Some people accuse me of trolling when I tout the merits of the provision system. [Nope.] The fact is that the provisions system is wonderful. But there is something in GWENT that isn't wonderful in its current state, and that thing is Orders. Yopu see, I attribute most of the game's issues to the Order mechanic.
Think about going first. You have a very powerful hand on round one. Only good cards. No rubbish bronzes just the good stuff. I mention this because maybe if u did have a rubbish card, you'd play that first as cover, but in this hand you don't. You have to play something that is vital to your game plan. So you play a a Gold card with an interesting and fun to use ability. What is your opponent's first move? Well since I can't log in I can't look up the card's name, but they play the card that "Kills the lowest units". The result is an empty board in a game that tries to represent the tactical virtues of two armies clashing. (not ideal)
And depending on teh game, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th card that you play may also get instantly blown up or imprisoned. Because of this situation where your most interesting cards generally get removed or locked almost instantly, people know that it is important that the Orders they include in their deck make a big impact in as small a time window as possible. This places more pressure on the Orders from a design standpoint as each card deisgn strives to be relevant in this removal/lock heavy environment. Which of course, only serves to reinforce the idea that to include plentiful removal and locks in your deck forms a solid foundation for success. It's like a snake that's eating itself.
I think the outcome of playing a unit with abilities would become a whole lot less binary if instead of Charges, each unit casted its abilities from a unique shared resource of some kind. Like maybe monsters have to kill things in order to build enough mana to cast their Orders. Whether enemies or themselves, they have to kill something and they build up their monster resource which will give them enough "mana" but let's just call their resource "Blood" or something ilke that so when you do drop your unit with an ability he should be able to cast it right away. Skellige already has a very similiar mechanic in their Bloodlust system!! Aha, so I'm NOT crazy am I? GWENT is already doing this. (I even gave you a hint of where I was headed by naming my monster resource "Blood". Did you catch it? Good for you! ) But they need to do it MORE!
Now if you give all Order abilities Zeal or at least most of them... you'd have to rewrite basically all of them. I think most Orders should either become condisional Deploy abilities like Skelliige's Bloodlust OR they should apply an aura like effect similiar to traps. You know how traps have a countdown or a trigger. I think most Orders should be like that. For example: The golem that deals 1 damage to a row. He should cast that ability instantly. But the effect should only trigger after a countdown. This effect would lie dormant on the row that has been targeted. It can be removed by using a clearing effect card that nobody seems to have any use for in the game's current state.
The Pirate guy who buffs ships and triggers 1 damage to random enemy when you play a pirate. Instead of just killing or locking the pirate to remove his aura what you should really have to do interfere with the unique resource that his ability is drawing from. How? By using tactics, the same way you can counter a Skellige's Bloodlust by buffing all your units you should be able to counter all these other unique resources too throughout the course fo the game. So it's not just the STR numbers on the field that matter, but also the tactics, and so forth.
Of course many removal cards and lock cards will have to be repurposed in this enviornment. There that is my official posistion of Orders.
Think about going first. You have a very powerful hand on round one. Only good cards. No rubbish bronzes just the good stuff. I mention this because maybe if u did have a rubbish card, you'd play that first as cover, but in this hand you don't. You have to play something that is vital to your game plan. So you play a a Gold card with an interesting and fun to use ability. What is your opponent's first move? Well since I can't log in I can't look up the card's name, but they play the card that "Kills the lowest units". The result is an empty board in a game that tries to represent the tactical virtues of two armies clashing. (not ideal)
And depending on teh game, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th card that you play may also get instantly blown up or imprisoned. Because of this situation where your most interesting cards generally get removed or locked almost instantly, people know that it is important that the Orders they include in their deck make a big impact in as small a time window as possible. This places more pressure on the Orders from a design standpoint as each card deisgn strives to be relevant in this removal/lock heavy environment. Which of course, only serves to reinforce the idea that to include plentiful removal and locks in your deck forms a solid foundation for success. It's like a snake that's eating itself.
I think the outcome of playing a unit with abilities would become a whole lot less binary if instead of Charges, each unit casted its abilities from a unique shared resource of some kind. Like maybe monsters have to kill things in order to build enough mana to cast their Orders. Whether enemies or themselves, they have to kill something and they build up their monster resource which will give them enough "mana" but let's just call their resource "Blood" or something ilke that so when you do drop your unit with an ability he should be able to cast it right away. Skellige already has a very similiar mechanic in their Bloodlust system!! Aha, so I'm NOT crazy am I? GWENT is already doing this. (I even gave you a hint of where I was headed by naming my monster resource "Blood". Did you catch it? Good for you! ) But they need to do it MORE!
Now if you give all Order abilities Zeal or at least most of them... you'd have to rewrite basically all of them. I think most Orders should either become condisional Deploy abilities like Skelliige's Bloodlust OR they should apply an aura like effect similiar to traps. You know how traps have a countdown or a trigger. I think most Orders should be like that. For example: The golem that deals 1 damage to a row. He should cast that ability instantly. But the effect should only trigger after a countdown. This effect would lie dormant on the row that has been targeted. It can be removed by using a clearing effect card that nobody seems to have any use for in the game's current state.
The Pirate guy who buffs ships and triggers 1 damage to random enemy when you play a pirate. Instead of just killing or locking the pirate to remove his aura what you should really have to do interfere with the unique resource that his ability is drawing from. How? By using tactics, the same way you can counter a Skellige's Bloodlust by buffing all your units you should be able to counter all these other unique resources too throughout the course fo the game. So it's not just the STR numbers on the field that matter, but also the tactics, and so forth.
Of course many removal cards and lock cards will have to be repurposed in this enviornment. There that is my official posistion of Orders.
Last edited by a moderator: