The Issue of Spies

[Moratia]

This is not that simple, SC is far to be the only way to abuse spy, Caretaker, Emyr, Decoy ect...
If you win the round one card down, then you can reverse tempo at the cost of 13 pts, that fit into the suggestion i've made and is a strategic option to do so, same as carry over, i'm ok for that because you get a fair advantages for a silver card at a fair cost.
If you win the round at even card then it is an issue because you will force your opponent to play a card and not only deny his carry over but take a sur card advantages since your opponent cannot pass. Which is way too strong as advantages for a silver card at no cost at all.
Since it is a kind of gameover mechanic and the only answer possible is to have his own spy in hand, you first jeopardize the entire game on the single fact one player draw his spy or not, plus you make the spy card a mandatory card that will be present in every single deck created which completly ruin some build and make the meta so thin that we keep see same deck over and over again.

Spy card is good and i not say they should be deleted, i'm saying that they should never been able to give a card advantages, they should allow you to reverse the tempo (so play the card immedatly if you are even or higher in card, or can keep it if you are down in card).

 

[Theo_FP]

An alternate solution to the scourge of spy cards, which I have not seen anyone suggest so far, would be to brick the pulled card's special effect, making the value of the card purely power-based. An example would be: cards like Slave Driver with the create ability would have that effect taken away from it, thus making it a 2 point card.

 

[Barracuda88]

...
If you win the round at even card then it is an issue because you will force your opponent to play a card and not only deny his carry over but take a sur card advantages since your opponent cannot pass. Which is way too strong as advantages for a silver card at no cost at all.
Since it is a kind of gameover mechanic and the only answer possible is to have his own spy in hand, you first jeopardize the entire game on the single fact one player draw his spy or not, plus you make the spy card a mandatory card that will be present in every single deck created which completly ruin some build and make the meta so thin that we keep see same deck over and over again.
...QUOTE]

Which is why I suggest the spy to boost to say 20, to give the opponent a little more leeway if they wanted to gamble on a pass. You mentioned carryover. If you nerf CA spies, you will have the same issue with carryover being auto-included in every deck.

Also, CA is a bit too important right now in the era of Nova-type finishers. I wish there would be timer-based cards like Borkh which could extend the play beyond "the pass".

 

[partci]

... If you nerf CA spies, you will have the same issue with carryover being auto-included in every deck...

Not if you make it to trigger at the end of the turn, like Ronvid is. Which is the correct thing to do.

 

[Jeydra]

It's not as dramatic as all that, if the spies are not abused with SC. If you win a round down one card, spy is pretty your only chance to even the odds. If you win the round on even cards, you get card advantage regardless, unless your opponent had carry over, and then the spy does help, unless he has his own spy. And if you win round one with a card up somehow, you already won, spy or no spy. I did suggest the spy power to be boosted higher to compensate for the rising bronze power, but i would NOT want them to go away completely. Spies are great cards (unless they're NG spies)

Eh, if you win a round down one card, you can just pass and "even the odds". The only time you cannot is when the opponent has carryover.

 

[partci]

... The only time you cannot is when the opponent has carryover.

Thus all carryover should receive the Ronvid Treatment.

 

[Guest 4226291]

This is not that simple, SC is far to be the only way to abuse spy, Caretaker, Emyr, Decoy ect...
If you win the round one card down, then you can reverse tempo at the cost of 13 pts, that fit into the suggestion i've made and is a strategic option to do so, same as carry over, i'm ok for that because you get a fair advantages for a silver card at a fair cost.
If you win the round at even card then it is an issue because you will force your opponent to play a card and not only deny his carry over but take a sur card advantages since your opponent cannot pass. Which is way too strong as advantages for a silver card at no cost at all.
Since it is a kind of gameover mechanic and the only answer possible is to have his own spy in hand, you first jeopardize the entire game on the single fact one player draw his spy or not, plus you make the spy card a mandatory card that will be present in every single deck created which completly ruin some build and make the meta so thin that we keep see same deck over and over again.

