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I have now tried several decks starting Idarran. He can be a good card, but I’ve yet to find him overpowered. Usually, if he survives, he quickly locks a row with relatively useless junk. When he can spawn something useful, he’s likely to become a clumsy, out-of-place unit consuming important space, while the units spawned are awkwardly placed.

I have not tried him in a blue stripes deck (I assume he works with scouts) because I don’t own Pavetta — that is the most likely broken combo I can think of.
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I just tested the basic premise of an Idarran — Blue Stripes deck. Despite the wording that Blue stripes scouts spawn a copy, Idarran does not work with scouts — probably just as well for balance sake.

I also note it took 6 games to even try the combo either I could not draw Idarran, scouts, and a bronze card in the same round or Idarran got killed before I could try it — despite packing my deck with removal decoys. When I finally could try the combo, it was on a round 2 where my opponent dry-passed. While it is true that I own neither defender nor tutor to support the combo, I think this experience highlights the limitation of Idarran in general.
 
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I have now tried several decks starting Idarran. He can be a good card, but I’ve yet to find him overpowered. Usually, if he survives, he quickly locks a row with relatively useless junk.
You're supposed to play him in a deck where you want him to spawn specific things. If he's spawning junk your deck is bad
 
I encountered my first Vypper spam deck today and it was my easiest win so far this expansion. Either my opponent misplayed or this deck is incredibly overrated.

I play a Salamandra deck these days so when the Vypper jumped to my side first turn I simply spent two turns self-poisoning it and his deck completely fell apart.
Seems really simple to deal with.
 
You're supposed to play him in a deck where you want him to spawn specific things. If he's spawning junk your deck is bad
My point was that there are very few decks where he can spawn useful things: in Skellige, he only spawns crows, sirens, and bears — maybe useful for damaged units, or the couple of cards with beast synergy, but not for much otherwise. He can summon Queen’s Guards — which is nasty once started, but very quickly fills the row.

In monsters, he spawns insects and rats, but for monster spawn decks, he takes up more space and provisions than he’s worth. That leaves him the one card spawned by Caranthir, but that is harder to set up and again, his body is likely to get in the way.

In NG, he’s a little better, but still pretty limited. Spawning cow carcasses is counter productive, I suspect (without testing) that he won’t work on units spawned into a deck (e.g. viper Witcher, coated weapons, Cynthia) since he didn’t work with blue stripes scouts. Things spawned by Coup de Grace tend to be disloyal — not helpful if spawned. Value will have to come from Dutchess informant; that can be hit and miss.

In ST, he will usually get tokens — which have limited synergies — and the space he consumes leaves less room for other units that generate synergy. Best option is a dryad fledgling or a young dryad — neither is overwhelming.

In NR, he could actually spawn useful cards: witcher students for griffon witcher adepts to transform (although the adepts will struggle to keep up), revanants (seem very useful, but I don’t own the cards to test), and targets of reinforcement.

In SY, he is also good. 1 point zealots are kind of meh, but they do synegize and can be converted to footmen. Again, row space is limiting — typically fireswarm fills rows without Idarran. But picking up a scarab, seductress, or peaches is very nice. Still, the value for provision, risk, and space did not seem overwhelming to me — although, in fairness, I am not much of an SY player.
 
8 provisions for a 6 point body and being able to spawn 3 larvas and 3 nekkers sound like a great deal to me. He's really threatening
 
@quintivarium Idarran doesnt work with blue stripes scout because he only works for units spawned on the board, not on deck. And on your side of the board, i believe.

You say Idarran spawns crap that clutters the board - that's the way Idarran should NOT be used.

You definitely dont want any tokens spawned, the decks that play tokens have no problem swarming anyway.

The simplest way is to use him with MO, with thrive units like Larvae, Nekkers or even Fruits. It can also be used Caranthir, Koschey and expensive DW units (Miruna, Dethlaff HV, Ruehin)

Then on SK, its for Queensguard, and also works great with Svalblod totem, giving an extra 6pts abomination immediately.

But the most dangerous Idarran is with NG, Imposter, as it can be played and used with leader ability without a chance to counter it, to spawn 2 copies of an important enemy unit (Damien, Alzur, Anseis, Beast, etc.)
By doing this, now the opponent has to deal with 3 units at the same time (Idarran + 2 spawned)
 

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@quintivarium Idarran doesnt work with blue stripes scout because he only works for units spawned on the board, not on deck. And on your side of the board, i believe.

You say Idarran spawns crap that clutters the board - that's the way Idarran should NOT be used.

You definitely dont want any tokens spawned, the decks that play tokens have no problem swarming anyway.

The simplest way is to use him with MO, with thrive units like Larvae, Nekkers or even Fruits. It can also be used Caranthir, Koschey and expensive DW units (Miruna, Dethlaff HV, Ruehin)

Then on SK, its for Queensguard, and also works great with Svalblod totem, giving an extra 6pts abomination immediately.

But the most dangerous Idarran is with NG, Imposter, as it can be played and used with leader ability without a chance to counter it, to spawn 2 copies of an important enemy unit (Damien, Alzur, Anseis, Beast, etc.)
By doing this, now the opponent has to deal with 3 units at the same time (Idarran + 2 spawned)
Thank you, you identified several interactions I had overlooked (and a few I just forgot to mention.

I’m not worried about nekkers and larvae — taking Idarran may generate additional thrive units, but in a thrive deck, it reduces the opportunities to proc thrive units that largely balances out — and since Idarran is not itself a thrive unit, it could deprive you of a thrive unit later. If the deck is not thrive but larvae was taken just as a good, cheap bronze, an extra copy may not be worth the cost of Idarran.

I was originally thinking the most dangerous Caranthir interaction was with the beast, which I find borderline OP, but the deathwish units you mention are probably worse — I don’t own enough of the right monster cards to fairly test these, so I will have to wait and see how they play for others.

