how and why harold beats GE'ELs

[Ruthless95]

how and why harold beats GE'ELs

i'll say this as simple as i can


Ge'el's ability: Add 2 strength to all non-Gold units on your side of the battlefield.
Yennefer: to unicorn: Add 2 strength to all other units on the battlefield. (buffing enemy as well)

the end.


harold's ability: Remove 2 strength from all opposing non-Gold units.
Yennefer: to chironex: Remove 2 strength from all other units on the battlefield. (nerfing yourself too)
ragh nar hoog: Remove 2 base strength from 8 random opposing non-Gold units on the battlefield.
stammelford's tremors: Remove 2 strength from 6 random opposing non-Gold units.

you wanted more?

in addition to this, monsters don't have a card that benefits from getting buffed while skellige have axemen that can benefit from wounding your opponent and in extreme cases result in 40-50 strength axemen (20-30 on average scenarios)
skellige also has units that benefit from wounding yourself like raging berserkers by your chironex.

now i know wounding is a core strategy associated to skellige but with ge'els's new ability and monsters being able to swarm the board with low strength creatures monsters need new (neutral) cards to be able to buff the units on your side so that ge'els can become an archetype of himself like how harold is compared to bran and crach.
or at least give monsters some bronze units that can benefit from buffs
currently harold can beat ge'els even without stammelford and ragh nar hoog, their effects cancel each other but axemen will do their job. [h=2][/h]

 

[265feral]

I've used Succubus on buffed Axemen to win games (most opposing players seem to scan over the card as if they aren't aware of it) and you can use Thunderbolt/Zoltan:AT to increase the power of multiple (low power) units. My Monsters Ge'els Consume deck seems to be running fine (10 wins out of the last 10 with at least half of the games against SK); I may be missing something here but I don't see a problem?

 

[Ruthless95]

I've used Succubus on buffed Axemen to win games (most opposing players seem to scan over the card as if they aren't aware of it) and you can use Thunderbolt/Zoltan:AT to increase the power of multiple (low power) units. My Monsters Ge'els Consume deck seems to be running fine (10 wins out of the last 10 with at least half of the games against SK); I may be missing something here but I don't see a problem?

there is no problem here, just saying why a gold and a bronze special cards reinforce harold's ability while ge'els is not having that support. how his ability doesn't affect any MS bronze card the way harold does to axemen. besides tell me what you do to axemen when you don't have your succubus, dudu them? put your hands up? FF?

 

[Tamacountry13]

Ge'els works with Monster cards that spawn others and swarm the field. Woodland Spirit, Gaunter, Fire Elemental heck even Monster Nest, Harpies and Arachas Behemoth spawn a lot of small units

 

[Tir_na_Lia]

Agreeing with the OP.

(also, the required explanation is so simple it makes me wonder whether the devs made an oversight)

 

[JohnathanHopkins]

Ge'els works with Monster cards that spawn others and swarm the field. Woodland Spirit, Gaunter, Fire Elemental heck even Monster Nest, Harpies and Arachas Behemoth spawn a lot of small units

This

Monsters have a great ability to spawn lots of low strength units. This combined with nerfed Dbomb is the synergy you are looking for

 

[Ruthless95]

Ge'els works with Monster cards that spawn others and swarm the field. Woodland Spirit, Gaunter, Fire Elemental heck even Monster Nest, Harpies and Arachas Behemoth spawn a lot of small units

emm ok let me reword. all the ones you mentioned is a standard effect of ge'els ability add 2 strength to non-gold units on your side yay!
now harold's standard ability is to hurt your enemy's units while having supplementary benefit to your own units by buffing axemen.
so to try and create an exact opposite of what Harold is, monsters need a bronze card that would hurt enemy's units for every buffed unit on your side.
i can only think of 1 excuse and that is because ge'els ability is proactive (you can plan to swarm the board ahead of time) but harold's ability is reactive (you never know how many units your enemy is going to play) like in case of NG with few but heavily buffed units, but then again there are things like weather, D-bomb and scorches that can aid harold against few but heavily buffed units.

