How cool are decks which absolutely demolish every other deck?

[BartonFink]

I mean, if you have one. Don't you find it boring to continually smash opponents? Being on the receiving end of such decks is certainly boring. In the last few days I've taken to force quitting games when I'm getting hammered. Not because I'm a poor loser, but just because it's really tedious to play these games. Sometimes when I pass, instead of someone doing the right thing and passing too when they are in front, they choose to play all their cards and just try to obliterate me. That's another instaquit time. It's not like watching this is Must See TV or anything.

I have seen comments on this forum about how some members are bugged because people copy and paste OP decks. That's annoying too. Not only are there people who take their time to come up with OP decks, but there are people who just unthinkingly copy those decks and...proceed to smash all and sundry.

I have to say that I think it's unfair to lose in the way that I have lost on occasion here in the past week or whatever. One guy had a Mon deck against whatever it was that I was playing, be it Nor or Nil. I was up by about 16 to 30 points and they had one card left to play. I was counting my chickens. They used their leader ability, played their last card and...wiped the floor with me. That seems a broken system to me. It should be hard to win from that position. As in, what are the chances that someone has a 10+ power unit to play on their last card or make a 15 point turnaround? Surprisingly high, it turns out. Other time my two card advantage going into round two counts for nothing in round three, when I can't win despite having an extra card to play or whatever. That seems unbalanced to me.

Forgot to mention this:

I'm sure that I seen comments, maybe here, that people hate how the Nil faction has so many poison units and that they think that it is unfair. Have the devs acted on that? It seems like they have, because there are so many 'new' units (to me, at least) which can just bounce your Nil units off the board. Okay, so let's say that it sucks to have a lot of your units poisoned out of the game. What if the games are close though, even though that is happening to you? By introducing cards and units which remove your Nil units too easily, the game just becomes really unbalanced and you (I) end up being smashed by loads of decks.

It's better to have good games and a chance of winning despite a lot of your units being poisoned than countering poison units by too easily removing them from the board and making Nil lose very easily as a result.

 

[Alrun24]

I mean, if you have one. Don't you find it boring to continually smash opponents? ...

Yes, I do. And that is why I don't use such decks usually. One of them (if not the worst) is NG Poison, I would never play that, but it seems you do. It seems you are playing NR, for me that is the most boring faction. And you mentioned loosing against MO. MO is not the most powerful faction now, they need a chance to win. There are some very annoying decks, more balancing is needed, I second that. But that your opponent can succed to use a big finisher against you doesn't mean that this is a broken system IMO. If you have to build a strategy around that finisher, I do not mind.

 

[Pacifixer]

I played NG Poison and it was really strong, but sometimes it can be a bit tricky, so i'm sure you are doing something wrong.

 

[thetruerenter]

Milling decks to zero is absolutely fun!

 

[BartonFink]

I played NG Poison and it was really strong, but sometimes it can be a bit tricky, so i'm sure you are doing something wrong.

No. I thought I drew great in that matchup. Had my Scenario card, had a couple of Aristocrats in my starting hand. Poison units aren't complicated. You just poison the shytte out of everything. The problem is that decks which normally don't deal damage to your units suddenly do, with cards you haven't seen before. E.g. that 1 power female unit which deals out 4,3,2.1 damage when she deploys. The Mon deck can be very strong even without having any units which deal damage. Imagine if those decks just started including new units which did deal damage. It would unbalance factions even more.

Strangely, I just played and beat another Nil player today. I was going to force quit the game after they copied a card from my deck, de la Tour. Their starting hand seemed to be made for trolling me. They also spawned my Scenario, which I wasn't playing. I hung in there and ended up winning because they didn't seem to have any Aristocrats to make use of the Scenario and I can't say that I remember them playing any poison units.

So, the problem isn't how I use poison units. It's that decks have changed by one or two units that make a massive difference to how competitive games are. For whatever reason, that changed today. I won most of my games, comfortably. I ranked up from 16 to 15 and I didn't even have to play for the extra win to guarantee that my Mosaic completion would stick. Not sure what that is all about.

 

[Pacifixer]

No. I thought I drew great in that matchup. Had my Scenario card, had a couple of Aristocrats in my starting hand. Poison units aren't complicated. You just poison the shytte out of everything. The problem is that decks which normally don't deal damage to your units suddenly do, with cards you haven't seen before. E.g. that 1 power female unit which deals out 4,3,2.1 damage when she deploys. The Mon deck can be very strong even without having any units which deal damage. Imagine if those decks just started including new units which did deal damage. It would unbalance factions even more.