Spy card is good and i not say they should be deleted, i'm saying that they should never been able to give a card advantages, they should allow you to reverse the tempo (so play the card immedatly if you are even or higher in card, or can keep it if you are down in card).

They’re already doomed. And making them stubborn blocks all problems except summoning circle.

 

[ThuleD]

So the new patch is live, and what do we see?
Spies are One-Use, all of the abuse is blocked, and they still are in every single top-tier deck. And Double Cross is rising in popularity to pull them more consistently.

It seems, I was absolutely right - the spy spam meta simply opened the eyes of the community to the insane power of spies, which was kinda overlooked before that.

But now, I think the spies became even more problematic: there are now exactly 2 cards which can counter an enemy spy - your spy, or a Cross into a spy. This means the spies are even more high rolly: if you get a spy as a second player, there is less of a chance the opponent has an answer, and cheap wins become even cheaper, since you now need to roll even higher, but getting those high rolls is even more impactful, since the chance of counterplay is even lower.

And so I will stand my ground - spies are broken and need to be removed and replaced with actually fun and interactive CA designs.

 

[partci]

... all of the abuse is blocked...

Spoiler

Milva, Johnny, Avallac'h: The Sage

 

[ThuleD]

Spoiler

Milva, Johnny, Avallac'h: The Sage

How is Johnny abusing spies?

Avallach is too inconsistent, though I had that happen to me once, it is by now means competitive. I'm borderline alright with it being a thing, though as I said innumerable times, I just want to see the spies gone.

Milva... Well, she just lets you win in 1 card after playing a spy, a lot of cards can do that. Won't really count that as abuse. I mean you can do the same with Schirru, Barklay into Cleaver in round 1, hell even Ciri:Nova if you want.

 

[Masur]

The opening post could be a solution to the coin flip, consider the following slightly modified version of it. You can't put CA spies in your deck but if you go first in round 1 then you get your faction's CA spy. The CA spy can only be used during round 1 and just like your leader it is not a part of your hand. Then balancing the coin flip becomes a question of how many points that round 1 only CA spy which the player going second can't answer should have.

 

[ThuleD]

The opening post could be a solution to the coin flip, consider the following slightly modified version of it. You can't put CA spies in your deck but if you go first in round 1 then you get your faction's CA spy. The CA spy can only be used during round 1 and just like your leader it is not a part of your hand. Then balancing the coin flip becomes a question of how many points that round 1 only CA spy which the player going second can't answer should have.

I think that's a bit too convoluted - why not simply put a new card into the first player's hand, instead of one of their starting cards? And since it is banished when swapped, you won't be able to store it in the deck for later use anyway.

As for the points... Probably raising it to 15 will be enough. In the current meta 13 feels a bit too easy to overcome with possible bronze chains of 14+ points. 15 will be more tricky to play., since most bronzes cap out their value at 14 and you will likely need to spend a silver to negate a 15 point spy, which imho will be fair, since the spy will always be in the first player's hand.

 

[Masur]

I think that's a bit too convoluted - why not simply put a new card into the first player's hand, instead of one of their starting cards? And since it is banished when swapped, you won't be able to store it in the deck for later use anyway.

That depends on if you want to allow all of the interactions with cards in your hand to apply to the CA spy or not. You could either give the player who goes first only the choice of using the CA spy to reverse the coin flip in round 1, or also the option to use the CA spy to bleed their opponent in round 2. There are plenty of ways to adjust the details to avoid any potential problems and fine tune the balancing of giving the player who goes first a CA spy.

 

[ThuleD]

That depends on if you want to allow all of the interactions with cards in your hand to apply to the CA spy or not. You could either give the player who goes first only the choice of using the CA spy to reverse the coin flip in round 1, or also the option to use the CA spy to bleed their opponent in round 2. There are plenty of ways to adjust the details to avoid any potential problems and fine tune the balancing of giving the player who goes first a CA spy.

True enough. I don't think we can theorycraft every possible outcome, only testing can give any concrete results, so we have to hope that CDPR listens and does something about the issue after proper testing.

