ZERO strategy - what is wrong with HC76

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I've come to the realisation that without any influence on the initial spread of cards, it is 100% a pure game of chance.

Example - I try a deck with Caranthir, Ruehin, Phoenix with obvious connetations. Click play game and we're off.

R1 the ST opponent plays....Witcher Trio. Next play is Call of Forest, so witcher disappears and Ciri appears. Call of Forest played again via leader in the same play, another witcher trio disappears and Lambert then appears. My hand at this starting point has no Phoenix, no Canthir, no Ruehin. I've got two Archespores and some other bronze "filler". I've got some bronze synergy with Forktail/Arachas/Vran but I've only got a Forktail, Vran's nowhere to be seen.

No chance in the round. Next round oppo goes for it. Why? He has two dwarves with mega boost in his hand. I play some big cards - Frightener/Kayran combo - and OF COURSE Geralt Igni appears. I've now played Phoenix, but there's not going to be a R3 so I've got Caranthir (brick), Phoenix x 2 (bricks).

The oppo seems to have every card they need, at the right time, and it happens repeatedly. The kicker is of course I go away, build the exact same deck, click "play" and naturally Call of the Forest, Witcher Trio are nowhere to be seen!!!!!!!!

I think the game needs a complete overhaul. As it stands, thanks to smaller hands, it's VERY hard to get the synergy you're looking for. It strikes me that CDPR have built a game here that tries to put archetypes together, but in limiting both hands and mulligans have crapped on the concept to make it ALL about the RNGsus initial deal.

They have to do one of three things to at least try and save this game:

1) Even the deal. I've been crying it for it since Gwent Beta, but if the provision deal in my first example was EVEN, I would have had Phoenix, Ruehin and whatever else to combat the fact the opponent had his best R1 cards in hand. With my deal being so markedly worse than theirs, I've lost before we even play a hand and I've quit twice recently before even laying a card down, knowing my hand won't make it through.
2) Build some kind of pre-deal strategy into it. Perhaps add 3 x "bankers" that you DEFINITELY get in that Round. It's a layer of strategy that allows you to at least have some sense of control over what happens at the start. It's also about making it fairer, and as the hand is smaller it's a better way of securing the cards you absolutely have to have, and encourages better deck build synergies.
3) Just put the bloody hand count and mulligans back to what they were. There was nothing wrong with 13 cards (including leader), I still don't know why the feck they would change it.
 
Yeah well, the devs took the approach of statistics and hand 'diversity' in order to kill getting the same hand and applying the same strategy each match.
So on average you'll get a fked up hand as often as your opponent and you just have to play a lot of matches to even this. The bad thing is that the diversity we get by not getting a good hand every time is boring - it's really boring if you can't play any combos and just lose, and hope the next time it's the other way around and your opponent has the bad hand.
 
if ur starting hand doesn't allow u to even try to fight in 1 round than its time to step ur deckbuilding game up
cheers
Not true bro. IF you lose the coin that means you HAVE to win round 1 or you might even get to a card disadvantage. the 5 points on the board do not help a lot if your draw sucks. And with the general decrease of mulligans in the recent patch, the thing is getting even worse. instead of decreasing them, they should have given all leaders +1 mulligan or smth.
 
I think it's all bull, to be honest.

I had an 8 point advantage R1, oppo plays rot tosser, I play Keltullis, kills the cow leaving me 8 ahead, 3 cards each. Out of absolutely nowhere, he plays Joachim into Leo Bonhart, that kills my 10 power Vran, meaning I've now lost card advantage. You would literally have to have the best luck in the world to have that exact, specific draw that not only offers a 17 point SWING but also then renders my final two cards useless in the face of it.

I'd won the previous game so it constantly, repeatedly feels like I lose if the program simply decides i'm going to, and there's not a thing I can do about it. The opponent I beat had a crappy hand, no doubt my superior deal won it. Genuinely feels like there's nothing else to it, no strategy, no intelligence, just a series of rigged programming RNG mechanics that make me win or lose.

As for the comments of master deckbuilder killaszit, maybe we should all just go to Youtube and copy the latest meta? That's gotta be so much fun, right? Heaven forfend I expect a strategy game to have some kind of strategy in it.
 
As for the comments of master deckbuilder killaszit, maybe we should all just go to Youtube and copy the latest meta? That's gotta be so much fun, right? Heaven forfend I expect a strategy game to have some kind of strategy in it.

im far from deckbuilding master but 1 thing I know for sure: part of proper deckbuilding is to lower chances of bad starting hands as much as possible
 

rrc

Forum veteran
IOut of absolutely nowhere, he plays Joachim into Leo Bonhart, that kills my 10 power Vran, meaning I've now lost card advantage.

