider getting Boar to create pirates will be more useful.

and even then you need to have more rain cards on hand than the opponent has FLs. That is, even with 3-4 rain cards in the deck, chance that Boar will bring you even a single pirate is like 1/4 - and the negative effects of Boar you will feel whether it worked or not.

Again you're ignoring the fact that silver Weather cards bring 2 Weather effects, while First Light only dispels one, many decks want to use Rally to thin their decks and get some important creatures they didn't draw by other means and they simply can't afford to use all their First Lights to prevent Boar from setting up the combo.

Those odds might still be acceptable if it had some strong effect when it worked. But putting one creature at the bottom of the deck (meaning that we need to play several other cards, which the opponent can counter as well, in order to have any profit at all) is, sorry, absolutely not enough.

If by many other cards you mean 1 out of our 3 Priestesses of Freya and 1 out of our 3 Pirate Captains/War Longships, i guess we have a different concept of many.

To get from 8 (strength of Boar) to the usual 12 under the condition that we get anything at all one time in four means that on average when we get something from Boar, we get at least 16 additional points plus four times the other costs of fielding Boar. Not gonna happen, which means Ermion plus Boar is worse than Ermion plus Geralt. And I can think of some cards that are even better than Geralt.

As long as you managed to keep Boar under Rain for 2 turns in the whole game, with 1 Pirate Captain/War Longship + a Priestess of Freya, or with 2 Priestesses of Freya you can make Boar worth 16 strength. You will manage to do it 90% of your games, and you will make it worth way more often than not.

BTW, competition of silver weather cards with bronze FLs is most wasteful, so don't tell me that I will take aeromancy to make rain for Boar. If I know that I will want rain, I'm not going to waste the silver slot, I can cast rain from bronze. Yes, I know that in your dreams you have rain in your hand in the first round and the opponent has no FLs, so you can leave aeromancy for later - but reality differs from dreams.

Again you're picking the worst option of the ones i mentioned, just to complain. I wouldn't pick Aeromancy either, but 1 Torrential Rain, 1 Merigold's Hailstorm and 1 Skellige Storm are already more weather effects than they can dispel and i bet you know how to build a deck to not make then only useful to get Boar to work.

Overall, i think you want Boar to be useful on a pure discard deck, while it was obviously created with a Discard/Weather mix deck in mind and he is bringing that archetype to reality by himself.
I can tell you one thing, i have played Skellige almost exclusively along 1000+ games, so i have played every imaginable archetype long enough to have a strong opinion about every Skellige card, mechanic and interaction. All brought me at least to ~3000 rating, with some getting me up to ~3400.
If there's something heavy discard decks, and by heavy discard i mean Birna, Donar, Ermion/Last Wish and Svanrige, or all 5. They're the most consistent Skellige decks you can create, meaning that you will play every card in your deck almost every game, they're also the only Skellige archetype capable of consistently winning games in 2 rounds, but if you can't finish the game by round 2, the deck lacked a finisher combo you can pull out with 2/3 cards in round 3. Boar is giving us that too. Hell, with the new Shieldmaidens you can even create a Weather/Discard/Warcry using War Longships instead of Captains and making use of the new Tremors, which will be great for clearing their rows affected by Weather, apart from setting up Warcry.
I see options everywhere, while you're so focused on looking for the cons that can't get out of that vicious circle of complaints.

 

[rams142857]

You deliberately ignore the point. Let me repeat it shortly, and end my part in the discussion.

There are three weather effects: frost, fog, rain. Fog almost does not harm Skellige (while it harms most of its opponents strogly, either directly or by Aard threat). Frost might harm Skellige or not, depends on the build (and harms most opponents even more than fog does). Rain harms Skellige always (smiths might be optional, but are you playing without resurrection cards? skalds too, the third row is always the most crowded so they want to go there) and discard Skellige in particular (war longships), other factions much less (only red elites and some dwarves come to mind, and Aard threat on second row is rarely critical). If Boar was working on fog - it would be an overly complicated but maybe playable (in a right kind of deck) card. If it was working on frost, it would be strange but also possible to accomodate to. But a card that actively needs the most damaging (for your faction) and most useless (against others) weather effect to work is a complete nonsense and the anti-synnergistic idea of the century. Not to mention how many things have to go right for this card to work at all (your hope for the key card in your deck is that the opponent will not bother to try to stop it, because he will laugh at its effect anyway? seriously? and the saddest thing is, you might be right...). And trying to make some use of it anyway is an exercise in futility.

Even shorter version: I'm not going to throw away war longships to use Boar. I will keep war longships (and captains, too - why not?) and throw away Boar, taking some useful gold card instead. And if I want to play weather discard, I will also do just that. Yes, I saw the option of using Boar, but I did not stop at seeing it - I compared it with the other options I have. And the comparison told me: even if I decide that the weather discard is the way to go, as long as meta does not give us throngs of particularly rain-vulnerable and fog-resistant opponents, fog discard (without Boar) is plainly better than rain discard (with or without Boar). Better in raw strength and better in elasticity (incomparably more builds to choose from: golds, silvers, amount of weather). Good luck on the high seas for you.

 

[Siergain]

It is a card that is bad in nomal deck and so-so in deck built around it. Considering it is a gold card it is really bad. But once per 40-50 games it will be devatating in perfect conditions for it to work.

 

[TheWalkingHawking]

I'll be short too.
If you don't want to play Weather, then obviously Boar doesn't fit the deck, but don't say the card is useless because you don't want to play the cards he synergizes with. Neither is Weather.