Strangely, I just played and beat another Nil player today. I was going to force quit the game after they copied a card from my deck, de la Tour. Their starting hand seemed to be made for trolling me. They also spawned my Scenario, which I wasn't playing. I hung in there and ended up winning because they didn't seem to have any Aristocrats to make use of the Scenario and I can't say that I remember them playing any poison units.

So, the problem isn't how I use poison units. It's that decks have changed by one or two units that make a massive difference to how competitive games are. For whatever reason, that changed today. I won most of my games, comfortably. I ranked up from 16 to 15 and I didn't even have to play for the extra win to guarantee that my Mosaic completion would stick. Not sure what that is all about.

Well, normaly i would say that with enough skill you can play anything and win, but not in this meta - top 10 meta decks or nothing, that's how it is. Hopefully it will change tomorow.

Btw if people are playing different cards than they used to, that is a good thing!

Also Philippa is auto-included in every single NR deck. No meta MO deck except for Vampires can deal damage.

 

[BartonFink]

Well, normaly i would say that with enough skill you can play anything and win, but not in this meta - top 10 meta decks or nothing, that's how it is. Hopefully it will change tomorow.

Btw if people are playing different cards than they used to, that is a good thing!

Also Philippa is auto-included in every single NR deck. No meta MO deck except for Vampires can deal damage.

I've noticed that the game updated just a few minutes ago for me. Maybe that explains some buggy behaviour by the game. Some decks that I had which were good to go have been disabled due to changes in the provisioning. Not sure how people view that. I've had to rejig my Nil deck but not had a chance to play it yet.

As for people playing new cards being a good thing, sure, I'm not complaining about that. I'm complaining about the balance of the entire game being skewed to them because of those tiny personnel changes. A couple of cards that just have the effect of nuking my side of the board. That's not fair. I'd prefer it if changes to the game didn't do that and then having to rely on the devs nerfing their unbalanced introductions to the game.

The last couple of days I've been competitive against my opponents, even after Ranking up to 15. I had days of being hammered before though. It's just a really bizarre matchmaking system, though a mod here wants me to believe it's just randomness. To some extent, sure, but...

re top 10 meta decks or nothing: I haven't looked to copy and paste decks that are hot. I've stuck to my deck pretty much and had wildly varying results. Like I said, many days on end of being hammered by everyone. Now the last couple of days I'm winning more often than not. Weird.

 

[BartonFink]

Started getting beaten a lot today. Had another ridiculous loss. I think it was against Ske. It was in round 3. They were a mile behind me with only one card left to play. They looked dead and buried. They used their leader ability, played their last card and absolutely smashed me.

Can't say that I think it's fair that you can be more than, say, 15 points behind someone and crush them by a similar or greater margin. Mon have done that against me, maybe Nor too and now Ske, I think.

Ordinarily you'd think: "What can that guy have in their hand as their last card? They're unlikely to have a unit over 7 power and even if they did and they could damage my units by 5 points or whatever, it's still not possible to see how they can overtake this huge lead that I have".

Wrong. Again.

That would be a suggestion of mine. Maybe remove these kinds of shenanigans from GWENT.

 

[Pacifixer]

Started getting beaten a lot today. Had another ridiculous loss. I think it was against Ske. It was in round 3. They were a mile behind me with only one card left to play. They looked dead and buried. They used their leader ability, played their last card and absolutely smashed me.

Can't say that I think it's fair that you can be more than, say, 15 points behind someone and crush them by a similar or greater margin. Mon have done that against me, maybe Nor too and now Ske, I think.

Ordinarily you'd think: "What can that guy have in their hand as their last card? They're unlikely to have a unit over 7 power and even if they did and they could damage my units by 5 points or whatever, it's still not possible to see how they can overtake this huge lead that I have".

Wrong. Again.

That would be a suggestion of mine. Maybe remove these kinds of shenanigans from GWENT.

15p is nothing if your opponent still has his leader and one card. 30p swing is a lot, but it's nothing insane. It is very common to finish with 20+p play.

 

[Evangium]

Wouldn't be so bad if it were just a Ranked issue. Sadly, since the rewards are no worse for playing Unranked, and people seem to suffer progress anxiety/believe they need to lern to pilot the paint by nmbers deck before commencing their ranked climb, the casual mode is infested with them for the easy wins against those foolish enough to try out jank. Seasonal doesn't offer much relief, since CDPR doesn't make any pretence of keeping it balanced and is often solved very quickly. The only consolation there, is that in another month a different set of oppressive decks will be the new meta.

 

[BartonFink]

15p is nothing if your opponent still has his leader and one card. 30p swing is a lot, but it's nothing insane. It is very common to finish with 20+p play.

