[WH Riders] High Risk - High Reward deck

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[WH Riders] High Risk - High Reward deck

WH Riders is my favourite monster card and i taught about creating a deck around it. here's the template (these are just the cards i got on my possession, i'll throw some suggestions about obvious changes that need to be made in order to make it more efficient).
http://www.gwentdb.com/deckbuilder/4...3:2;50226:4:1;

This key card is obviously WH Riders, all you have to do is win the first round (just win it, even with a -1 or -2 card disadvantage) and you'll get a high chance of winning the 3rd round whilemaking sure your ennemy spent most of his ressources because he has to win the 2nd round. He're the general scenario :
  • 1st Round : try to win even spending high value cards like white frost, Nithral (he'll also bait burst damage to get your riders safe 2nd round), abuse the Célénos Harpies and baityour opponent's damage even more (they generally try to get the first round and nullify your carry-over strength give by harpie eggs and Earth golem), don't show your WH riders to your ennemy and hope you bait all his bursts with Nithral and such.
  • 2nd Round : we admit here that you won first round, by let's say 1-2 card disadvantage (in some case, spamming frost at an ennemy that has no mean to clear it gives you first round with just -1 card Disadvantage), now is the time to get out your WH Riders as quick as possible (so they can gain str) using the riders you managed to draw and WH navigator/Eredin. Make your opponent commit all his ressources because they have to win the round. (this'll be hard for them since you could have 1 frost/white frost left and you gain +3 str each turn
  • 3rd Round : if the game went well for you, you should be ahead by 30-40 points and your oppnent has only 1-3 cards to play.




Suggestions :

Gold Cards
I'd suggest these cards to add (mendatory for pretty much any deck monster), better replace the crappy golds i use xD :
  • Caranthir
  • Succubus
  • pretty much any decent gold like Kayran/Ge'els/Regis/Renew...etc
Silver Cards
  • Water Hag
  • Fiend (replace cleaver with it)
  • Crones
  • Jottun
  • Azure's Double Cross (Operator-Navigator Combo)
  • Iris
Bronze Cards
  • Don't have much ideas here, maybe replacing the earth golem by an Ekimmara, feel free to suggest.
Strength of this deck :

- Good overall carry-over strenght
- Strong clear skies (Archgriffin) which makes up from the damage weather dealt to your units (sometimes even gaining advantage when you harpy eggs were their main target)
- Good Operator-Navigator combo, giving you more versatility and a +12 str while only giving a useless +3 to your opponent. (care for mirror matches tough...)
- Ereding used at it's full potential (getting a free rider from him and in some cases getting one rider from Operator is really helpfull)

Weakness :

-Somewhat dependant of Riders, but has many ways of getting them (i could get them on board in the 5 games i played with it so far)
-Very vunerable to Scorch, and relatively vulnerable to heavy burs/Lockt (since you can have +1 rider with Eredin and +1 from operator, it requires quite a lot of damage to bring down your cards, and Nithral is also a great bait to high cards)
-Vunerable to cheap damage at some point (once you've got tour riders out they start regaining str)

Notes :
I don't really know how viable this deck is, i just made it for fun and the strategy behind it seemed solid to me xD
-Spamming Riders (more than 3) won't trigger their Trio effect, so don't do it unless you got some of them locked.

That's it, thanks for reading and feel free to suggest any changes.
 
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4RM3D

Ex-moderator
The idea behind this deck is not new. Dwarves are most famous for this with their resilience units. It basically all comes down to whether or not the opponent has the right removal cards. If you really want to (ab)use this mechanic, then the Letho trick gives you more consistent wins. But even then the whole strategy falls apart with one simple card. It's always going to be a gamble. Something which is fine for casual play, but not good for ranked play.
 
i agree that it's somewhat a gamble, i didn't test it vs top tier decks and mine in it's state (with those crap golds and silvers) isn't optimal at all, it has better power and versatility with better cards. I'd say the the "toss" is in your favor, weather cards can't harm you enough since you clear them with archgriffin which also gives you 7pts, and you can spam weather and get some flexible hands with Navigator/Eredin so you'r not tied with only 1 play. Many decks doesn't run scorch which is the biggest threat, you can easily lock NG's rot tossers and such and with the succubus it's just icing on the cake (800 scraps to get that ***** T_T ).
Btw, the dwarves are still weak to weather and can't clear it and regain str at the same time, besides having to play only around the resilience effect while WH can spam some weather control.

i don't really care about ranked atm, broken meta. maybe the nerfs will get in this deck's favor xD
 
If i have my fiend, alzur thunder, succubus etc in hand , it is a 75% sure loss for you. i lock one and alzur the 2nd while playing my harpies and we both go to round 3 almost same carryover but you down 1 or 2 cards.
 
Michelazz;n9053100 said:
If i have my fiend, alzur thunder, succubus etc in hand , it is a 75% sure loss for you. i lock one and alzur the 2nd while playing my harpies and we both go to round 3 almost same carryover but you down 1 or 2 cards.

i may have them in hand too and unlock my rider and play another one with operator/Eredin if one got stolen, or maybe just steal it back with a succubus. My budget deck is not a match for optimal decks (like any other budget deck) that have many locks, steals.
Alzur thunder is a big threat, it can be dealt with but it depends on what i have in my hand.
 
LyLightBringer i started Open beta with a wild hunt deck and had good results until i reached ranked play ( started rank 7 or 8) . Here were everything started to change. People were playing in a smarter way and the wild hunt riders started to appear weak. So i changed them with harpies ( they give you same carryover win or lose no conditions) and everything started to look better. Now i am rank 14 with 2711 MMR. Need 2-3 more games and i will reach hopefully rank 15. Kept eredin as leader ( my favourite) . Kept the wild hunt hounds but removed the riders and navigators and put harpies archgriffins and drowners instead.
 