 

[Tamacountry13]

emm ok let me reword. all the ones you mentioned is a standard effect of ge'els ability add 2 strength to non-gold units on your side yay!
now harold's standard ability is to hurt your enemy's units while having supplementary benefit to your own units by buffing axemen.
so to try and create an exact opposite of what Harold is, monsters need a bronze card that would hurt enemy's units for every buffed unit on your side.
i can only think of 1 excuse and that is because ge'els ability is proactive (you can plan to swarm the board ahead of time) but harold's ability is reactive (you never know how many units your enemy is going to play) like in case of NG with few but heavily buffed units, but then again there are things like weather, D-bomb and scorches that can aid harold against few but heavily buffed units.

Well tbh leader abilities don't have to have other cards gain additional effects when they get used.
For example theres no NR card that gains points if Radovid hurt/locks a unit and Scoia'tael donesnt have a card that gains points if a unit is returned to your hand (Eithne) or in cards are redrawn (Francesca)

By themselves Ge'els is the better leader as you can make use of him in nearly every game, The same can't be said about Harold as your relying on your opponent's deck and not your own.

 

[MrWhiteMale]

You seem to be inadequate. Author says that:
- Harold and Ge'els have basicly same ability affecting same side of the board (Monsters' one) for exactly same amount of points (+2 and -2). However, monsters just have this ability, while SK have synergy making it much better.
- In other words: both abilities hit/buff for the same amount of points, but SK make more profit out of it while monters cant do that.

IMHO, monsters are the weakest faction atm for following reasons:
- the only working deck is spam-deck which cant be easily countered with Lacerate which is usefull card anyway (broneze card counters whole deck... welcome to clearskies world...again...)
- NR have bronze cards that make your cards gold (basicly invul) and they have Triss' Butt to UNCOUTERABLY buff cards in hand.
- SC have ambushes and those stupid elves on horses to buff cards in hand or buff cards with ambush after you pass...fcking wow... uncounterable buff again.
- SK have strong graveyard plays which can be countered to some extent but Madman Lugos and deck rolling are uncounterable.
- NG have cards and abilities to move/kill spies... Basicly uncounterable again. Most those tricks are 30-40+ powerswing.

Monsters have...they have nothing uncounterable... All buffs they play stay on board dummy as is, waiting for debuff. The only card close to invul is Keyran but it is so misirable...Jeees
Whole monsters gameplay relies on luck and opp's stupidity. That is it. You can only make (srry for that) "POWER OVERWHELMING" with brute force, no sneaky plays, no uncounterable buffs in hand or graveyard...nothing tbh.

P.S.: I play NR, SK and MS, not only MS as you may naively think.

 

[Michelazz]

The only cards that are OP at the moment and cant be countered are ambush. As for harald , there are many ways to counter him with monsters. one of the ways is to kill his axmen or shakle them. He might resurect them but he will then be able to use them for 1 round only as he might not have resurection options in round 2 and 3. the 2nd way and the most effective is to try gaining card advantage to be able to play last in round 3. you can leave him buffing those axmen till they reach max power and you finish him off by foging the raw.

 

[Tamacountry13]

Gwyngvalch I understand completly about what he's saying but leader abilities DON'T need to give additional bonuses to Bronze cards.
Ge'els DOES synergize with the Monster faction as a lot of thier cards spawn small units for more Ge'els value. Gaunter by himself adds 4 bodies of the field for 8 points of value from Ge'els.
If you compare Ge'els to Harold BY THEMSELVES Ge'els is the better leader as you have a lot more control over it and can build a deck that favours him.

Monster is far from weak btw, If anything they are in the top 2 best factions. Skillege and Nilfgaard are both worse off currently.

 

[Ruthless95]

Gwyngvalch I understand completly about what he's saying but leader abilities DON'T need to give additional bonuses to Bronze cards.
Ge'els DOES synergize with the Monster faction as a lot of thier cards spawn small units for more Ge'els value. Gaunter by himself adds 4 bodies of the field for 8 points of value from Ge'els.
If you compare Ge'els to Harold BY THEMSELVES Ge'els is the better leader as you have a lot more control over it and can build a deck that favours him.

Monster is far from weak btw, If anything they are in the top 2 best factions. Skillege and Nilfgaard are both worse off currently.

so what you are saying is since almost no leader gives additional synergy to the units of that faction, harold's ability should not affect axemen? because i very much agree.

 

[RickMelethron]

now harold's standard ability is to hurt your enemy's units while having supplementary benefit to your own units by buffing axemen.

ever heard of d-bomb?

IMHO, monsters are the weakest faction atm for following reasons:

and yet, consume monsters are still one of the strongest decks at the moment...

