Analyzing every Anti-Weather / Weather-Support card

+
Chac42;n8948320 said:
Hmm, I just realized that when they designed Wild Hunt Hound they probably thought having to include frost in your deck was disadvantage.
Yep, I think design team of the game is kinda behind on the basic concepts. And I fail to see why because it is rather obvious that smaller decks have an advantage over larger decks as almost no one playes decks with more than 25 cards. Only some people add one or two above that number.

It is barely possible to run out of cards in three rounds without heavy deck-thinning shenenigans so it is obvous that Hound (or Aretusa adept or any other similar card) do not have disadvantages.

 
Excellent post. I think that Wild Hunt Hounds and Aretuza Adepts could be fixed by making them resurrect the weather card, instead of playing it from your deck. That way, it forces you to play the weather effect normally from your hand first. If you think this would be abused, because 3 bronze weathers suddenly turn into 6 bronze weathers, the units could banish the weather card after they resurrect it, to make it harder for you to spam weather.

Also, I agree with First Light and the anti-weather units are absolutely ass design. I don't remember where I saw this, but someone suggested that Clear Skies should leave behind a lingering "clear skies" effect, that would prevent the application of the next weather card. Or, it could Heal all of your units. Maybe not completely, I think capping the heal at 3 per unit would be fair.

Clan Tordarroch Armorsmith is by far the worst anti-weather unit, and he could be fixed by simply... Giving weather immunity to the units he heals.
Archgriffin could maybe replay the removed weather effect on the opposite side.
Nauzicaa Standard Bearer could leave behind the same lingering "clear skies" effect that I suggested for First Light, but it would only apply to that one row.
 
The problem with weather is that it's broken by design. The best solution is probably for the clear skies to "persist" through the round, meaning you can't be weathered for the remainder of the current one.
This will hit weather hard, but I'm fine with weather being unplayable instead of the devs designing entire sets of cards with the only purpose of trying to counter it. Changing the flavor of spells available on the mages or the gimmick on the row clear units is too superficial and leaves the impresion of a design-by-numbers type of deal.
Which is a similar issue to some of the archetype cards I might add as the mulligan/spell/reveal/discard related cards which buff while in deck/hand and have no other function than to support said archetype.
 
nhk3;n8950410 said:
instead of the devs designing entire sets of cards with the only purpose of trying to counter it.

Completely agree. Just improve the counter weather cards is a poor solution. They should rework the mechanic instead.
 
KingPegasus;n8946660 said:
What about back in the old days any damage caused by weather is wiped when you remove it? That would make for some very interesting last moves

All too often the old days were "haha I have the last card so I win". Guy plays an aeromancy or a first light and there would be a crazy points swing that points wise doesn't make the match look close, but in actuality it just came down to the last card which just wasn't right.

It's not so much about last card wins anymore and that's great IMO.
 
Personally I think the solution is easier than that. Lower the strength of weather support units so they won't offer so much value on top of deck thinning, playing two cards in one. Make Wild Hunt Hound a 3, Aretuza Adept a 2, Drowner a 6.

Along with that, have all the anti-weather cards changed to be as good as Blue Stripes Scout: Not by giving them more strength, but by giving them extra synergy that offer decks more synergy while not playing against weather decks.

Drop Archgriffin to 6 strength with the ability to consume a creature from your graveyard and gain a +1 from it (to a total of 7 strength, no matter what the consumed creature's strength was).

Have Vrihedd Brigade clear weather from the row it pulls a unit from rather than it's own row, to help spread your units around and avoid stacking all your units into weather again.

Have Nauzicaa Standard Bearer buff adjacent units by 3 instead of just one chosen unit.

Let Clan Tordarroch Armorsmith clear weather from a row on top of healing your units, and remove it's Veteran tag.

Clear Skies is a tricky one. Not sure how to help that terrible card.
 
valcat What you're proposing isn't really a solution to the weather problem.In the future when other units that promote the weather archetype are introduced we'll have the same situation as now - always needing to balance around the power of weather itself rather than designing weather in such a way that it's not too overpowered on its own and units that support it are reasonably good.
I think someone on the forum proposed at one time that Clear Skies should apply a "Clear Skies" effect on all rows, which could also work as a solution to the weather problem. The 'clear skies' effect would either clear weather from a row and dissipate or if there's no weather on the row it will persist until the next weather is played on that row, prevent it and then dissipate. This will allow a sort of preliminary counter play to weather, however there will be a significant hit to the power of golden weather in this case.
Still, I think weather not being played is better than weather constantly dominating all other archetypes. If you look at it now even Spell Scoia'tael actually uses a lot of weather spam.
 
I believe the weather animation and idea is what made gwent so popular and attractive to play. So i dont think they will remove it and they shouldnt.

In closed beta weather was weak because 1 clear skies and ur back to ground 0 ( scoiatel used to be able to use 4 or 5 First light in a game and always ended up with CA due to thei passive which made weather against them pointless)
henselt was broken as hell. promotes all unit to gold and weather wont be able to affect them anymore in any way. So u r just left with dead bronze special cards.Both decks were the ultimate meta.

now in Open beta they tried to fix this issue by making weather deal permanent damage which is nice. But my issue here is that only monsters weather decks and some skellige archetypes should be able to spam weather. They shouldnt have gave the other factions the ability to spam weather too and still have a synergetic deck. It is this problem which made people hate weather this much in the game.
 
Also about first light.How about "Clear weather from all your rows,and summon a random(or weakest ? ) unit from your deck.Making it a silver card as well.
 
My suggestion to First Light is to make it last for 2 turns and restore half the damage dealt by weather.
 