 

[Jeydra]

So the new patch is live, and what do we see?
Spies are One-Use, all of the abuse is blocked, and they still are in every single top-tier deck. And Double Cross is rising in popularity to pull them more consistently.

It seems, I was absolutely right - the spy spam meta simply opened the eyes of the community to the insane power of spies, which was kinda overlooked before that.

But now, I think the spies became even more problematic: there are now exactly 2 cards which can counter an enemy spy - your spy, or a Cross into a spy. This means the spies are even more high rolly: if you get a spy as a second player, there is less of a chance the opponent has an answer, and cheap wins become even cheaper, since you now need to roll even higher, but getting those high rolls is even more impactful, since the chance of counterplay is even lower.

And so I will stand my ground - spies are broken and need to be removed and replaced with actually fun and interactive CA designs.

I don't agree. In the previous patch it was possible to not run spies because if the opponent is running spies he probably also has Summoning Circle, and if you're not running your own spy you brick his Summoning Circle. Now every deck might as well just run spy because why not.

I'm finding spies more tolerable now and am not convinced they need to be removed. I'll point out they fill one vital function: to stop you from getting bled to death in round 2. For example if you're playing Axemen and lose round one, without spies, the opponent can simply bleed you as much as he wants. There's nothing you can do even if you're up 50+ points. But with a spy, you can now go to round 3 up two cards instead of up just one.

The only problem I have with spies currently is when they accentuate the coin flip. The Brouver / Yaevinn / Cleaver deck is an excellent example of this, as is any Ciri: Nova deck that leads with spy on winning the coin flip because they'll either win on even or lose up two cards if the opponent doesn't have a spy. A possible solution: make spies not playable for the first ~3 turns of the game.

 

[ThuleD]

I don't agree. In the previous patch it was possible to not run spies because if the opponent is running spies he probably also has Summoning Circle, and if you're not running your own spy you brick his Summoning Circle. Now every deck might as well just run spy because why not.

I'm finding spies more tolerable now and am not convinced they need to be removed. I'll point out they fill one vital function: to stop you from getting bled to death in round 2. For example if you're playing Axemen and lose round one, without spies, the opponent can simply bleed you as much as he wants. There's nothing you can do even if you're up 50+ points. But with a spy, you can now go to round 3 up two cards instead of up just one.

The only problem I have with spies currently is when they accentuate the coin flip. The Brouver / Yaevinn / Cleaver deck is an excellent example of this, as is any Ciri: Nova deck that leads with spy on winning the coin flip because they'll either win on even or lose up two cards if the opponent doesn't have a spy. A possible solution: make spies not playable for the first ~3 turns of the game.

I will point out once again - I am not against CA designs, they are needed for the overall health of the game. But in their current form they are cancerous - they limit design space, make coinflip even worse (though we regretably saw no effort to fix it in the first place), they are boring and pretty much essential in nearly every deck. We can have more fun CA designs, but spies need to be gone first.

 

[SentienceLOL]

Definitely coin flip abuse

 

[Dant3s15]

Should CDPR remove cheap CA spies?

I mean, they should not be able to be played for less than -13 and yet they are tutored with Brouver, Skjall or Rainfarn, This is just stupid to allow one faction too always have spy in hand(looking at you Brouver) and every other not. Or just remove them from the game, with no coinflip fix on the horizon they make loosing coinflip much worse.

 

[Draconifors]

Dant3s15

Thread merged.

 

[TrompeLaMort]

If you think about it, all the cases when the use of spy seems abusive, they are being played to a losing situation. This clearly points toward the solution (that I proposed in another thread): make spies give CA only if you are still ahead after playing them.

But honestly, I like the idea of spies, but if it is to stay like it is now, I would much rather they just delete them. "Oh, spies are a high skill card." How much skill does it take for second player to play turn 1 spy? (And then either first player has a spy, and he plays his --- so much skill by the way --- or he doesn't and he lost.) That is the most brain-dead, abusive and stupid thing in the game. It is not how spies should be played, yet it works wonders.