Any good strategies against NG Viper Witchers with ST or NR?

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Any good strategies against NG Viper Witchers with ST or NR?

I feel like I have a great ST deck but often have trouble with the frustrating and boring games where the NG player just keeps pulling bloody Viper Witchers
 
1) Spread your points out. If you don't have a 10+ power unit on the board the Viper Witchers aren't at full strength.
2) If you have movement cards, use them to break up Mahakam Ale. Alternatively just kill their units.
3) If you're NR then armor helps since it absorbs the damage.
4) Save Scorch or Igni or a similar anti-big-card effect to deal with Trial of the Grasses.
 
Most NR archetypes are a pain for alchemy. NR swarm puts so many bodies out that vipers can't possibly do good damage, armour blunts their board impact and forces them to target things they'd rather not, and Henselt machines can consistently stop them from being able to use mahakam ale effectively. You just have to practice, practice, practice, and zero in on what your specific deck does best.
 
Oh I agree.

This card is hands down my most hated card in the game given it counters any kind of engine card that requires on board presence to do anything. Dragoons, Marksmen, Smugglers, Farseers - anything that has to stay on the board is instantly nuked by this ******* card.

And they can use Ointment to res...

Nothing in this game bothers me much on an emotional level, but these assassin's creed wannabes one-shotting so many archetype defining cards without any effort or setup other than building a (perfectly synergistic) deck around them is utter bull. Event their voice lines **** me off... "We follow Letho's lead" - well go and... (I don't want to get banned so will leave the rest up to imagination)

I'm getting to the point of instant forfeit any time I see one of these viper witchers put down on the board because they trigger me so hard. Actually the whole NG faction triggers me. Enforcers are almost as bad as these *******.

In fact I feel like playing a deck that hard counters NG and NG only - I don't care about losing to other factions if it means ******* those ******* with their cheap and brainless tactics.

/rant (yeah it felt good)
 
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Assuming it's the standard Novice/Viper build
You can also push them into a long round, they've got max 4 vipers round 1 if you don't kill them, and total 8 after Assire. they feel invincible round 1, but you can push them as far as wasting a soft finish. IF you can push deep on R1 then bleed them a bit on R2 since it takes a bit for them to get board presence. Card advantage means very little against them, what matters is how many vipers they have to throw at you.
 
Well, I play alchemy. And it's really a bit weak Vs NR in terms of getting full effects. NR rarely has any unit with 10+ strength, and can kill unit fairly quick to deny ale.. or just scorch any unit bluffed. The key is in round one, don't kill anything or just the one with least threat being Res. As you can nearly guarantee they will come back if you kill them. If you stay off killing them, we can brick a ointment for like 6 pts. Round 3 of i end up having to use ale, they usually die to scorch. as for ST. Seriously, they have a tier 1 deck, and this is tier 1.5. just ithlinne a tremor or mediation a couple of bluffed dudes and you laugh.. control does very little to st. Just slave driver is super strong due to your op bronzes. So again, don't kill them. Or do the nova version when you have wardancer, agitator, and a few bad cards for slave driver to copy to lower the chance of it getting something good.
 
I still find if difficult to push when playing with things like Marksmen or Dragoons as it's slow tempo that requires several turns of setup - which players usually hold viper witchers back for. And their mahakam ale pulls can pump out good value every turn, especially with things like slave infantry if they use them.

Even if I try to bait viper witchers on less important targets, they still seem to have more than enough to one shot the core bronze engines leaving me with maybe one marksman or one dragoon, the latter of which is useless if not played early in a round.

It's pretty depressing.
 
Man, I don't know what a good counter for Alchemy Nilfgaard is. My Witchers do 9 damage, which I think is an okay amount. Some people make them do like 11+ damage which is really annoying. Then again, most engine cards are below 9. I think an Armor deck would be really good, just don't use Aspirants lol. I've always had trouble beating machines, but that's just me.

As for ST. Well.... you could try a Mulligan (swap) deck. I've never come against an Alchemy deck with mine but I assume it would do okay. I think Movement and Handbuff would do terrible against Alchemy because their engine cards are really fragile. I mean you could always go for Dwarves, they're really strong all the way through. Spell decks are kind of weak, but I personally think it would do good against them if you don't have good units in your deck for the Slave Drivers to use.
 
of course there's always the obvious option... since they rely so heavily on columns, weather chews right through them >.>
 
Void_Singer;n10335212 said:
of course there's always the obvious option... since they rely so heavily on columns, weather chews right through them >.>

I am tempted to play weather just for this.

Otherwise I'm currently trying a handbuff deck without dragoons... not working out well.

Dragoons and Marksmen just need a survivability buff - I'd even take double quen from Ithlinne if it comes back as a bronze card and not attached to a new geralt.
 
