Suggestion of rework of Syndicate (SY) leaders

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After I read the latest season reports, I was very disappointed by the performance of many SY leaders.

Therefore, I would highly appreciate some buffs for SY.

Here are my suggestions.

Jackpot

Order: Gain 9 Coins, then boost an allied unit by any excess amount gained.

Whenever you play a cutup card, deal one damage to the opponent unit with the highest power

This ability adds 15 provisions to your deck's provisions limit.



Lined Pockets

Order: Gain 1 Coin. Charge: 5
Whenever you play a Crime card, gain 1 Coin.

Whenever you play a Blindeye you have the option to spend one coin. Then a random own unit will get vitality (2) or a random opponent unit will get bleeding (2)

This ability adds 16 provisions to your deck's provisions limit.



Off the books

Order: Gain 2 Coin. Charge: 3.
Your Tributes cost 1 Coin less.

Whenever you play a Salamandra you gain one load. This loads can only be spent for paying tributes.

This ability adds 16 provisions to your deck's provisions limit.

Blood Money

Order: Damage an enemy unit by 8, then gain Coins equal to any excess damage dealt.´

Whenever you play a Crownsplitters boost a own unit with the highest power by one.

This ability adds 15 provisions to your deck's provisions limit.



Pirate's Cove

Order: Spawn a Sea Jackal on an allied row, then gain 4 Coin.
Whenever you play a Tidecloaks gain 1 load. As soon as you have 5 loads a Sea Jackal will be spawned on a random allied row and the loads will be reset.

This ability adds 15 provisions to your deck's provisions limit.
 
Apart from the fact that these look considerably overtuned I wonder why Blood Money (the Whoreson J., i.e. Cutup leader) supports the mostly dwarven Crownsplitters or why Lined Pockets (the Djikstra leader ability) supports the gang of the King of Beggars.
I would suggest scaling down the original abilities a bit, so that they retain the versatility and consistent influence, without becoming broken.
 
Pirate's Cove

Order: Spawn a Sea Jackal on an allied row, then gain 4 Coin.
Whenever you play a Tidecloaks gain 1 load. As soon as you have 5 loads a Sea Jackal will be spawned on a random allied row and the loads will be reset.

This ability adds 15 provisions to your deck's provisions limit.
This one is pretty good. It's overtuned, but the core idea behind is is interesting. Spawning spenders as a payoff for playing certaint type of card could make for an interesting play style.
I would drop the order, change the counter to 3 and Tidecloacks to something more "compatible" like Profit.

Pirate's Cove
Counter: 3
Whenever you play a card with Profit reduce the Counter by 1. When the Counter reaches 0, spawn a Sea Jackal on random allied row and reset the Counter.
This ability adds 15 provisions to your deck's provisions limit.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
@Markus_Wirth I wont evaluate the suggestions themselves, but like another user has pointed out, the suggestions dont go along with the leaders and gangs associated with them. I will post them here for you:

Jackpot - Gudrun - Tidecloaks
Lined Pockets - Dijkstra - (no gang)
Off the Books - King of Beggars - Blindeyes
Blood Money - Whoreson Jr - Cutups
Congregate - Hemmelfart - Firesworn
Wild Card - Cleaver - Crownsplitters (ability removed and replaced with Pirate Cove)

I understand this last one leads to a conflict, since Pirate Cove generates a tidecloak, and there already is another tidecloak leader. Jackpot makes sense with Tidecloaks due to Bincy and fence, and somewhat, Hoard cards (of course Cache is better for those, but before Cache, Jackpot was the best for hoard)
 
Well, actually to my mind Pirate Cove obviously fits best to Gudrun´s Tidecloacks.

Regarding lined pockets I am thinking it perfectly fits to a gang of poor pickpockets and not to a noble gang leader. When you go for lined pockets you usually have both townfolk and Bincy (both no Blindeye), but you have the problem of having too many coins and no spenders. In my current line pockets deck, however, I only have Pickpocket and Payroll Specialist as blindeye. Nevertheless, I also like the idea of connecting it to the profit key word.

Regarding Off the Books: This will be a considerable option for a deck containing Fallen Rayla, Professor, Azar Javed, Salamander and some new cards of the Salamandra gang

Regarding Jackpot: To my mind this fits best to whoreson´s casino.

Regarding Blood Money: This was the only left fraction.

Regarding overtuned fractions: Of course, this might be the case and nerfs of the provisions boosts, coins might be appropriate. I think, that it´s a shame that SY has so many not competitive leaders and appreciate any boost of this fraction. Furthermore, Devs already stated that they want to focus more on keywords (like they already did with beast, firesworn, witcher, symbiosis/dryad,....) and I think that this would be fitting to this strategy.
 
There are rumors about CDPR deleting the SY faction. Streamers like Trynet said it on stream. McBeard implicitly too before quiting Gwent.
 
