Renfri, the New Queen of Gwent

[quintivarium]

I know of three ways for NG (and only NG) to play multiple Renfri’s:

1. Using Vilgefortz: Renegade with Imperial Practitioners. This is very draw dependent, and generally works significantly better with Mushy Truffle than with Renfri. It is a toxic deck, but Renfri is not the issue.

2. Using cards like Artaud, Cantarella, bribery, etc. to copy/steel an opponent’s Renfri. I honestly have no sympathy for a player using Renfri who complains about Renfri being used against themself.

3. Resurrecting Renfri with Assire. But this does not give three consecutive copies. It only gives three copies if Assire is herself resurrected (with Renue) but even this would require extreme luck and help from an opponent, together with a 26 card deck.

If there is an issue here, it is not with replays. It is that Renfri is not a reasonable card in the first place.

Post automatically merged: Jul 27, 2022

Actually, I did think of a fourth way — available to all factions — using Decoy. But this is so clunky (Decoy is not a unit, Decoy often gives a negative tempo turn, and one must still manage to draw the cards) one is better off without it.

 

[Barracuda88]

I know of three ways for NG (and only NG) to play multiple Renfri’s:

1. Using Vilgefortz: Renegade with Imperial Practitioners. This is very draw dependent, and generally works significantly better with Mushy Truffle than with Renfri. It is a toxic deck, but Renfri is not the issue.

2. Using cards like Artaud, Cantarella, bribery, etc. to copy/steel an opponent’s Renfri. I honestly have no sympathy for a player using Renfri who complains about Renfri being used against themself.

3. Resurrecting Renfri with Assire. But this does not give three consecutive copies. It only gives three copies if Assire is herself resurrected (with Renue) but even this would require extreme luck and help from an opponent, together with a 26 card deck.

If there is an issue here, it is not with replays. It is that Renfri is not a reasonable card in the first place.

Post automatically merged: Jul 27, 2022

Actually, I did think of a fourth way — available to all factions — using Decoy. But this is so clunky (Decoy is not a unit, Decoy often gives a negative tempo turn, and one must still manage to draw the cards) one is better off without it.

Not consecutive turns, but Assimilate Renfri against a Renfri will potentially play four Renfris. Let's not single out NG, though, eh?

 

[EduFerraz]

I think it was The practioner deck. But i can think someone doing this.

Play renfri from hand.
Use leader to play renfri (double cross).
Opponent plays renfri.

Give spy status to renfri.
Play artaud.

Its still not 3 consecutives renfri, but almost that

 

[igor565]

I think it was The practioner deck. But i can think someone doing this.

Play renfri from hand.
Use leader to play renfri (double cross).
Opponent plays renfri.

Give spy status to renfri.
Play artaud.

Its still not 3 consecutives renfri, but almost that

You can also Bribery or Coup into Renfri, but that requires 26 card deck

 

[EduFerraz]

Renfri is confirmed to be be nerfed on the next patch. Rightfully so (in fact, it shouldnt have taken this long).

Still, i think players focused too much on complaining she is OP and on suggestions on how to balance her before analyizing her value properly. Lets make it clear - im not defending the card, im just trying to discuss aspects of her that i havent seen brought up.

One such aspect actually brought my hopes even lower on the average Gwent playerbase's ingenuity:
The selection of blessings. In particular, the avoidance of the option 'blessing of kindness', which ive read several times that its considered the worst of the bunch, and ive never seen any other player use it besides myself.

Its an option that forces a player to think, about numbers and unit placement. Not that much. But apparently the average Gwent player has an allergy to Math, which seems kind of ironic.

Well,i did the math. And i went even further, and did a whole deck to maximize this blessing.
It's not a weird deck, in fact its quite similar to a lot of NG Renfri decks.
I chose NG for a good reason - its the faction that allows to play more units per turn for cheaper provisions, to maximize the 'blessing of kindness'.