Seriously, guys, run NR armour. Alchemy struggles against this deck. Sure, the vips can shut down a few of your armour synergy cards, but they can't get all of them. Most proper alchemy decks push to 10 or 11 damage (mine runs 11), but they can usually only do that a couple of times in round 1, and after that they don't run a lot of interaction. An armour deck, if left alone for a couple of turns, produces MASSIVE points, and you're always building towards Stennis or Natalis CH plays that usually put NG inescapably on the backfoot. Stennis on his own screws them up because they can only kill him or the unit he summons, and either unit has a ton of armour to power up cavalry. If it's the buff armour guy and they don't kill him, thunderbolt just turns him right back on. Shani even makes the lolfest worse by bringing back something with even more armour than it had in the first place.

Henselt Machines has the upside that most of its power is from relatively weak units, so vips end up wasting their value while ballistas are roflcoptering their way around murderising everything.

ST really only has dorfs and dorfs stomps alchemy quite easily (alchemy runs out of steam long before dorfs, and it fills its board up with juicy Tremors targets), but Spellatael variants usually DESTROY alchemy, because it bricks their slave drivers AND gives them not a single good target for vips to hit, while all alchemy's main plays set up spellatael removal for maximum value (yes, please give your vip +4 power so my lightning bolt gets 9 value). The only good target slave drivers can get from my version is elven scout (who is quite good).
 
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iamthedave;n10339182 said:
Seriously, guys, run NR armour. Alchemy struggles against this deck. Sure, the vips can shut down a few of your armour synergy cards, but they can't get all of them. Most proper alchemy decks push to 10 or 11 damage (mine runs 11), but they can usually only do that a couple of times in round 1, and after that they don't run a lot of interaction. An armour deck, if left alone for a couple of turns, produces MASSIVE points, and you're always building towards Stennis or Natalis CH plays that usually put NG inescapably on the backfoot. Stennis on his own screws them up because they can only kill him or the unit he summons, and either unit has a ton of armour to power up cavalry. If it's the buff armour guy and they don't kill him, thunderbolt just turns him right back on. Shani even makes the lolfest worse by bringing back something with even more armour than it had in the first place.

Henselt Machines has the upside that most of its power is from relatively weak units, so vips end up wasting their value while ballistas are roflcoptering their way around murderising everything.

ST really only has dorfs and dorfs stomps alchemy quite easily (alchemy runs out of steam long before dorfs, and it fills its board up with juicy Tremors targets), but Spellatael variants usually DESTROY alchemy, because it bricks their slave drivers AND gives them not a single good target for vips to hit, while all alchemy's main plays set up spellatael removal for maximum value (yes, please give your vip +4 power so my lightning bolt gets 9 value). The only good target slave drivers can get from my version is elven scout (who is quite good).

And for anyone wanting to run movement or handbuff ST, we should just accept auto-loss when faced with alchemy?

I can accept certain decks should be weaker against others, but I haven't come across such one sided hard counters in gwent over the last year.
 
alchemy ng player here. so let me get it right, dwarves complaing about ng now, rest is complaining about dwarves..
and yes weather is hammering me..
that why i enyo gwent, truely ..
 
If you're running Movement or handbuff ST you should accept auto-loss against almost every decent deck in the game. They're critically underpowered and struggle against half a dozen different archetypes.

And there are tons of decks that are auto-loss against consume monsters unless the consume player bricks his hand.
 
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fo3nixz;n10341782 said:
alchemy ng player here. so let me get it right, dwarves complaing about ng now, rest is complaining about dwarves..
and yes weather is hammering me..
that why i enyo gwent, truely ..
Dwarves? lol - don't label all us ST players with that nonsense please. Never touched that archetype for thematic reasons and I never intend to.
iamthedave;n10342242 said:
If you're running Movement or handbuff ST you should accept auto-loss against almost every decent deck in the game. They're critically underpowered and struggle against half a dozen different archetypes.

And there are tons of decks that are auto-loss against consume monsters unless the consume player bricks his hand.
Movement actually does damn good against point buffing decks such as consume, dwarves, NR unit spam, SK bears/ships etc - anything that doesn't kill marksmen allows you to setup ridiculous point swings. Handbuff likewise, if you can keep dragoons on the board then it can also provide huge r3 finishers with things like braenn or swordmasters.

The only decks that hardcounter movement and handbuff respectively are NG alchemy and NG spies. This is purely because viper witchers **** the engine units more times than you can copy or res them with operator/muzzle/SC/hattori, and Impera Enforcers can be safely held in the hand until there are like 10 spies on your side of the board, at which point they also **** any engine card. The only other decks that are tough matchups for movement are high tempo Nova decks that can force you to single card round 3 finish.

Other decks that can be problematic in general is anything that controls the marksmen or dragoons because these decks are so heavily reliant on these engine units. Everything else is fair game tbh, especially proactive/greedy point buffing decks that don't interact with your side of the board that much.
 
Sailears;n10342682 said:
Dwarves? lol - don't label all us ST players with that nonsense please. Never touched that archetype for thematic reasons and I never intend to.

Movement actually does damn good against point buffing decks such as consume, dwarves, NR unit spam, SK bears/ships etc - anything that doesn't kill marksmen allows you to setup ridiculous point swings. Handbuff likewise, if you can keep dragoons on the board then it can also provide huge r3 finishers with things like braenn or swordmasters.

