I am a big fan of Syndicate decks, but it seems to me bounty decks still aren't viable because of a few key cards are too weak or offer nothing to the archetype.
I have a lot of experience with SY and have made it to pro with them several times (including this season, after tunnel drill nerf, and I will make a thread about how to climb with SY crimes in post-tunnel drill world later), so I believe my criticism here will be useful.
Bounty decks are slow but powerful. I enjoy them because their opening tempo is deliberately slow, which is strong against other control decks. If bounty decks were more viable, then you'd see a lot less hyper-control decks. When a bounty deck works well, it can beat some of the most hardcore maddoc/crime control decks out there because the archetype is so ridiculously slow. You can open with something like confession extractor, then place a bounty on an enemy unit with slander. There are many ways to have a slow opener in R1 forcing the enemy to either spend good cards to put points on the board, or just pass early rather than risk overplaying their hand.
Whereas crime decks are lighting fast, bounty decks are the opposite. It's a cool idea and gives a lot of flavor to SY.
Here is the highest winrate bounty deck I've produced, and while it's not pro-tier quality (no bounty deck is) but it can get you to rank 5 and still win 40% or more past 5:
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The most ironic part of the above "bounty" deck is that there are virtually none of the new gold bounty cards. Quite frankly, due to poor synergy and design, they are unplayable. Bounty decks as a whole, are focused around controlling your opponents board and generating value out of it, which are easily countered by 3 things: Veil, Purify, and boosting a unit tall. The above deck has as much tall punish as possible, but, like all bounty decks, is powerless to veil.
Special mention goes to assimilate decks countering bounty because not only do they have powerful veiled units, but most nilfgaard units play low for little bounty value so assimilate decks can generate more value scoring bounties on your own units than the actual bounty deck can hit against them. It's also impossible to stop Bounty Hunter Executioners from being copied, which means NG can always kill a unit they apply bounty onto, which again is easy due to being able to copy your golds and spells. This thread isn't about assimilate, which deserves it's own thread, but I want to mention a full list of counters just so this thread is complete.
I my opinion, bounty decks could just a bit more juice (i.e. points), but especially could use some more ways to deal with veil. The best way to beat a bounty deck is by boosting a veiled unit as tall as possible. That such a 5 IQ strat remains the best way to beat bounty really speaks volumes on how bad bounty cards are.
That said, bounty decks aren't viable because 3 of their most expensive golds are terrible, and one of their spells is also very weak. I'll discuss the worst cards from worst to not worst.
1. "Fabian Hale" - One of the worst cards in the game, and probably the #1 reason bounty decks suffer. 8 prov cards are supposed to offer tremendous power and utility, and practically be a win condition (compare to an unanswered Caleb Mange at 8 prov), and this card has the stats of a 4 prov card Witch Hunter. The intimidate tag is worthless because a crime deck would NEVER run this horrible expensive card over 4 prov crime card Slander, which has 100x more synergy and gives a bounty, and bounty decks do not run many crime cards so even in a bounty deck Fabian Hale plays for the same value of a 4 prov Witch Hunter most of the time. This is a sad card that needs some help, but I think a simple fix could make it viable.
Change the deploy to, "
Purify an enemy unit and place
Bounty on it." Keep the intimidate tag, helps make the card more viable outside of bounty decks. Get rid of the whole earning coins part, because bounty decks have no problem making money - the problem is placing down quality bounties. If a bounty deck can put down a bounty, then that card is pretty much dead meat and the bounty player is going to make some cash the next turn. Cash is never a problem as long as bounties can be applied, yet there are no good quality cards to help apply bounties against veiled units.
SY only has two quality 6 prov purifies from Kurt and Kalkstein, but having to purify on one turn and then apply bounty the next turn, and then kill the bounty on the following turn is too slow of a tempo to ever be viable for the already glacial tempo of bounty decks. Bounty decks lack some kind of card with fast tempo; what better card to add tempo into their arsenal than the trickster, Fabian Hale? He's The Scoundrel that will frame even the most innocent of people into monsters that must be hunted down. It only makes sense that he can turn even the best saints into the worst sinners by finding ways to make people forget about their history, hence the purify.
I don't think this would be an overpowered buff - but it would be damn powerful and instead of never seeing this card get played, you may see it get run quite often in veil heavy metas (which we currently have because of Crystal Skull), or defender heavy metas (defenders not so much, as SY decks can deal with defenders in a lot of ways without purify). With a purify Fabian Hale becomes a unique and useful card that justifies 8 prov.
2. "Purge" - Since it relies on having Witch Hunters on the board, this card is extremely niche and difficult to use. The juice is not worth the squeeze; by the time you've setup your board with enough Witch Hunters to make this card viable, you've probably already won anyways. It's a weak "win more" card with no utility, because if you're facing an opponent with boosted veil units (which is common btw) then this card won't even apply it's bounty effect. So it doesn't help bounty decks win against the matchups bounty is weak against, and helps bounty decks win games it was going to win anyways. It's a worthless card, although still not as bad as Fabian Hale.
My suggestion is to change the Deathblow part to, "
Purify the highest-power enemy unit, then apply a
Bounty on it." This actually makes the card useful against decks that use veil. Currently this card offers no advantages and therefore playing a Witch Hunter deck has no advantages.
This buff would not be OP because of the huge amount of setup required to get value out of it. Thematically and lore-wise, the idea of a Purge destroying innocent people makes perfect sense. Also, with a purify, this card may even see use in a crime deck because crimes have lots of ways to knock units down to 3 power or less, so they would be able to reach the powerful deathblow part.
3. "Octavia Hale" - One of the worst tutors in the game due to how weak her sons are, but also, her range of cards she can tutor are very small and make it easy to brick with her.
My suggestion is to add a passive to her, "Every time you place a
Bounty on an enemy unit, gain 1 coin." This would be unique, as no other such mechanic exists, and also makes it so the opponent has an interest in trying to answer Octavia.
Even if she gets bricked (because you play two of her sons on R1 and draw the other 2 on R3, which is very common) she would still have value with this change. Thematically it also makes perfect sense. She is literally juggling gold bags in her artwork. She is all about the money is she not?
4. "The Brute" - easily countered by any tall punish. Also extremely awkward to play if your opponent can keep spamming engines that require you to react, thereby losing out on any value you'd get from being boosted by the last unit killed.
I agree with the suggestion to make The Brute like Alumni, so that the highest unit you've killed with bounty during the game is the value The Brute boosts himself by. It wouldn't be any less vulnerable to tall punish, but at least for 13 provs you'd see The Brute potentially play for 20+ points (coins included) in R3, which is comparable to any other 13 prov card in the game.
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I think if the above cards were buffed, Bounty decks would become quite viable A- or B tier decks. Right now though, I kinda feel ripped off having bought the $100 PoP decks hoping for some cool new SY cards. Not super ripped off, but definitely low value.
Bounty decks will always be weak to players who run good purifies, however, and that is fine, because purify has slow tempo and purify offers low value against tons of matchups. However, bounty decks right now are not only weak to purify, but veil also, and veil is proactive making it impossible for Bounty decks to win against most matchups. An opponent that runs veil and purify will beat bounty 100% of the time, it's just too easy and no one will take this deck seriously until it has good answers to veil.
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