This passive ability is worth more if Renfri is played early, like all other passive blessings. It provides 1/2 pts every turn.
If Renfri is played as the 2nd card in a match, that makes 15 turns of this blessing, if we average it as 1.5pts per turn, that is around 22pts of value. This is not even considering the case where you play more than one unit per turn, and if you do a proper setup - which is quite tricky, i admit - you can get 2pts per turn almost everytime, putting odds between evens and evens between odds.

So, in the end, this blessing alone can potentially be worth up to 30-40pts. And yet, players just love going for the basic 'do 8pts of damage' or 'set the lowest unit to 12', because they dont want to think.

I urge you to give this blessing a try and check it for yourself, its definitely not bad, as its general perception is.

(EDIT) i just realized that Renfri synergizes with herself! Her 'curse of sloth' - which happens to be one of her strongest options, that players still havent found out about its true potential - allows you to play more units, thus synergizing with 'blessing of kindness'. And this blessing's effect works even on the turn Renfri is played. Its madness!

Well i have to disagree with you, its not players dont do The math, its because The bleesing isnt so good as you are saying.

For this bleesing be good you need to play her early in round 1, wich means you problably need to already used runemage (so you have to have both in hands).

Also you need to already used your leader abillity, wich can be very expandable.

In other hand to have all this potential (30-40 points) you need to setup your entre deck to it, and players prefer to adapt The deck to play more renfris than to play around one Blessing that you can Even dont get it.

So if your deck isnt setup for it, using your math for 1,5 points per turn, and playing her as second card you Will have 21 points potencial.

Buuut, you have 2 other Blessing that can be really good if you get early, the bleesing of patience wich can made you play 3 times The order, and, with an avarage of 7 points per order (usually more, but i Will take this avarage) you have The same 21 points and The remove potential.

Also bleesing of humility can Give you 15 points, its less points but you dont need to play in The firsts turns, you Just need to play in The first round.

For the last, people usually wants to go "all in" in The Last round, so its better to use her there.

So unless you make a deck for it (as you did) wich is kind of meme ond rng based (you need to have her and runemage in hand first round and/or have sure you Will get The specific bleesing) the players are right to think its one of The weakest blessings

 

[DRK3]

Well i have to disagree with you, its not players dont do The math, its because The bleesing isnt so good as you are saying.

For this bleesing be good you need to play her early in round 1, wich means you problably need to already used runemage (so you have to have both in hands).

Also you need to already used your leader abillity, wich can be very expandable.

In other hand to have all this potential (30-40 points) you need to setup your entre deck to it, and players prefer to adapt The deck to play more renfris than to play around one Blessing that you can Even dont get it.

So if your deck isnt setup for it, using your math for 1,5 points per turn, and playing her as second card you Will have 21 points potencial.

Buuut, you have 2 other Blessing that can be really good if you get early, the bleesing of patience wich can made you play 3 times The order, and, with an avarage of 7 points per order (usually more, but i Will take this avarage) you have The same 21 points and The remove potential.

Also bleesing of humility can Give you 15 points, its less points but you dont need to play in The firsts turns, you Just need to play in The first round.

For the last, people usually wants to go "all in" in The Last round, so its better to use her there.

So unless you make a deck for it (as you did) wich is kind of meme ond rng based (you need to have her and runemage in hand first round and/or have sure you Will get The specific bleesing) the players are right to think its one of The weakest blessings

I maintain my position on the blessing of kindness.

Yes, i agree there are other really good blessings, and particularly, really good blessings to get early R1. Blessing of patience may very well be the best blessing, and be worth ditching your default leader ability early for it. BUT this does not contradict what i said, because i never stated blessing of kindness was the best blessing, only that it was much better than what players thought of it.

Blessing of humility is also really good early in a match, however it is very easy to get over 5pts each round with blessing of kindness, except its not instant so players dont acknowledge its value so easily.

Something else i should have said already - the value of removal is worth more than the value of boosts or extra points... however if you're going for blessing of diligence just for the value, and not to remove some critical opponent units, then that blessing is not as good as most others.