(your hope for the key card in your deck is that the opponent will not bother to try to stop it, because he will laugh at its effect anyway? seriously? and the saddest thing is, you might be right...)

I guess you didn't get the sarcasm.

 

[DEERCG]

Anyone who will use this card? I'm curious.

1. Need weather card to trigger ability.
2. Tell to opponent our tactics.
3. What if no luck and draw it in round 3?

These things enough to said is it a useless card?

 

[OwNeDUp]

Looks useless especially when u have broken deck like harald axeman with yenefer conjurer or weaker but still decent deck with Bran discarding Queens guard and buffing them with draig.

 

[GW3NTLORD]

Succubus is even worse. She starts at -10 gold power, to get to 12 power average gold swing, she needs to steal a unit of at least 11 power, wich is allready rare enough.

Not after this patch as you going to see more buffs & huge strength cards from now on

About "boar of the see" yes at least for now it defiantly looks bad card & imo not because it requires rain but due to weather / aard nerd.

 

[DEERCG]

TH3WITCH3R Thing I don't like that's tell opponent all about our deck just with this Piggy. They will know we have:

1. Weather deck
2. Clan Dimun Pirate Captain
3. Clan Dimun Pirate
4. War Longship

And step by step how we play it. So they will well prepare to counter that. I dunno what is the point when dev make this card.

 

[GW3NTLORD]

TH3WITCH3R Thing I don't like that's tell opponent all about our deck just with this Piggy. They will know we have:

1. Weather deck
2. Clan Dimun Pirate Captain
3. Clan Dimun Pirate
4. War Longship

And step by step how we play it. So they will well prepare to counter that. I dunno what is the point when dev make this card.

Yehh man imo that's the biggest problem of skellige that it's very predictable where with other faction we can only guess. You can even tell skellige strategy just by looking at Sk leader :/

 

[Treamayne]

I'm not going to go as far as to say it is a good card, but it bears play-testing as I don't think it is as bad as this thread makes it sound.

So, after some playtesting:

1- Wild Boar really needs to be the Siege equivalent of Leshen. It should spawn Torrential Rain.

2- Pirate has the weather immunity, but Pirate Captain and War Longship do not. That hurts this deck.

3- Boar really wants to be played on a round the opponent can't just pass. buying turns for more triggers mean you either need to get high power quickly or play a control round.

4- Boar works fairly well if you win Round 1 and use round two to play the Wild Boar and build up new pirates to discard in round three.

5 - The deck doesn't seem to work as a full weather deck, it needs strategic use of a small amount of weather rather than a full "all weather, all the time" like many decks running weather.

 

[KasumiGoto]

So, after some playtesting:

1- Wild Boar really needs to be the Siege equivalent of Leshen. It should spawn Torrential Rain.

2- Pirate has the weather immunity, but Pirate Captain and War Longship do not. That hurts this deck.

3- Boar really wants to be played on a round the opponent can't just pass. buying turns for more triggers mean you either need to get high power quickly or play a control round.

4- Boar works fairly well if you win Round 1 and use round two to play the Wild Boar and build up new pirates to discard in round three.

5 - The deck doesn't seem to work as a full weather deck, it needs strategic use of a small amount of weather rather than a full "all weather, all the time" like many decks running weather.

Yeah but now a lot of people play Radovid so they can take out Boar easily.

 

[Treamayne]

Yeah but now a lot of people play Radovid so they can take out Boar easily.

Yes, that is true for every Gold at 8 or less STR. However, nobody's claiming this is a competitive deck; this is just about sharing ideas and lessons learned in play-testing the card.

 

[KThomas14]

I've tried probably about 20-30 games with a deck similar to this: Champion of Champions, Clan Dimun Pirate Captain x3, Clan Dimun Pirate x3, Coral, War Longship x2, Clan Brokvar Archer x2, Wild Boar of the Sea, Priestess of Freya x3, Clan Tordarroch Shieldsmith, Srigdrifa, Svanrige, Ragh nar Roog, Decoy, First Light, Torrential Rain, Dimeritium Shackles, Restore, Donar an Hindar, and Birna Bran, with King Bran as the leader. This deck is not competitive, mainly because the cards do not synergize well. Right now, the entire combo needs to be played in a particular order on the first turn. You need to get weather up, and you need to play WBotS at the start, then you need to play the Pirate Captains, then the War Longships, then you can play King Bran, Svanrige, Clan Dimun Pirate. If you deviate from this pattern, the Pirate Captains and War Longships will not reach their full effect. Also, you really suffer if you delay playing the Clan Dimun Pirates as you run the risk of drawing a second Pirate. Do note that there are a few other cards which could fit into this deck, but the core is WBotS and the Pirates; I don't think changing the supporting cards would vastly improve this core.

In my opinion, CDPR needs to make two changes, and then this deck would be viable (and maybe even quite good). First, remove the requirement of WBotS only producing Pirates in Rain. Second, allow the Pirate Captains to gain strength when they are in the player's hand, deck, or the battlefield. These two changes would give the Skellige player much more flexibility. For example, the first round could consist of playing WBotS, the War Longships, King Bran, CoC, and the Pirates. Those would be some good numbers on the field, especially when you consider the damage the longships can do. If you win the first round, you could revive the War Longships while playing your spies, thus still buffing the Captains. Finally, the Captains can be played in the last round. Right now, this entire deck can be shut down by one First Light, one Impenetrable Fog, one Scorch, or other similar cards. While the changes I've proposed might actually make the deck a bit OP, the game is still in beta, so this is a perfect time to experiment. As the game currently stands, I don't see how this deck core could have a win rate higher than 10%.