I'm not exactly sure how far they were behind me. If I thought that this would have turned out to be another bs come-from-a-lightyear-behind win I would have made a note of how far I was out front. I might have been 20 something in front and I think that I lost by double figures.

Personally, I just find that ridiculous. Think I've seen people here complain about scenarios. I wouldn't complain if they just removed leader abilities and scenarios. It doesn't particularly bother me when my leader is locked either. De la Tour still unlocks him, which is cool, if you can get him in your hand. That way you use your leader ability once to their nil.

Post automatically merged: Feb 6, 2020

Wouldn't be so bad if it were just a Ranked issue. Sadly, since the rewards are no worse for playing Unranked, and people seem to suffer progress anxiety/believe they need to lern to pilot the paint by nmbers deck before commencing their ranked climb, the casual mode is infested with them for the easy wins against those foolish enough to try out jank. Seasonal doesn't offer much relief, since CDPR doesn't make any pretence of keeping it balanced and is often solved very quickly. The only consolation there, is that in another month a different set of oppressive decks will be the new meta.

Hmm. I'll have to get used to the lingo here. You're saying that Unranked is full of script kiddies with their cut/copy decks and they beat players a lot there? I tried Unranked once and I think that I played a veteran who smashed me. Haven't returned there as my deck is a free one and I think that my decks have about 5/8 of the basic set of cards.

Back to your comment, so these Copy/Paste decks beat players in Unranked who are trying out "jank"? That last word has me stumped.

re Seasonal, agreed. The previous season plus one was awful, with de la Tour being an insta-quit for me once I could see how he played out. Playing against those decks was really boring. I played the current Season and it wasn't too bad. It's sort of amusing and maybe you could get better at it with some practice, but I don't really like the idea of tweaking my factional decks to optimise them, but I suppose veterans have loads of decks for each faction and mode.

 

[Evangium]

Hmm. I'll have to get used to the lingo here. You're saying that Unranked is full of script kiddies with their cut/copy decks and they beat players a lot there? I tried Unranked once and I think that I played a veteran who smashed me. Haven't returned there as my deck is a free one and I think that my decks have about 5/8 of the basic set of cards.

Yeah. Doesn't help that Gwent has a library now where you can import a deck straight to the game. Last time I checked it out (the library), it looked like it suffers the same problem other games that have player build sharing do - loads of copy-paste of the current meta decks, with a few gems you have to really dig deep to find. It would probably easier if I kept up with who the top players and streamers are.

Back to your comment, so these Copy/Paste decks beat players in Unranked who are trying out "jank"? That last word has me stumped.

Jank = non-competitive, play for fun/meme deck. It's a pretty broad term that can encompass decks built around a theme, decks that focus on an interesting card interaction, decks that are designed purely for meeting daily challenges (e.g. play 20 spells). The kind of deck you wouldn't take to ranked because you'd not get a chance to experience the fun or novelty of it. Sadly, even though the Ranked box under Classic is checked by default, a lot of meta deck players have figured out how to untick it to get to the mode that won't hurt their ranking if they lose. Though I doubt any of them are actually high enough to drop a rank. It's a problem that's gotten worse since HC launched. Back in Beta, there were seperate rewards for climbing the ranked ladder, so there weren't as many competitive decks in casual. They'd mainly come in near the end of the season, when ranked players had achieved their best rank and didn't want to risk losing it. For the most part, grind efficiancy tended to dictate playing ranked to clear daily challenges and progress to the next tier of ranked rewards.

re Seasonal, agreed. The previous season plus one was awful, with de la Tour being an insta-quit for me once I could see how he played out. Playing against those decks was really boring. I played the current Season and it wasn't too bad. It's sort of amusing and maybe you could get better at it with some practice, but I don't really like the idea of tweaking my factional decks to optimise them, but I suppose veterans have loads of decks for each faction and mode.

Season of the Wolf was rather vanilla. I took some consolation that the Witcher Trio was able to come back into vogue. I ended up playing a lot more ranked due to the lack of deck core variety. Pretty much every deck you was running Yrden, Igni and Witcher Trio. Season of Love is a bit ho-hum for me. It's not as bad as Season of Damien was, but it's still one I play only if the reward book forces me to. My biggest issue with the seasonal modes is that they run too long. Other games I play, 2 weeks might be the longest an event runs for, but it's usually 4 days over a weekend with rewards to encourage play. Even if the meta gets dominated by one or two archetypes, it doesn't go on long enough for it to feel stale, which keeps it feeling like a break from playing the regular game.