Blessing of kindness does NOT have to be a early R1 choice to be worth it, even at the beginning of a long R3 is still worth more than most other blessings.
And it has one of the highest point potentials like i previously described, except maybe going for blessing of patience early (for 3 uses) combined with order of sloth or envy, which can be worth ridiculous amounts in certain contexts.

 

[Bean54]

Thanks for the replies. I’m still relatively new to the game, so I’m still getting the grasp of all the tricks of the game. Let me clarify, the person was 100% using a Nilfgaard deck. I was about to win the game in the second round when my opponent played Renfri who gave the ability that killed off half my side of the board. Then, I don’t know what card it was they played, but to lead off round 3 they put out another Renfri, which threw me off since I thought you could only play a gold card in once. They may have played a different card after that, but I was getting annoyed and frustrated so I may have glossed that over in my mind. Then came Renfri once again after that and I just forfeited the game.
I don’t even own the Renfri card, so they couldn’t have stolen it from me.

 

[quintivarium]

Well i have to disagree with you, its not players dont do The math, its because The bleesing isnt so good as you are saying.

I don’t dispute your argument — it is quite valid. But I think there is an important and equally valid point in DRK3’s post that I think deserves attention. In particular, there is a tendency of players to become conditioned to thinking about a card or an ability in one way, neglecting (even failing to consider) alternatives that are both creative and viable.

Renfri is the perfect example. It is frequently emphasized that leader abilities are valuable and should be conserved until late in a match. (The ability to perform two cations in a round is very powerful — and best used to respond to powerful plays of an opponent, which usually occur final round. And early use of leader — when an opponent can freely pass — easily overcommits.) But while this is generally true, even good players often overlook the exceptions.

My observation has been that most players use Renfri late in a match — and focus attention on the curse part of the granted leader, which is generally the better part late in a match). What DRK3 points out is that there are powerful alternatives based upon using Renfri early and focusing upon the blessing aspect of the card, which tends to be most important in these situations.

There is clear validity to this approach. Although very situational, I think curses will generally play for 8 to 13 points (with occasional potential for much more). When played early, at least 4 Blessings have potential to play for 15 points or more — and continue to provide benefit into round 3. To avoid being completely meme, this early use of leader should be planned into the deck design. I think there is a lot of so-far untapped potential in this approach.

 

[DRK3]

Thanks for the replies. I’m still relatively new to the game, so I’m still getting the grasp of all the tricks of the game. Let me clarify, the person was 100% using a Nilfgaard deck. I was about to win the game in the second round when my opponent played Renfri who gave the ability that killed off half my side of the board. Then, I don’t know what card it was they played, but to lead off round 3 they put out another Renfri, which threw me off since I thought you could only play a gold card in once. They may have played a different card after that, but I was getting annoyed and frustrated so I may have glossed that over in my mind. Then came Renfri once again after that and I just forfeited the game.
I don’t even own the Renfri card, so they couldn’t have stolen it from me.

If you were not using Renfri yourself, that limits a lot of ways that your opponent could use extra Renfris.

The common way for NG to use 2 Renfris is to simply put her back from the graveyard to the deck with Assire. This is usually done over multiple rounds - example: play Renfri R1, use Assire R2, get and play Renfri again R3, or tutor her with Roderick.

But since you said 3 Renfris were played, i can only think of Imperial practitioner spam. This method allows anyone to get as many copies of any NG or neutral card as they can get practitioners on the board, so in theory it can be way over 3, it can be 7 or 8. And since Renfri its undeniably the strongest card in the game right now, its no surprise that's what imperial practitioners decks are going for lately.