Yea, frost in particular tends to be the best bronze weather in most cases, and it can be tempo'd out by hounds/adepts for some reason. Why nerf elven merc if you're gonna give other factions cards that almost do the same thing.
 
A really nice post, you've put alot of thought into it. Most points are well backed by logic. I do, however, have questions about some:
valcat;n8938950 said:
Blue Stripes Scout: Brilliant design. This card is the sole reason NR is played at all. The only good anti-weather card in the game. While it's strength of 6 is weak, the small addition of giving this card Crewman 1 made it a synergistic card that allowed for the creation of new decks in the weather heavy meta. This is what all anti-weather cards need: A synergistic boost to your other units that will make sure playing the card isn't a net loss when clearing a row from a weather effect.
You designated green for well balanced. This card is not. Crewman is a powerfull ability, that pushes this card far above its collegues power curve. Yes, it a reason why NR is played in weather-heavy meta. But its also a powercreep, a card wich has "clear weather effect" for free. Its a patch slapped onto NR to make it viable, but its not a solution. If anything, it causes more troubles.
Dont get me wrong, i see your point. I just dont believe "Clear weather" cards shall be "good" by themselves.
If i were to look for solution, making autoinclude anti-weather card wouldnt be one, auto-includes are a bad thing. Id probably make weather unable to damage armored units, or their armor. Then it would actually require support from cards like WH warrior or archers to get going on core units. Obviously, such tweak would require a revision of armor values, but i digress.
Other points are fair. Id also want to comment on Caranthir - i dont believe him to be broken as is. By himself, hes an interesting card, he does alot, but offer a low power value.
From where i stand, we need more cards capable to endure weather without fuzz (best such card in game ATM is the redanian knight), not autoinclude "iam allready in your deck, and i clear weather for free" cards.
 
isnadtochiev;n8965070 said:
A really nice post, you've put alot of thought into it. Most points are well backed by logic. I do, however, have questions about some:

You designated green for well balanced. (Blue Stripes Scout) is not. Crewman is a powerful ability, that pushes this card far above its collegues power curve. Yes, it a reason why NR is played in weather-heavy meta. But its also a powercreep, a card wich has "clear weather effect" for free. Its a patch slapped onto NR to make it viable, but its not a solution. If anything, it causes more troubles.
Dont get me wrong, i see your point. I just dont believe "Clear weather" cards shall be "good" by themselves.
If i were to look for solution, making autoinclude anti-weather card wouldnt be one, auto-includes are a bad thing. Id probably make weather unable to damage armored units, or their armor. Then it would actually require support from cards like WH warrior or archers to get going on core units. Obviously, such tweak would require a revision of armor values, but i digress.
Other points are fair. Id also want to comment on Caranthir - i dont believe him to be broken as is. By himself, hes an interesting card, he does alot, but offer a low power value.
From where i stand, we need more cards capable to endure weather without fuzz (best such card in game ATM is the redanian knight), not autoinclude "iam allready in your deck, and i clear weather for free" cards.

I don't really see Blue Stripes Scout as power creep, but it might be because the deck I play shuts down NR more often than not. Every card with Crewman on it has another strong ability attached to it. Blue Stripes Scout effect is the weakest of the Crewman cards, unless you're facing a weather deck. Which is what I think should be the power level of anti-weather cards, able to give you a strength advantage if they actually clear weather since there's less of them than there's weather in the opponent's deck.

Blue Stripes Scout is especially strong against decks where most of their units have a low amount of stats or very similar stats. I usually counter the ballista that follows it with a Raging Berserker, and wait patiently for two scouts and a machine between them to be played, then Igni the row for a 25 strength swing. In the case of Foltest, that is.
 
You forgot to mention weather decks typically suffer in not having enough tempo by themselves, especially in high level games, unless adding crones to your deck. But again, deck thinning using foglets + wild hunt hound are highly unstable, adding crones to your deck you get a very high chance to get multiple foglets, both hounds and frost or multiple crones in your starting pull and how are you going to deal with that?

It is laughable that you guys are expecting anti-weather cards can be as good as weather supporting cards. If this were the case, what's the whole point of using a weather deck? Making anti-weather as good as weather supporting means total destroy of weather monster fraction and making the already struggling wild hunt fraction become non-exist.
 
Last edited:
wildkeny;n8967100 said:
Making anti-weather as good as weather supporting means total destroy of weather monster fraction and making the already struggling wild hunt fraction become non-exist.

Weather problem has nothing to do with monsters. And, in fact, that speaks a lot by itself; if other factions benefit more by weather spamming than the faction that should benefit the most by weather spamming, than we have a serious problem about weather spamming.

Although i agree that creating more powerful anti-weather cards is a poor solution. Weather should be simply reworked. Some old features like weather immunity and symmetrical weather werent a problem on old weather mechanics and they should come back.
 
Laveley;n8967290 said:
Weather problem has nothing to do with monsters. And, in fact, that speaks a lot by itself; if other factions benefit more by weather spamming than the faction that should benefit the most by weather spamming, than we have a serious problem about weather spamming.

Although i agree that creating more powerful anti-weather cards is a poor solution. Weather should be simply reworked. Some old features like weather immunity and symmetrical weather werent a problem on old weather mechanics and they should come back.

Currently, to make weather supporting monsters balanced, most of these units have relatively low power themselves, which makes weather hardly a winning condition. If weather effects get weakened, either by adding weather immunity to various units, or lowering the damage, then CDPR need to overhaul half of the monster fraction to keep them still playable.

If you look at the top leader board, very few are still using weather decks. If weather is such a great way to overpower your opponents, why wouldn't we see more weather decks at high levels. In my opinion, it's more of a problem for low level opponents when they don't have a good deck with high power units to fight through weather.
 
Top Bottom