This would be very bad. Why should they do it?
Since they added Syndicate the Coin Mechanism was considered problematic and unhealthy for the Game because the opponent doesn't have a chance to interact with the SY players Coins and Jason already mentioned a few times in streams that SY is incredibly hard to balance where already some small buffs can totally break the meta and lead to something like the infamous DJ townsfolk meta.

On one point it would probably make it a bit easier for them to release new expansions if they got one faction with a unique mechanism less to generate Card's for, but deleting them would probably also lead to a lot of work because I doubt they could just delete the Card's without a huge community outcry and would need to rework them to fit in to other factions.

Gotta say I wouldn't even mind it that much if the Card's should receive a good rework, but imho removing Defenders from the Game is way more important.
 
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Since they added Syndicate the Coin Mechanism was considered problematic and unhealthy for the Game because the opponent doesn't have a chance to interact with the SY players Coins and Jason already mentioned a few times in streams that SY is incredibly hard to balance where already some small buffs can totally break the meta and lead to something like the infamous DJ townsfolk meta.

On one point it would probably make it a bit easier for them to release new expansions if they got one faction with a unique mechanism less to generate Card's for, but deleting them would probably also lead to a lot of work because I doubt they could just delete the Card's without a huge community outcry and would need to rework them to fit in to other factions.

Gotta say I wouldn't even mind it that much if they should do that if the Card's receive a good rework, but imho removing Defenders from the Game is way more important.

From my point of view I prefer having underperforming fractions to not existing fractions.

Regarding the argument that you can not interact with coins.
I am asking myself why not creating cards being able to do that.
E.g. Transform x opponent coins into own boost on Melee and consuming the lowest power opponent unit on Ranged for MO
Or Cahir Dyffryn Melee: Whenever an enemy receives a boost, boost self by the same amount. Ranged: Whenever an opponent receives a coin, boost self by the same amount (NG)
Or Transform x opponent coins into random damage on Melee and whenever you deal one damage, deal one additional damage on Ranged (SK)
Or Whenever you boost a unit steal one coin and transform the stolen coin into additional boost (Melee), whenever an own unit is boosted gain one vitality (Ranged) (NR)
Or Whenever your opponent plays a unit transform one opponent coin into 2 bleeding on a random opponent unit (Melee), boost self by the amount of artefacts in your deck (Ranged) SC

What I would really appreciate is the following:
- making events where specific cards (e.g. defender, scenarios, etc.) are not allowed. This would also mean a lot of room for new deck building. Maybe one season without defenders on ranked and another without scenarios might be intresting.
- making fraction "specific-campaigns": Idea is that you can use only specific cards (e.g. only cards with Salamandra and crime cards and are allowed to use other cards later). Then you face in a story-telling way computer opponents and at the end of a campaign you must beat X other real opponents who already managed their campaign. This would be a great way to "relive" rarely used cards/archetypes
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Since they added Syndicate the Coin Mechanism was considered problematic and unhealthy for the Game because the opponent doesn't have a chance to interact with the SY players Coins and Jason already mentioned a few times in streams that SY is incredibly hard to balance where already some small buffs can totally break the meta and lead to something like the infamous DJ townsfolk meta.

On one point it would probably make it a bit easier for them to release new expansions if they got one faction with a unique mechanism less to generate Card's for, but deleting them would probably also lead to a lot of work because I doubt they could just delete the Card's without a huge community outcry and would need to rework them to fit in to other factions.

Gotta say I wouldn't even mind it that much if the Card's should receive a good rework, but imho removing Defenders from the Game is way more important.

I seriously hope that is not true and SY is not removed from the game, even though they're probably my least favourite faction.

Syndicate, problematic and unhealthy? I think scenarios (and scenario removal), even more than a year later, are still more problematic. Uninteractive because of the coins? I would much rather face any SY deck than that Sabertooth Madoc PS list, SY at most spends 2 turns without units, that ST list can spend 6/7 turns without anything for you to interact with.

If those things really were said by Slama, the case is even worse than i thought, they have no idea what they're doing and in which areas they should focus to balance Gwent, even after 2+ years since Homecoming.
 
I seriously hope that is not true and SY is not removed from the game, even though they're probably my least favourite faction.

Syndicate, problematic and unhealthy? I think scenarios (and scenario removal), even more than a year later, are still more problematic. Uninteractive because of the coins? I would much rather face any SY deck than that Sabertooth Madoc PS list, SY at most spends 2 turns without units, that ST list can spend 6/7 turns without anything for you to interact with.

If those things really were said by Slama, the case is even worse than i thought, they have no idea what they're doing and in which areas they should focus to balance Gwent, even after 2+ years since Homecoming.
Nah, this is just simply not realistic. You don't just remove a CARD from a game like this without direct consequences - now we are talking about a FACTION. Dozens of cards, art, a full expansion, lots of real money payments from players, the general balance of the game, and the list is literally endless. This simply holds no realistic value.
Reworking the whole faction as it is MIGHT be somethign to consider, but even then, this seems far fetched - Syndicate as a faction is simply not a threat to the balance of the game in any way. It doesn't add up.

