A single card wins a game

[apostleofzion]

A single card wins a game

Hi,

1. I come from Hearthstone (Rank 10).
I wish to know if there is a card if left unanswered, can win the whole game/round. If we don't have an immediate answer, you lose!

Eg. Flamewalker can be atrocious in hearthstone with mage spells!

2. Also we have deck types like control, aggro etc?
So does that apply over here or we have different types of decks?

Thanks

 

[Keymaker7]

Hi,

1. No.

2. Maybe not exactly like in HS, but I suppose (even I am sure) there will appeare theme decks (for example vampire deck in monster f(r)action) and decks focused on weather control, morale boost, flexibility, ressurection and so on.

 

[VeTrack]

1. I wish to know if there is a card if left unanswered, can win the whole game/round. If we don't have an immediate answer, you lose!

2. Also we have deck types like control, aggro etc? So does that apply over here or we have different types of decks?

1. That is circumstantial, but less likely here in Gwent. Both of them are two very different card games. Even if you win one round with a specific card in here, it doesn't necessarily mean you will win the whole game.

2. All, if not most, card games can have specialized decks for certain plays and it doesn't really have anything to do with 'themes'. So yes, but the classifications will of course be different from HS.

 

[McBeardCH]

Great question!

You're asking: Is there a card that functions like Flamewaker or Juggler or some other "early" play that can lose you the game on a bad draw?

NO.

This game does not work like that.

There's 3 rounds in a match. Even a bomb of a card doesn't win you the game. Some cards do have powerful effects when "left" on the board (a decent example is Hav'Caaren Smuggler (http://www.gwentdb.com/cards/3101-havcaaren-smuggler) or Sigrdrifa (http://www.gwentdb.com/cards/5038-sigrdrifa) But cards don't take damage, or engage in any sort of trading or traditional combat. A card is played for the value it represents, the value it can remove from the opponent's board, or the card advantage it can provide you through stalling (since players don't draw cards)

And, if you feel your opponent got a god draw and played strong early game, just stall and/or pass to the next round.

The game is a very different game, but RNG and Tempo principles from HS don't exist in the same way. RNG is barely here.

As for your second question - Aggro and Control don't exist in the same way. Aggro specifically, the game won't go any faster if you play smaller cards, because there is no "early game" in that, players do not have limited resources and cards in the first few rounds, and there's no "damage" that is done to a specific unit (your hero/your face) to end the game.

 

[Mahakaman]

There will be cards which can really swing a board-state or even a match-up (though less so). The good thing however is that it really comes down to crafting a specific board-state where a specific card can be fully effective. Or, on the other side of the coin, play around specific cars in order to negate their impact as much as possible.
Because you know most or all of your cards at the start of the game, it becomes a lot easier to do such a thing.

As said, in Gwent the traditional classifications of Aggro/Mid-range/Control do not work. It is in my mind better to think about decks in strengths and weaknesses they have. These can either be specific cards like Scorch, Weather, etc, or based on how they play, like how good they stall, how much Strength they produce, how consistent they are, how flexible etc.
For instance a deck vulnerable to Scorch and with mediocre stall, might have a bad match-up against a deck with a lot of stall and Scorch.

 

[mjul]

1. Well, the mechanics forbid such an event from occurring. Your only resource are the cards in your hand. And you can either use them to increase your strength, decrease the strength of your enemy or draw a card (various versions). There are very few exceptions and they aren't overpowered. This philosophy, combined with the fact the basic removal, available from the start (the card Scorch), is literally one of the most powerful cards in the game, makes for a game that is more about out-bluffing your opponent and about tactical choices. There is of course some RNG (the initial hand) but you can mulligan 30% of it, that limits the amount of randomness you can have. This makes for very few overpowered cards. Of course there are always card combos that, if you don't have a counter (which most likely be some form of Scorch), can be extremely overpowered and almost always win the game, but they require 3 or more cards to play, so that's a big investment considering you only get 10 cards at the start.

To sum it up, there are very powerful combinations in the game, but not single cards. They can be answered but if you don't have an answer in your hand, then that's it. Thankfully it's a best out of 3, so even a slip up in a single round won't ruin your entire game.

2. Not really. That nomenclature comes from Magic:TG and was transplanted into HS. Gwent has an entirely different mechanic. Here there is no tempo, since there's no mana. You don't develop things on the board, on the contrary the best tactic in Gwent is to not place anything on the board, but that can be tricky.

There will be different types of decks and different strategies, but I doubt they will be called aggro, temp, mid-range and similar. Control, maybe, there are a lot control cards in Gwent. We'll see how the community develops. The one mechanic that is already in play and many decks may use, is Stall.