 

[Sumgee]

This was a good thread to read as I am really starting to really play Gwent. I DL'd the game when I 1st heard it came out then didn't touch it for a yearish. I was noticing that when I am winning big or even just have the upper hand in a game (which I contribute to good draws on my deck) I tend to get victories from the other player losing connection. Conversely when I am losing or getting crashed no one has ever disconnected (and I lose more than I win!). From the OPs post and reading through this I take it that now any leg up in a game is attributed to playing an overpowered deck and people just rage quit (or don't want to waste their time). That's a shame. Even when im getting crushed I just play it out. Let the other guy enjoy the moment.

I think I have a few DCs of my own, but they were attempts to play at work on my iPhone and I couldn't see what the heck I was doing or had a client walk in. I assumed until now most others were in a similar situation.

 

[Evangium]

This was a good thread to read as I am really starting to really play Gwent. I DL'd the game when I 1st heard it came out then didn't touch it for a yearish. I was noticing that when I am winning big or even just have the upper hand in a game (which I contribute to good draws on my deck) I tend to get victories from the other player losing connection. Conversely when I am losing or getting crashed no one has ever disconnected (and I lose more than I win!). From the OPs post and reading through this I take it that now any leg up in a game is attributed to playing an overpowered deck and people just rage quit (or don't want to waste their time). That's a shame. Even when im getting crushed I just play it out. Let the other guy enjoy the moment.

I think I have a few DCs of my own, but they were attempts to play at work on my iPhone and I couldn't see what the heck I was doing or had a client walk in. I assumed until now most others were in a similar situation.

On the rage quit side of things, It's entirely possible to fake-out wins with the right leader ability on a sub-optimal deck. It just depends on how overrepresented in the meta the leader ability and the reputation of the deck it's usually attached to. Though I will admit, Gwent is nowhere near MTG levels when it comes to players conceding a game within the first few turns to avoid playing against certain decks.

 

[BartonFink]

Yeah. Doesn't help that Gwent has a library now where you can import a deck straight to the game. Last time I checked it out (the library), it looked like it suffers the same problem other games that have player build sharing do - loads of copy-paste of the current meta decks, with a few gems you have to really dig deep to find...

Jank = non-competitive, play for fun/meme deck. It's a pretty broad term that can encompass decks built around a theme, decks that focus on an interesting card interaction, decks that are designed purely for meeting daily challenges (e.g. play 20 spells). The kind of deck you wouldn't take to ranked because you'd not get a chance to experience the fun or novelty of it...For the most part, grind efficiancy tended to dictate playing ranked to clear daily challenges and progress to the next tier of ranked rewards.

...Season of Love is a bit ho-hum for me. It's not as bad as Season of Damien was, but it's still one I play only if the reward book forces me to. My biggest issue with the seasonal modes is that they run too long. Other games I play, 2 weeks might be the longest an event runs for, but it's usually 4 days over a weekend with rewards to encourage play. Even if the meta gets dominated by one or two archetypes, it doesn't go on long enough for it to feel stale, which keeps it feeling like a break from playing the regular game.

I'm not savvy enough to use deck importing features. At least I don't think I am. Maybe it's more straightforward than I think it is but it's really not that important to me to do that kind of thing anyway. I prefer picking cards that I like but there's just so many cards in the library it's a real pain to get to know them. In that way I can see why people would want to cut/copy decks. I might post on this sort of topic in a few minutes.

Thanks for the definition of Jank. I red posted your reply or whatever you call it. Hopefully that will make your reply easy to find if someone uses the term again and I want to remind myself of what it means. I've done that myself for some of the daily rewards, just loaded up on spell cards or whatever the incentive was. It's good that you can change what your daily reward is and also that they appear to be a permanent reward, as in you don't have to complete it that day. Just complete it on one day, and not necessarily the day you started working towards it. All good.

With Seasons running too long, if I wanted to get Rewards for it then I'd probably like that about them. Haven't played more than my first game in that, just to see what it was like. I've been more focused on Ranked play recently. Managed to Rank up to 15, if that's the one to do with Mosaics, despite being spanked by some crazy buffing decks, including Nor, which wasn't such a deck before.

Maybe I'll regret asking this, but what's "HC"? It's probably something obvious. Where's the GWENT dictionary when you need one?

Post automatically merged: Feb 9, 2020

On the rage quit side of things, It's entirely possible to fake-out wins with the right leader ability on a sub-optimal deck. It just depends on how overrepresented in the meta the leader ability and the reputation of the deck it's usually attached to. Though I will admit, Gwent is nowhere near MTG levels when it comes to players conceding a game within the first few turns to avoid playing against certain decks.