Michelazz;n9053440 said:
LyLightBringer i started Open beta with a wild hunt deck and had good results until i reached ranked play ( started rank 7 or 8) . Here were everything started to change. People were playing in a smarter way and the wild hunt riders started to appear weak. So i changed them with harpies ( they give you same carryover win or lose no conditions) and everything started to look better. Now i am rank 14 with 2711 MMR. Need 2-3 more games and i will reach hopefully rank 15. Kept eredin as leader ( my favourite) . Kept the wild hunt hounds but removed the riders and navigators and put harpies archgriffins and drowners instead.

yep, you play more of a weather control deck which is what my other WH deck is all about. Eredin is obviously the best leader for non consuming decks no doubts about it, your card set gives you more flexibility and more control over the opponent units. I didn't test my deck in ranked mode (missing too much good cards to do so) but i think it has some chances. WH decks clearly lacks big tempo plays and relying on frost means playing it early (1st-2nd round to get maximum value out of it and to avoid drawing biting frost cards especially on the 3rd round) that's why i'd prefer an agressiv deck first round to get maximum resilience value out of 3 riders, the maximum i got so far was 19 str each, which means 57 points lead into the 3rd round all i had to do was passing my turn. But it was risky and i could get shut down on the 1st and second round.
 
The problem is the cards lack flexibility. They are only good if you can win the first round. The problem is your deck list is not going to win the first round against high tempo decks. You just do not have enough points outside of WH rider to do so. Your opponent will either bleed you out of everything and force you to play riders if you want to win, bleed you out and still make you lose the round, or pass after their massive tempo plays and force you to go down 2-3 cards because this deck has no way to quickly catch up.

The main issue is that you're not even being rewarded that highly for playing these cards. I can't think of a single popular deck that doesn't have a way to remove or lock them. You want to bleed them out of their removal before you play the riders, but at the same time saving riders until later turns ruins most of their value. Dwarves execute this strategy about 100x better and they don't really see much play right now.
 
MooshieMooshie;n9058580 said:
The problem is the cards lack flexibility. They are only good if you can win the first round. The problem is your deck list is not going to win the first round against high tempo decks. You just do not have enough points outside of WH rider to do so. Your opponent will either bleed you out of everything and force you to play riders if you want to win, bleed you out and still make you lose the round, or pass after their massive tempo plays and force you to go down 2-3 cards because this deck has no way to quickly catch up.

The main issue is that you're not even being rewarded that highly for playing these cards. I can't think of a single popular deck that doesn't have a way to remove or lock them. You want to bleed them out of their removal before you play the riders, but at the same time saving riders until later turns ruins most of their value. Dwarves execute this strategy about 100x better and they don't really see much play right now.

As i said i didn't play this deck against competitiv decks and i don't think it has a chance with the current meta, you got a good point saying that i must win first round without using riders because that's one of it' biggest weaknesses, but at the same time if i draw the 3 riders in hand first turn, then i can use Eredin/Navigators to get hounds anf frost the opponent. If i had Ge'els coupled with royal decree i'd have even higher chances to get Nithral and i don't see any Tempo that can resist double frosted lanes with Nithral on the board, they generally give it up. (if they burst nithral then your riders are even more safe). I agree with you tough, winning the first round is the key and it depends on what the opponent has in hand to actually be able to counter you.

I don't know much about the dwarves executing this strategy but i guess their deck doesn't have the weather control ? I played around it for a couple of games (with the dwarf Hero card) and i just get destroyed by weather and scorch. while i can easily repel off weather with the WH deck thanks to the archgriffin.
 
I'm of the same opinion as most of the others. I played a deck very similar to what you're suggesting when OB first came out. There are just too many counters to the riders to make them a viable choice as your main offence. Pretty much everyone has some sort of weather removal so frost spamming isn't even going to guarantee you R1.
 
I have a similar deck. But Because WH Riders are easy to predict. Soon as an opponent see's 1 they know what your trying to do and prioritize there removal and in the current meta there is removal aplenty. WH Riders being vulnerable to just about all of them.

My deck has an answer though. With a bit of luck, Ideal play goes like so.

Starting hand:
  • WH Riders (all copies if possible)
  • Quen Sign
  • Operator
  • WH Navigators(all copies if possible)
  • Removal of some kind e.g Geralt Igni, Scorch,
  • Nekker warriors 1-2

I copy my WH Rider that I summon with Eredin with Nekker Warrior 1-2 times. Use operator to create another copy in my hand. So now you have 5-7 copies in your deck with 2-3 in hand ideally. Use Quen sign. Then remove enemy cards, If they have created some extreme tempo. Play 2 WH navigators and summon in your WH riders let them burn cards then Ideally with a whopping scorch force them to concede the round.

Following Round you play your remaining WH Riders while milking the opponent's cards until you see an opportune time to pass.

Other Cards in deck

Golds
  • Caretaker (enable you too steal back the copied WH rider you gave the opponent with operator)
  • Ciri:Brave (recover lost CA)
  • Avallac'h (help when you just dint get the card you need. In 2nd round can give you're Riders more boosting time)


Silvers
  • Alzur Double Cross (if you don't use and other cards over 6 cost its a guaranteed WH rider summon that will also be 2 str higher mitigating scorch risk)
  • King of beggers (offset lost tempo in 1st round)
  • Summoning circle (use to copy the WH Rider if your opponent plays theirs)
  • Octvist (amazing in round 2 to recover CA)
  • Decoy

Bronze
  • First Light

The other Bronze cards I interchange quite often.

I can post my Actual Deck list if requested. but the idea is to summon more Riders then can be dealt with
 
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