 

[RickMelethron]

so what you are saying is since almost no leader gives additional synergy to the units of that faction, harold's ability should not affect axemen? because i very much agree.

no, he's saying that you can't say harald is better than geels because axemen exist. if you want to calculate a perfect scenario where the opponent plays geels and you play harald with 3 axemen on the board and the opponent has no d-bomd, of course you'll come to the conclusion that harald is better. but that's not how the game works, decks have to perform well in a multitude of different scenarios, and against a multitude of different opponents. not to mention the fact that a deck's overall performance isn't tied to their leader ability; you can have the greatest leader in the game, if the rest of the cards are crap, your deck will be crap.

overall, geel decks are better than harald decks; simple as that. it's much easier to counter a couple of axemen than a full board of units

 

[MrWhiteMale]

blah blah blah

overall, geel decks are better than harald decks; simple as that. it's much easier to counter a couple of axemen than a full board of units

Just to remind you... Full board starts with Behemoths. They are same vulnurable to lock as axemen, they are much more vulnurable to alzur and they cant be resurrected due to absenece of resurrectors so in general behemoths are much worse and quite unstable... Also, just a funny story: Coral and Woodland hit with fog exactly 1 same row of arachas... Jeees what a brilliant balance of gold cards...

UPD to monster's weakness: NG palyers realised they can completely counter nekkers... Once and for all without a signle lock...

 

[nhk3]

harold

Harold

Harold

Harald. Just saying.

 

[Ninschi]

Stating that Ge'els +2 ability is not supported whilst SK got axeman is too much based on the fact that MS has no axeman equivalent. Imho the MS exclusive concept of breeding as well as the Arachna Behemoth created Spider-spawning (and to lesser extend mass Foglets) are good synergistic mechanics when combined with Ge'els ability. In that regard, MS mechanics and Ge'els ability are actually more synergistic than Harald + SK mechanics which are basically limited to Axeman AFTER his change some patches ago. Ge'els was always designed to be the "breeding-Captain" whilst Axeman was originally not designed to synergize with Harald, but Crach an Craite (he used to trigger only on self-wounding).

The equation +2 -2 ~= 0 only appears unfavorable to MS when Harald and Ge'els directly oppose each other as -2 per unit really increases in value against a spam-heavy deck. However, considering different match ups Ge'els strength is really only determined by the composition of your own deck, whilst Haralds ultimately depends on the composition of your opponents deck. For that it is actually easier to get the most out of Ge'els ability as you can build your deck accordingly.

It seems fair to me that good decks (and Ge'els is arguably a very good deck - I play both, Ge'els and Harald at R15) have certain bad matchups. That is however, not a problem of lacking synergies or strength difference.

 

[RickMelethron]

Just to remind you... Full board starts with Behemoths. They are same vulnurable to lock as axemen, they are much more vulnurable to alzur and they cant be resurrected due to absenece of resurrectors so in general behemoths are much worse and quite unstable... Also, just a funny story: Coral and Woodland hit with fog exactly 1 same row of arachas... Jeees what a brilliant balance of gold cards...

UPD to monster's weakness: NG palyers realised they can completely counter nekkers... Once and for all without a signle lock...

and where do your super harald decks rank in the meta? i see geels consume decks doing very well.

PS: if you had to edit my original post into "blah blah" to try and make yourself look better, that just shows how weak your arguments are

 

[Ruthless95]

ever heard of d-bomb?

ever heard of not having it in deck or not drawing it out? ever heard of SK resurrect ability? SK never runs out of res and wounding but monsters do run out of behemoth and vran. D-bomb a 30 strength axmen (if you are having D-bomb in deck ofc) don't worry mate stemmelford is there, yen is there, yencon is there, harold is there, ragh nar hoog is there, field marshal dodu agitator is there, weather is there brokvar archers are there. possibilites are end less. and then if you be too cheeky he corals your row and that 7 strength newly D-bombed axemen WINS. have i heard of clear skies now you ask?
12 5 strength arachas takes 1 igni and MS player has 0 way of rebuilding that power back on the board.

 

[Sapphyxus]

ever heard of SK resurrect ability? SK never runs out of res and wounding. . .

Exaggeration. RNG is a bitch to all equally. I've had plenty of games where I wanted even one rez, and I didn't have one - even running 3 Freyas, a Beggar, and Sig.