I don’t think the SK interactions are that great. I did not try using totem (again, I don’t own it), but 12 points for eight provisions is hardly broken — although the tempo might be an issue. Idarran with queens guard can play for 26 points over 5 turns before it fills the row — but the quick points are easily shut down with a timely ping. I would like to see it in the hands of more experienced players; I found it could not keep pace with congregate, ST movement, or Viy decks, and only won against against griffin adepts because my opponent got row locked into playing King Roegner into a row guarded by my dire Bear.

I completely overlooked interactions with leaders. These are potentially broken as there is no chance to lock/remove Idarran before he spawns another unit — most leaders will produce innocuous one point junk, but NG imposter is a definite exception that feels very bad for the game.

Idarran clearly breaks the current seasonal — but that is as much the fault of how the duplication is worded as of Idarran.
 
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Idarran also spawns a copy of location card's spawns. With SK for example you can place the location card on Idarran's row, create a bear witcher adept and it will create another 1 point adept on the right of Caduch giving you 2 units to heal(that will auto heal).

I think it also works with elf and onion soup but I don't remember now, will try.

Edit: It works(lucky me had the best possible get)
idarran-memes.jpg
 
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Idarran also spawns a copy of location card's spawns. With SK for example you can place the location card on Idarran's row, create a bear witcher adept and it will create another 1 point adept on the right of Caduch giving you 2 units to heal(that will auto heal).

I think it also works with elf and onion soup but I don't remember now, will try.

Edit: It works(lucky me had the best possible get)
View attachment 11081420
I didn’t think to check neutral cards — it probably works when desert treasure spawns a unit. This is getting into pretty pure meme territory though.
 
I didn’t think to check neutral cards — it probably works when desert treasure spawns a unit. This is getting into pretty pure meme territory though.

No, I already tried.
Edit, I forgot to try if the spawned unit was copied, I will try later.
 
Idarran also spawns a copy of location card's spawns. With SK for example you can place the location card on Idarran's row, create a bear witcher adept and it will create another 1 point adept on the right of Caduch giving you 2 units to heal(that will auto heal).

I think it also works with elf and onion soup but I don't remember now, will try.

Edit: It works(lucky me had the best possible get)
View attachment 11081420

Thank you for reminding me - Idarran also works on spawns from scenario, with certain scenarios like passiflora or siege that spawn 2 engines it could be big.

But you say it works with location cards and it SHOULDNT. Location cards deploy effect is spawn AND play, so they spawn not on the board but in hand, then they're played on the board, it shouldnt work with Idarran.

Did you try it with location cards? Or with desert treasure? To be sure it also works with 'spawn and play'.
 
Thank you for reminding me - Idarran also works on spawns from scenario, with certain scenarios like passiflora or siege that spawn 2 engines it could be big.

But you say it works with location cards and it SHOULDNT. Location cards deploy effect is spawn AND play, so they spawn not on the board but in hand, then they're played on the board, it shouldnt work with Idarran.

Did you try it with location cards? Or with desert treasure? To be sure it also works with 'spawn and play'.
I tested it. It does work with scenarios, locations, and with desert treasure (not when the treasure is spawned — it is an artifact — but when the artifact is used to spawn a unit). Synergy with scenario is scary and likely OP.

It’s a shame. I like the creativity possible with Idarran — I hope that creativity isn’t nerfed out of him (say by making him only work on tokens).
 
Some proof:

Dulla and Runewright combo, no extra treasure with Idarran:
no-extra-treasure.jpg


Extra unit of treasure spawn:

yes-extra-unit.jpg


Haern Caduch spawns extra unit:

caduch-extrqa-unit.jpg
 
Idarran is working really smoothly. He is also referring to units. It does not matter what the source of the spawned unit is (artefact, leader ability). What I heard is that he´s not interacting with Blue Stripes Scout. If this is true his description should be changed to:
The first time you Spawn a unit on the board each turn, Spawn a 1-power copy of it on this row, then give it Doomed.

Regarding the strength of him:
To be honest, I rarely faced him and when I saw him I never lost against this deck. Currently, I am playing at rank 1. Few minutes ago I tried a Fruits of Ygith Combo + Koshchey and in first round I overflooded my deck and lost.
So you should really focus on spawners which spawn engines (No Katakan, ....).
 

rrc

Forum veteran
I faced Idarran in a SvalBlod deck which played Cerys on Ranged row! :eek:
The purpose was to keep spawning Queensguard units in both the rows, effectively playing for +4 each turn. Also, in that game Idarran immediately played for +6 with Totem (Idarran + Totem is total cheat.. come on..) But still I won the game mainly due to my GT deck. I moved Idaraan to ranged row and soon the spawning stopped and the entire row was punished with a Sweet Crushing Trap.
Netherless, I think this is a scary card and mainly benefitting NR, MO, and SK (Idarran + Scenario is OP for each faction.. outside the context of Scenario, it benefits NR, MO, and SK the most). He should be easily 9P as he is not restricted to only bronze cards and he will force a design restriction in all future expansions too. He should be limited to something.. may be max 3 spawn? May be 9P? May be 5 strength? 6 for 8 with potentially game breaking ability seems nuts to me.
 
Idarran is fine to be fair. Sure, it has a potential to be a threat by opening up dangerous combos, but none of those proved meta-breaking so far. Honestly, the time it takes with the extra setup makes things even more streamlined giving your opponent more time to disrupt.
 

Gyg

Forum regular
Idarran is fine to be fair.
I just don't like that card for 8 provisions is kill or lose, having a 6 strength too. I like WotW, but boy, you should pack some hefty removal to your deck. Otherwise so crazy combo can outpoint you easily.
 
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