 

[quintivarium]

Thanks for the replies. I’m still relatively new to the game, so I’m still getting the grasp of all the tricks of the game. Let me clarify, the person was 100% using a Nilfgaard deck. I was about to win the game in the second round when my opponent played Renfri who gave the ability that killed off half my side of the board. Then, I don’t know what card it was they played, but to lead off round 3 they put out another Renfri, which threw me off since I thought you could only play a gold card in once. They may have played a different card after that, but I was getting annoyed and frustrated so I may have glossed that over in my mind. Then came Renfri once again after that and I just forfeited the game.
I don’t even own the Renfri card, so they couldn’t have stolen it from me.

I think it likely that your opponent generated multiple copies using Imperial Practitioners. In Gwent, there are a few cards that can appear innocuous when played, but that can create explosive combinations. This is hard on beginners — you don’t know what to watch out for — but, with time, you will learn the urgency of addressing these cards (assuming you can address them) immediately. Imperial Practitioners are one such card.

Ideally, the match-pairing system would protect beginners from this kind of deck, but in practice, with the ease of crafting cards to build a netdeck and a rating system that better reflects amount of play than quality of play or quality of card holdings, match-pairing often fails.

 

[EduFerraz]

If you were not using Renfri yourself, that limits a lot of ways that your opponent could use extra Renfris.

The common way for NG to use 2 Renfris is to simply put her back from the graveyard to the deck with Assire. This is usually done over multiple rounds - example: play Renfri R1, use Assire R2, get and play Renfri again R3, or tutor her with Roderick.

But since you said 3 Renfris were played, i can only think of Imperial practitioner spam. This method allows anyone to get as many copies of any NG or neutral card as they can get practitioners on the board, so in theory it can be way over 3, it can be 7 or 8. And since Renfri its undeniably the strongest card in the game right now, its no surprise that's what imperial practitioners decks are going for lately.

Spyro yesterday was playing it and did 7 renfris in a match (maybe more, i couldnt see all the stream).

In this match in last round He was choosing randomly The curses and bleesing and still win By a large of points kkkk.

About your other post, in time i Will reply it

 

[ianann]

I am at this point where I randomly just insta-quit matches when the opponent plays renfri or her gang. (Rank three with home-brewn decks only) Most players btw. don't seem to have a clou what to do aside their boring and ultra-annoying follow-the-path netdecks. Gwent is dying - slowly but steadily with every new "Update". It's a shame.

 

[Yopofthering]

I maintain my position on the blessing of kindness.

(...)

I agree with both of you.
Yup, Blessing of kindness is underestimated, but you would need the perfect draw and opponent reactions to generate all the points. It's situational and it's one of my favorite abilities (I used to play a Wolfsbane deck). Because it's fun, not overpowered, require thinking in deckbuilding and during the games, each match is different, each move is important.
It would be so cool if all curses and blessing were like that, although it obvious we need to keep a handful of simple options for beginners.

I'm disappointed with Renfri because I thought she would create a big variety of decks, like a mini-game by herself, but it's not the case. Also, some blessings/curses are too similar to other cards or leaders.

 

[EduFerraz]

I am at this point where I randomly just insta-quit matches when the opponent plays renfri or her gang. (Rank three with home-brewn decks only) Most players btw. don't seem to have a clou what to do aside their boring and ultra-annoying follow-the-path netdecks. Gwent is dying - slowly but steadily with every new "Update". It's a shame.

Yesterday i did The same.

I tried to make a NR shieldwall deck. A mix of The old shieldwall with The new knights and scenario.

In theory a good deck, no much remover (only The duels cards) but a lot of pointslam.

First match i faced a gt harmony deck without renfri (or my opponent didnt get it, but i dont think so because He used saskia first round).

Win By a lot of points and i dont Even get my scenario.

Second game, against NG renfri, my opponent used her 2 times without runemage and in The 2 times He get The cursed that kill an unit with 10 points or less.

If He gets any other curse i would win The game. Buuut nooooo, He needs to get that to make The game so boring.


