Dol blathanna swordmaster

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Dol blathanna swordmaster

This card looks very unrestricted. From what i can see he can target golds and doesn't have any dmg limit like assassin or bekker. I see no reason why he couldn't kill things like unseen elder or tibor in single shot. Is he really such powerful as bronze or maybe I overlooked some kind of important detail?
 
Um no... the swordmaster damages an enemy by whatever the swordmaster's current power is. It won't kill Tibor unless it the swordmaster's strength was 25.

 
The card (bronze) can, and does, provide a bigger swing than BTM (silver). Card design and balance at its finest.
:cheers:
 
It is not that great as you suggest it is ( at least no deck so far makes good use of that card ).
You need other cards to boost it.
 
quantum_number;n9769081 said:
The card (bronze) can, and does, provide a bigger swing than BTM (silver). Card design and balance at its finest.
:cheers:

Came to check the patch out after taking a extended break from the game due to CDPR's awful balancing.

Glad to see their still terrible at designing and balancing cards. Who doesnt love 1 strength spies and bronzes that outperform silvers?
 
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quantum_number;n9769081 said:
The card (bronze) can, and does, provide a bigger swing than BTM (silver). Card design and balance at its finest.
:cheers:

Not on its own. You need to buff the Swordsmaster first.
 
quantum_number;n9769081 said:
The card (bronze) can, and does, provide a bigger swing than BTM (silver). Card design and balance at its finest.
:cheers:

Unless you have a dozen cards that buffs it first, the swing it provides is 8.
 
It is rather obvious that other cards need to be played, so I don't know why that is being pointed out. BTM needs cards as well. The Dun Banner Heavy Cavalry, a card that led to the nerfing of a bunch of other cards, provided a swing of 8 on its own, except no one played it on its own.

In any case, the cards that boost the swordmaster provide bodies, with elf tags to boot. These cards don't just disappear after they've been played, they become parts of other combos.

Time (or Swim) will tell if it's a great, good, bad or meh card. However it turns out, BTM, a silver, will still be worse. The devs said they wanted silvers reigned in, then made bronzes that outperform them. I find this ...weird, to say the least.
 
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With a buff from a Hawker Support it provides a 14 point swing with a proper target - with a removal not to forget. Against a neutral Silver providing up to 20(BTM), without having slow played cards before. A Swordmaster Buff slows you down heavily - especially in the current state of the game. The plays that lead into your BTM - mostlikely at least - are tempo plays themselves; An Ifrit, Woodlandspirit, for example. One can argue that Woodlandspirit got a lot slower with the Harpy nerf.
 
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Dol Blathanna Swordmaster currently too powerful

In my honest opinion, Dol Blathanna Swordmaster currently too powerful. Imagine combo with Hawker Support, Quen Sign. Yes, you have those low tempo plays to set it up but when you do, you have a bronze card having 20+ value almost everytime, in addition, it's a card removal.

At least limit its damage by 10 or only damage bronze and silver.
 
It is quite powerful for a bronze, lets put hawker supporters aside, because I think thats what you were refering to rather than "Hawker Smuggler". But with the new buff to iorveth which seemed needed but also vrihedd dragoons and vrihedd vangards, I don't think you even need to make this a core part of your strategy, they'll simply get boosted without much effort. But... You probably might even want to use hawker supporters on hatori and in this case you can revive the swordmaster, lets assume its a 12-16 power swing at the given time, then you decoy your hatori for another 15-19 strength, yeah we are going to see some swordmaster decks for sure.
 
KDean11

​​​​​​​Quick to complain, are we? Anyhow, Swordmaster requires a few cards or a longer round to become strong. Same can be said for a lot of units, like Protectors. The handbuff archetype was non-existent before. Now they at least have a good bronze core card. Beyond that, they have little else to synergize with. So, all in all, the Swordmaster is a pretty fair card.
 
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Zjiin;n9769511 said:
Came to check the patch out after taking a extended break from the game due to CDPR's awful balancing.

Glad to see their still terrible at designing and balancing cards. Who doesnt love 1 strength spies and bronzes that outperform silvers?

The salt is strong in this one :D
 
4RM3D;n9771071 said:
KDean11

Quick to complain, are we? Anyhow, Swordmaster requires a few cards or a longer round to become strong. Same can be said for a lot of units, like Protectors. The handbuff archetype was non-existent before. Now they at least have a good bronze core card. Beyond that, they have little else to synergize with. So, all in all, the Swordmaster is a pretty fair card.

Well I guess you're right that handbuff archetype deck doesn't have a good bronze core and this solves it. Anyway it's not more of a complaint but my opinion on the new card. But i like the card addition in general. I will try to build a deck around it.

For what it's worth, i wrote that one after i lost to an opponent with 20 power DB swordmaster.
 
DB Swordmaster buffed by Hawker Support is 20 points max (counting Hawker Support).
2x plain and simple Nilfgardiaan Knight is 22 points, + they have armor.
I can't really see how swordmasters are broken, you need to build the whole deck around them with a lot of low tempo plays.
 