You've played MTG? I played it years ago. I don't remember it having a Concede feature, which is what happens here your connection times out or you Pass, so in that way, GWENT is better than MTG.

I posted a thread here about being way out in front in the 3rd game, my opponent only having one card left to play, it looked like a certain loss to them and they sent me a GG. I'm not sure if they deliberately disconnected but I saw a Result screen giving me 2 wins for the encounter but a "Defeat" message on the Victory screen! I wrote to the Support team and one got back to me and said they looked at the encounter and it was draw. Not it makes even less sense.

re Fake-out, you mean have an opponent concede because they think you have an uber-deck which will crush them? I've done that against Nil in a previous Season mode, with good reason, Damien De La Tour. In the last week or so I had a fellow Nil player play cards which looked perfectly chosen to troll me but I stuck it out and ended up winning, so sometimes it pays to hang in there. I thought of force-quitting when they seized my DDLT, from memory, which came after some other trolling plays by them

Post automatically merged: Feb 9, 2020

From the OPs post and reading through this I take it that now any leg up in a game is attributed to playing an overpowered deck and people just rage quit (or don't want to waste their time). That's a shame. Even when im getting crushed I just play it out. Let the other guy enjoy the moment.

When my Nil deck was getting regularly smashed some weeks back, I would force-quit games, but not out of rage. Just boredom of having to sit through such a one sided contest. I have noticed that there are rewards or trophies for huge victories. I suppose that it's not very nice to deprive people of these but I'd be willing to sit it out if players could let me know that that was the case and so long as they were really able to get the trophy or reward.

It really sucked one time I passed after my opponent played their last card and they ended up winning because their card could still act. I've been wary of making the same mistake again but if I feel pretty safe about not losing, I do Pass instead of just pointlessly playing my remaining card or making a unit on the board give an order.

 

[4RM3D]

Maybe I'll regret asking this, but what's "HC"? It's probably something obvious.

HC stands for Homecoming, which was the name given by the devs to signify the first release of Gwent coming out of beta.

 

[mazeebra]

I'm currently on the locked down playstation version of Gwent, playing some other goals, but it's only casual matches..

It's not really fun to having won round 1 and starting with a 2 card advantage in round 2. There are good and decent matches, but many matches are against people who are clearly new or at a much lower level.

Anyways, once I hit a couple of milestones I'm moving over to PC and I guess having to climb the ranks all over again. I expect some of my decks to continue to abolutely demolish opponents. I'm looking more forward to reaching a level where games again will be challenging and competitive.

 

[BartonFink]

It's not really fun to having won round 1 and starting with a 2 card advantage in round 2. There are good and decent matches, but many matches are against people who are clearly new or at a much lower level.

Anyways, once I hit a couple of milestones I'm moving over to PC and I guess having to climb the ranks all over again. I expect some of my decks to continue to abolutely demolish opponents. I'm looking more forward to reaching a level where games again will be challenging and competitive.

I didn't think that I'd have sympathy for you, thinking that maybe I'd rather be in your position than my position of a some weeks back where once I rose up past a certain rank, I would lose all my matches every day or maybe just win one. Fortunately things have improved for me.

Anyway, yes I would find it really boring smashing every opponent if they didn't give me a good contest.

 

[mazeebra]

I rose up past a certain rank, I would lose all my matches every day or maybe just win won. Fortunately things have improved for me.

Well, I'm familiar with that situation too, but it's kindof an opportunity to adjust decks or come up with new ones.

 

[BartonFink]

once I hit a couple of milestones I'm moving over to PC and I guess having to climb the ranks all over again

I forgot to mention this last time. You're really going to start over again for PC? Are you going to spend money to improve your odds of getting good decks? I personally wouldn't have the stomach to start over again if something happened to my progress on PC. It's such a massive grind that I don't think it's worth it and I wouldn't be interested in any case.

Playing today, I rage quit for the first time...on multiple occasions. I was often swearing out loud. It's like the only decks that I was up against were designed to nerf me. Even though it was slightly better than the previous time I got walloped (I might have won one or two games today), it just pissed me off. That previous time I'd force-quit games just to avoid the boredom of having to sit through them. This time I was just pissed that my great deck, a poison oriented Nil one, was just basically up against other decks which did not give me a sniff of winning...and sometimes I didn't know that until I hit game three.

Poison should work as a strategy but with the decks that I'm up against, they just wipe the floor with me. Sco has its bs Harmony and that doesn't get nerfed by the devs.

I dunno if it's just the time and day that I'm playing but if it keeps on going like this, the sooner I quit, as I don't want to have to do homework every day to have a competitive deck. That's why I've called for the ability to filter out decks or cards or factions...maybe even certain players.