All other games were against renfri and i Just insta quit

 

[dj_pindis]

maybe my comment wont be deleted here, is their anyone whoo can help me? i am trying to find a way to play against "normal " Decks.
I often only play against nilfgaard and they ALL do the same boring deck, poisen, banish and renfri.
I am looking to play as it was in the beginning, where everyone had diffrent deck and it was impossiple to guess what the other had
And why is it those who now play monster deck dont use the monster deck? they just spawn ice ? I have played against 7 monster deck today and they all only had a maximum of 5 card, the rest was just ice and bombs ?

 

[ianann]

maybe my comment wont be deleted here, is their anyone whoo can help me? i am trying to find a way to play against "normal " Decks.
I often only play against nilfgaard and they ALL do the same boring deck, poisen, banish and renfri.
I am looking to play as it was in the beginning, where everyone had diffrent deck and it was impossiple to guess what the other had
And why is it those who now play monster deck dont use the monster deck? they just spawn ice ? I have played against 7 monster deck today and they all only had a maximum of 5 card, the rest was just ice and bombs ?

Yeah, welcome to Gwent 2022. That's all there is to say.
There's a given limit for units in a deck before you can play it though, 5 cards of units in decks is just not possible to encounter.

 

[igor565]

maybe my comment wont be deleted here, is their anyone whoo can help me? i am trying to find a way to play against "normal " Decks.
I often only play against nilfgaard and they ALL do the same boring deck, poisen, banish and renfri.
I am looking to play as it was in the beginning, where everyone had diffrent deck and it was impossiple to guess what the other had
And why is it those who now play monster deck dont use the monster deck? they just spawn ice ? I have played against 7 monster deck today and they all only had a maximum of 5 card, the rest was just ice and bombs ?

What exactly is the problem?
May I wonder what rank you are at? At higher ranks people tend to play the most meta possible to achieve higher mmr (not only in Gwent, it’s the same in every competitive game).

 

[dj_pindis]

What exactly is the problem?
May I wonder what rank you are at? At higher ranks people tend to play the most meta possible to achieve higher mmr (not only in Gwent, it’s the same in every competitive game).

My rank is only 4 and level 49 (if im a reading it correct, i havent played for more than a few weeks ) i guess its not a real problem just annoying, I just miss when i played in the beginning people used all kind of cards! Now they all have the same decks, its getting to easy ? I have tried to throw a lot of games just so i could fall in rank, but i dont think it works like that.
so i am just looking for a way to play aganst people who plays with more random cards, insteas of people who have the same card decks. ( if that makes any sense)

Post automatically merged: Aug 1, 2022

Yeah, welcome to Gwent 2022. That's all there is to say.
There's a given limit for units in a deck before you can play it though, 5 cards of units in decks is just not possible to encounter.

He probably had 13 or something but just didnt play them, most of them only play those summon card and then renfri and triss, then they just play bombs and ice and that. in any way it was and is still annoying. Do you know of any way where i can play gwent the way it was in the beginning or do i have to make a new account ?

 

[ianann]

My rank is only 4 and level 49 (if im a reading it correct, i havent played for more than a few weeks ) i guess its not a real problem just annoying, I just miss when i played in the beginning people used all kind of cards! Now they all have the same decks, its getting to easy ? I have tried to throw a lot of games just so i could fall in rank, but i dont think it works like that.
so i am just looking for a way to play aganst people who plays with more random cards, insteas of people who have the same card decks. ( if that makes any sense)

Post automatically merged: Aug 1, 2022

He probably had 13 or something but just didnt play them, most of them only play those summon card and then renfri and triss, then they just play bombs and ice and that. in any way it was and is still annoying. Do you know of any way where i can play gwent the way it was in the beginning or do i have to make a new account ?

Unfortunately not and I don't think there's a way.

 

[dj_pindis]

Unfortunately not and I don't think there's a way.

Thanks anyway, It is what it is. Just feels like a lot is Making their deck all around that 1 card. I dont understand why, i have so i can equip her, but i enjoy much more playing a "weird" deck. I got all kind of weird card in my northen realm deck.