As for the comments of master deckbuilder killaszit, maybe we should all just go to Youtube and copy the latest meta? That's gotta be so much fun, right? Heaven forfend I expect a strategy game to have some kind of strategy in it.

I always run Bonhart in my NG decks. In case of my enemy-boost deck, I run Regis, Bekkar's mirror too so that at least one of that is in my hand to handle boosted enemy. 'Out of absolutely nowhere...' that is a funny expression. I mean, really very funny. The opponent may think 'out of absolutely nowhere, you played Kayran and got Frightener'

What makes you think everyone will need YouTube or netdeck to do deck building? I had never used netdecks and could manage top 10K consistently. My advice would be to spend more time on deck building than thinking that CDPR is out there to get you. You can't win all the games. If you can win 55-60% of the game you should be content. If you can't, please concentrate on deck building and don't rely on a single card to get the win condition. GL.
Post automatically merged:

BTW, what is this 'HC76'? I see that many posts (mostly negative sentimental ones) refer HC76.
 
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_Kili_

Forum regular
Post automatically merged:

BTW, what is this 'HC76'? I see that many posts (mostly negative sentimental ones) refer HC76.
It's a reference to Fallout 76. Basically it means that Homecoming is as bad as FO76

im far from deckbuilding master but 1 thing I know for sure: part of proper deckbuilding is to lower chances of bad starting hands as much as possible
Good plan in theory, the provision system, the removal of a 3rd bronze copy and the removal of tutors make that nigh impossible though
 
BTW, what is this 'HC76'? I see that many posts (mostly negative sentimental ones) refer HC76.

I also had no idea, but it took me only a minute to figure out.

Homecoming + Fallout 76 = HC76

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On the topic, this is exactly the problem I mentioned several times. Due to a lack of mulligans, tutors and thinning, getting your golds in Homecoming is a pure luck. You get the cards you need R1/R2/R3 - you easily win. You don't - you lose.

And no, it's not the same as in other card games, because:

1. Golds in Gwent are much more powerful than other cards. It other CCGs all cards (at least in constructed) have roughly the same usefulness.
2. Provision system basically requires you to put bad cards in to compensate for good golds. Again, no such restrictions in other CCGs.
3. HC has a pretty binary win conditions compared to other CCGs. Either you have the points to beat your opponent or you don't. This is especially relevant since they killed a lot of archetypes in HC. Mill, at least, offered another win con. Kambi decks occasionally worked too. They killed all of that in HC.
4. It's almost impossible to get CA unless you go 2nd and have high tempo plays.

Bottom line: consistency is what made Gwent stand out from another card games. Some people might argue this led to boring repetitive matches, but that was true only for several decks like GS and consume. Most other decks were reactive (at least in some capacity) and played differently against different opponents.
 
Good plan in theory, the provision system, the removal of a 3rd bronze copy and the removal of tutors make that nigh impossible though

u know what's funny? I see it totally oposite:D deckibuilding in HC is faaaaaaaar beter than in thus more ways to build solid deck
 
u know what's funny? I see it totally oposite:D deckibuilding in HC is faaaaaaaar beter than in thus more ways to build solid deck
When did I say deckbuilding is better/worse? I just said building a consistent deck is impossible
 
They went from maximum thinning too minimum thinning, bad idea . HC76 doesnt make any sense.
At least revert clearsky to previous ability. And make marching orders and doublecross boost by 1 !
 
When did I say deckbuilding is better/worse? I just said building a consistent deck is impossible

what u think when u say "consistent deck"?
if it stands for "deck that has chance to get shitty opening hand close to 0" than u wrong in my opinion (rember that u MUST take for consideration number of mulligans of ur Chief)
if it stands for something other than maybe ur right

but i was talking about opening hand and deckbuilding
 
what u think when u say "consistent deck"?
if it stands for "deck that has chance to get shitty opening hand close to 0" than u wrong in my opinion (rember that u MUST take for consideration number of mulligans of ur Chief)
if it stands for something other than maybe ur right

but i was talking about opening hand and deckbuilding
A consistent deck, atleast for me, is a deck that has a reasonably high chance to play it's strategy, or atleast has the means to do so.
Since in Gwent you are playing cards from you hand and are not really drawing a lot of cards from your deck, your starting hand is obviously a big factor in that.