The only decks that hardcounter movement and handbuff respectively are NG alchemy and NG spies. This is purely because viper witchers **** the engine units more times than you can copy or res them with operator/muzzle/SC/hattori, and Impera Enforcers can be safely held in the hand until there are like 10 spies on your side of the board, at which point they also **** any engine card. The only other decks that are tough matchups for movement are high tempo Nova decks that can force you to single card round 3 finish.

Other decks that can be problematic in general is anything that controls the marksmen or dragoons because these decks are so heavily reliant on these engine units. Everything else is fair game tbh, especially proactive/greedy point buffing decks that don't interact with your side of the board that much.

Most decent decks run a removal or lock suite that'll shut down or kill marksmen and Dragoons. I run a movement deck; it really does have no game after about 3.7k; every single deck runs enough removal to shut down their main engines almost every game, and without those engines they're absurdly low tempo. And armour hardcore shuts down movement as well because it's virtually impossible to get positive gains from actual movement effects, since they just buff strength and re-amour up every time. You can get wins, but it's draw dependent; if yours is perfect and theirs is weak, you have a chance. Good draws will flatten the movement deck every time, all day long. There's just no protection for the key cards, fun as they are.
 
iamthedave;n10343522 said:
Most decent decks run a removal or lock suite that'll shut down or kill marksmen and Dragoons. I run a movement deck; it really does have no game after about 3.7k; every single deck runs enough removal to shut down their main engines almost every game, and without those engines they're absurdly low tempo. And armour hardcore shuts down movement as well because it's virtually impossible to get positive gains from actual movement effects, since they just buff strength and re-amour up every time. You can get wins, but it's draw dependent; if yours is perfect and theirs is weak, you have a chance. Good draws will flatten the movement deck every time, all day long. There's just no protection for the key cards, fun as they are.

Yes I know it is tough to get from r18 up to 4k and pretty much useless above that.

But you're making out as if every meta deck is good against movement which isn't accurate. Armour doesn't shut it down in terms of point swings - the battering rams/ballistas etc shut it down by killing the engines. If I can get 4-6 marksmen to stick on the board then cards like nivellen/aard/zoltan can chew through the armour. Greedy point buffing decks don't shut it down - huge short r3 finishers do, as many will out-tempo r1 then bleed r2.

Anyway I hope the next patch does something for these archetypes because right now it's worse than before the midwinter patch. I'm too salty right now. :/
 
4-6 Marksmen? I can see the 4 from Operator, where are the other two coming from?

I think you're mixing armour with machines. Armour is - usually - quite non-interactive, and generally prefers to be up against decks that want to get points on it because every point of armour reduces the effect.

All I can say is: don't put too much faith in it. Pretty much the only thing coming out of the forums right now is 'fix Dorfs'. I think it's more likely that they'll annihilate the ST faction temporarily for the game's health than risk a softly-softly patch that might not address the problem. We might get lucky, but I think it's more likely they'll take the nuclear option due to how bad things have gotten. And if they go in looking to nerf dorfs, it's highly unlikely they're also thinking of buffing other archetypes, in case it accidentally buffs dorfs.
 
iamthedave;n10346622 said:
4-6 Marksmen? I can see the 4 from Operator, where are the other two coming from?

I think you're mixing armour with machines. Armour is - usually - quite non-interactive, and generally prefers to be up against decks that want to get points on it because every point of armour reduces the effect.

All I can say is: don't put too much faith in it. Pretty much the only thing coming out of the forums right now is 'fix Dorfs'. I think it's more likely that they'll annihilate the ST faction temporarily for the game's health than risk a softly-softly patch that might not address the problem. We might get lucky, but I think it's more likely they'll take the nuclear option due to how bad things have gotten. And if they go in looking to nerf dorfs, it's highly unlikely they're also thinking of buffing other archetypes, in case it accidentally buffs dorfs.

Muzzle and SC.

But usually now I save SC for spy nonsense, otherwise very easy to get 5 with Muzzle. I also use Muzzle in my handbuff deck to get 5 dragoons minimum.

6 Marksmen into Nivellen on a point buffed row can level even the greediest commander's horn/etc. I've never had much issue with NR point buffing decks that allow me to setup the combos.
 
Sailears;n10329792 said:
Oh I agree.

This card is hands down my most hated card in the game given it counters any kind of engine card that requires on board presence to do anything. Dragoons, Marksmen, Smugglers, Farseers - anything that has to stay on the board is instantly nuked by this ******* card.

And they can use Ointment to res...

Nothing in this game bothers me much on an emotional level, but these assassin's creed wannabes one-shotting so many archetype defining cards without any effort or setup other than building a (perfectly synergistic) deck around them is utter bull. Event their voice lines **** me off... "We follow Letho's lead" - well go and... (I don't want to get banned so will leave the rest up to imagination)

I'm getting to the point of instant forfeit any time I see one of these viper witchers put down on the board because they trigger me so hard. Actually the whole NG faction triggers me. Enforcers are almost as bad as these *******.

In fact I feel like playing a deck that hard counters NG and NG only - I don't care about losing to other factions if it means ******* those ******* with their cheap and brainless tactics.

/rant (yeah it felt good)

I feel your lament and i heartily sympathize

:affection:
 
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