Since they added Syndicate the Coin Mechanism was considered problematic and unhealthy for the Game because the opponent doesn't have a chance to interact with the SY players Coins and Jason already mentioned a few times in streams that SY is incredibly hard to balance where already some small buffs can totally break the meta and lead to something like the infamous DJ townsfolk meta.
Not even in league with issues that were plaguing the game in past years. Similar "broken" faction mechanics and decks were up and running with almost every faction, this again doesn't make much sense.
And honestly, how does it serve a serious problem that one cannot interact with the opponent SY player's coins? A real first world problem in Gwent, truly.
 
Syndicate, problematic and unhealthy? I think scenarios (and scenario removal), even more than a year later, are still more problematic. Uninteractive because of the coins?
Didn't say that this is currently Gwents biggest problem, I just reacted on the question why they could consider removing them and the uninteractive Coin Mechanism and carryover was considered unhealthy by a lot of players back when Syndicate got introduced but got kind of powercreept and there currently are way bigger problems around, I mean they already removed Sacrificial Vanguard because it generates carryover by their reasoning (not exactly sure where it generates Carryover though and that reason feels already a bit strange after introducing a lot more Handbuff Card's a month early with MM).

Nah, this is just simply not realistic. You don't just remove a CARD from a game like this without direct consequences - now we are talking about a FACTION. Dozens of cards, art, a full expansion, lots of real money payments from players, the general balance of the game, and the list is literally endless. This simply holds no realistic value.
Reworking the whole faction as it is MIGHT be somethign to consider, but even then, this seems far fetched - Syndicate as a faction is simply not a threat to the balance of the game in any way. It doesn't add up.
If Trynet and McBeard should have really said that (i don't know haven't watched any of their streams recently) than it's highly likely that they are at least considering removing them because the two Card's in one Turn Leader rework was also teased way before the official announced by Streamers.

Like I already said above another reason could be just to decrease the work for upcoming expansions so that they are able to deliver more than 2 expansions a year and in that case it would probably be better to rework the SY Cards than to just drop the further expansion support for that faction and leave them as they currently are apart from the added Neutrals.

But I guess we just have to wait, because right now no one else seems to have heard anything about that and we don't even have a link to confirm that they said that.

If those things really were said by Slama
The only thing he said was something like that they are hard to balance and that even small tweaks can already lead to big imbalance (kind of when Hidden Cache got added and was considered tier 0 before it got toned down.).
 
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Like I already said above another reason could be just to decrease the work for upcoming expansions so that they are able to deliver more than 2 expansions a year
I absolutely don't see how those two separate things correlate.
Having 6 factions instead of 5 has next to nothing to do with only being able to push 2 expansions a year. Sure, less factions means less cards to design in total, but following this logic, we should remove half of the factions, so we could have a new expansion every 2-3 months? Nah, this just doesn't make sense.

If Trynet and McBeard should have really said that (i don't know haven't watched any of their streams recently) than it's highly likely that they are at least considering removing them because the two Card's in one Turn Leader rework was also teased way before the official announced by Streamers.
Except that is a balancing decision, one with a reasonable logical bacground. Removing a faction for... the sake of it? Not so much.

But I guess we just have to wait because right now no one else seems to have heard anything about that and we don't even have a link to confirm that they said that.
Pretty much. So far this is very far-fetched, without any reasoning to back it up.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
@OneWhoCravesSouls I didnt mean to imply i was answering to you directly and responding to your statements, i was commenting on the statements by the devs and other people shared by you earlier, i know your opinion on the subject might be different.
 
Removing a faction seems pretty extreme, for what its worth I hope it doesnt happen.

I do like the gang synergy idea for reworked leaders even if the specific ideas suggested in this thread might not be realistic.
 
Simply solution for Syndicate is to rework bounty to make it work on veiled targets.
Either to make bounty ignores veil or change bounty card to "remove a targets veil and apply bounty".

Reasons:
1. Veils were introduced mostly to protect large targets from getting poisoned which was considered toxic back then. The community was mostly okay with bounty. Especially when we only have 4 bronze and 2 gold that apply bounty.

2. SY struggles in R1. It historically struggles in blue coin. Now with the veil startegem it struggles in red coin as well.

3. Bounty was the defining mechanism to SY and it was meant to punish tall targets. The decline of SY since veil allows for MO and SK to dominate the meta. Both of those factions really relies on tall units.
 
I had an idea yesterday that would be an interesting support for self poison - a leader ability that lets you transfer your poison from one of your units to another of your units. This way you can play a little bit around the other player poisoning you or you could get extra value out of your self poisons with abomination or roland. It would be like a budget salamandra hideout because it wouldn't let you poison an enemy but salamandra hideout can be used defensively against nilfgaard to move the poison away from your tall units.
 
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