Now to apply that to HC76:
>3rd Bronze copies were removed, so the pool of different cards in your deck is bigger (funnily enough the overall pool of cards got smaller compared to beta) so you automatically have more variance in your starting hand
>Blacklisting was removed. This in conjuntion with the 1st pointmakes it extremely annoying getting a good starting hand when you have a bead draw.
>Tutors were removed. Tutors would give you basically a joker for cards you need in your strategy, you can either draw one of your core cards, or a tutor for it. This mechanic drastically increases deck consistency and also improves later draws
>Mulligans are best used later in the game. This has nothing to do with your starting hand directly, but it doesn't help very much either. The goal with mulligans in HC76 is to preserve them for as long as possible, espescially if you use a leader with not that many mulligans.
>If comparing the rate of cards drawn to mullligans availiable, not counting card effects, just game mechanics, you have less mulligans for more cards drawn in comparison to beta ( HC76: 16 cards drawn, 1-3 mulligans, Beta: 13 cards drawn, 5 mulligans). That means in HC76 you have the same amount of redraws for the entire game, than you had for just round 1 in beta.
 
They went from maximum thinning too minimum thinning, bad idea . HC76 doesnt make any sense.

They tried to make Gwent more similar to Curvestone and Manascrew the Gathering, and lost everything that made Gwent stand out in the process.

Variety is not achieved by making the players having inconsistent hands, variety is having a lot of different decks which play against each other in various ways. Apparently, CDPR doesn't get that.
 
3rd Bronze copies were removed, so the pool of different cards in your deck is bigger (funnily enough the overall pool of cards got smaller compared to beta) so you automatically have more variance in your starting hand
But there are a lot more cards doing similar things, including even golds, such that we often have even more cards that do the things that we want compared to beta.
Tutors were removed. Tutors would give you basically a joker for cards you need in your strategy, you can either draw one of your core cards, or a tutor for it. This mechanic drastically increases deck consistency and also improves later draws
There are still tutors in the deck, but they are more expensive than other cards. So you have to actually decide if you want more power or consistency. (Except if you are playing SK)
If comparing the rate of cards drawn to mullligans availiable, not counting card effects, just game mechanics, you have less mulligans for more cards drawn in comparison to beta ( HC76: 16 cards drawn, 1-3 mulligans, Beta: 13 cards drawn, 5 mulligans). That means in HC76 you have the same amount of redraws for the entire game, than you had for just round 1 in beta.
That calculation is flawed, because you are neglecting the point that first of all there is the coin flip mulligan, adding 0.5 mulligans on average. Secondly drawing more cards is much stronger than mulliganing cards because you will see a lot more of your deck. And thirdly the way round 1 and 2 work now, you can get rid of up to 6 weak cards in those, without having to mulligan them.

I just said building a consistent deck is impossible
Have to disagree with that too.
I'm mainly playing a NR charge deck and in my deck I'm running (cards can have multiple functions):
-7 cards that continously generate charges + the leader
-11 cards that can be given charges to
-5 cards that profit from other cards getting charges
-5 cards that can buff other cards and thus protect engines
-4 cards for which gaining a charge means that you get double the value out of it

This way, the chance for my deck to brick is as good as zero.
 
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But there are a lot more cards doing similar things, including even golds, such that we often have even more cards that do the things that we want compared to beta.
There are a lot more useless cards, yes

There are still tutors in the deck, but they are more expensive than other cards. So you have to actually decide if you want more power or consistency. (Except if you are playing SK)
Yeah, if you don't want to be competitive I guess that's true. But then, whats the point?

That calculation is flawed, because you are neglecting the point that first of all there is the coin flip mulligan, adding 0.5 mulligans on average. Secondly drawing more cards is much stronger than mulliganing cards because you will see a lot more of your deck. And thirdly the way round 1 and 2 work now, you can get rid of up to 6 weak cards in those, without having to mulligan them.
Ever played old 40 card Foltest? Then you would not think that seeing more of your deck (in your hand) is good. And sure I can get rid of weak cards, but whats the point if I want to win?

Have to disagree with that too.
I'm mainly playing a NR charge deck and in my deck I'm running (cards can have multiple functions):
-7 cards that continously generate charges + the leader
-11 cards that can be given charges to
-5 cards that profit from other cards getting charges
-5 cards that can buff other cards and thus protect engines
-4 cards for which gaining a charge means that you get double the value out of it

This way, the chance for my deck to brick is as good as zero.
You may not brick, but are you really getting anywhere?

Just for clarification, when I'm talking about decks I mean competitive decks, that can actually take you to a high rank, not some meme decks.
 
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