DB Swordmaster has a power of 4. The only way to deliberately buff that is Hawker Support, Iorverth & Francesca. Vrihedd Dragoon is random and therefore unreliable.

So in addition to the Swordmaster itself, you need 3 bronze cards, 1 gold and 1 leader to bring ONE of your Swordmasters to 17. Now you need your opponent to actually have a target big enough to give your buffed Swordmaster full value. By comparison NG's Spotter can give you 17 points with just 3 cards total. And you can use all 3 of them for 17.

Every deck has combos like this. The difference is that the amount of cards needed for a Swordmaster deck to do a big 1 turn swing, most other decks use over several turns for a far greater value. You just don't notice that because a last second 3 pointer is more memorable than a team dominating the entire 4th quarter.

HTMekkatorque;n9770811 said:
It is quite powerful for a bronze, lets put hawker supporters aside, because I think thats what you were refering to rather than "Hawker Smuggler". But with the new buff to iorveth which seemed needed but also vrihedd dragoons and vrihedd vangards, I don't think you even need to make this a core part of your strategy, they'll simply get boosted without much effort. But... You probably might even want to use hawker supporters on hatori and in this case you can revive the swordmaster, lets assume its a 12-16 power swing at the given time, then you decoy your hatori for another 15-19 strength, yeah we are going to see some swordmaster decks for sure.

Vrihedd Vanguards don't buff units in your hand and Hattori resurrects units at base power so resurrecting a Swordmaster would bring a maximum swing of 11+whatever was used to buff Hattori.
 
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For what I’ve seen after playing a few matches with sword masters, it looks like they might be a bit too much in dedicated decks, but pretty meh otherwise. In a dedicated deck they will get buffed by Vrihedd Dragoons and Iorveth, not just Hawker support, and if you leave them for last, the chance they will accrue a significant boost from the Dragoons is high. But I don’t think they are good at all in any other deck.
 
Jurus331;n9773791 said:
DB Swordmaster has a power of 4. The only way to deliberately buff that is Hawker Support, Iorverth & Francesca. Vrihedd Dragoon is random and therefore unreliable.

So in addition to the Swordmaster itself, you need 3 bronze cards, 1 gold and 1 leader to bring ONE of your Swordmasters to 17. Now you need your opponent to actually have a target big enough to give your buffed Swordmaster full value. By comparison NG's Spotter can give you 17 points with just 3 cards total. And you can use all 3 of them for 17.

Every deck has combos like this. The difference is that the amount of cards needed for a Swordmaster deck to do a big 1 turn swing, most other decks use over several turns for a far greater value. You just don't notice that because a last second 3 pointer is more memorable than a team dominating the entire 4th quarter.



Vrihedd Vanguards don't buff units in your hand and Hattori resurrects units at base power so resurrecting a Swordmaster would bring a maximum swing of 11+whatever was used to buff Hattori.

That's why i said buff the hatori with a hawker supporter to get to 6 strength, it's a no brainer. You can bring it out at 6 power to bring out a 6 power swordmaster, thats an 18 strength power swing (6 from hatoris body, 6 from the swordmasters body and another 6 from damage), and decoy strengthens hatori by 3, so this really should be no problem at all. Not to mention 6 damage to a creep could weaken certain strategies like longships. It will be a relatively top tier deck.

But yes I think this would have to be in a very dedicated deck or maybe just 1 in a deck if you really hate succubus or something.

Other than that I think the neutral cards make spellataelia also in line for top deck material, but I think dwarfs archetype is in a pretty sad place right now, which I don't mind at all because I don't find dwarfs very interesting to play.
 
HTMekkatorque;n9776271 said:
That's why i said buff the hatori with a hawker supporter to get to 6 strength, it's a no brainer. You can bring it out at 6 power to bring out a 6 power swordmaster, thats an 18 strength power swing (6 from hatoris body, 6 from the swordmasters body and another 6 from damage), and decoy strengthens hatori by 3, so this really should be no problem at all. Not to mention 6 damage to a creep could weaken certain strategies like longships. It will be a relatively top tier deck.
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The Swordmaster has a Base Strength of 4. Your Hatori does not buff the unit he ressurects, does he? If not, he would be a 6 with a Swordmaster being a 4 and dealing 4 damage, equals 14 points for a silver that you first need to boost with another bronze card. Besides the Light Longship hits the first time as a deploy effect, thus it is a 7 strength unit which u cannot remove with a 4 strength Swordmaster.
 
Imagine this okay... Turn one SK drops a longship, you retaliate with iorveth. You follow up with say officer mulliganing a vrihedd vangard, so theres this like tiny opportunity for a second longship to come out, yeah sure but then turn two he drops another or what not then you ressurect your iorveth, i mean this is assuming a perfect hand but desperate times, you could hawker supporter one of your swordsmans, you might even have a second one in your hand ready for hattori but then really it depends on the coin flip because lets say you don't have hattori but then first turn you pre-emptively raise your swordsman by 3 with a supporter then he drops one. Just wait and see when people have collected the cards.
 
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