Yeah. I thought the pace at which expansions are being released seemed rushed. Crimson Curse and Novigrad brought pretty severe balance issues at launch that needed to be hot fixed. Both Novigrad and Iron Judgment had missing premium art at launch. I justified this mentally by thinking about the new reward points that would help me complete the October reward tree even with previous contracts dwindling. Then it turns out Iron judgement was so rushed that new contracts weren't even added. They took the time to change all the mastery contracts' text to reflect the uncoupling of leaders with leader powers so this is particularly strange.
In addition to the ones mentioned, I would have expected contracts for triggering exposed abilities and an arena contract for making a deck composed entirely of Iron Judgement cards. An identical arena contract exists for all previous expansions. Perhaps there could also be a contract for damaging or killing units while they still have armor using bleeding or other special armor circumvention effects.
Even then, that would be the least amount of contracts to be added in any expansion. I suppose that's fine as not every expansion needs so many new key words. Still, I think this would be a good opportunity to add contracts related to keywords from classic Gwent that never received them. This would bring the original five factions more in line with Syndicate, which has a contract related to every imaginable facet of its play and is therefore significantly more lucrative for earning reward points than the original factions. A potential list would be as follows:
(The factions are mostly for organization and to try to achieve fair representation amongst factional mechanics. Many of these could be triggered by neutral and cross-faction syndicate cards.)
Monsters:
Trigger Thrive abilities "x" times
Trigger Dominance abilities "x" times
Organics?
Nilfengard:
Boost enemy units by "x" power
Move "x" cards to the top of a player's deck.
Tactics?
Scoialatel:
Boost units in your hand by "x" power.
Trigger Ambush abilities "x times"
Nature?
Northern Realms:
Spend/Give "x" charges.
Trigger Inspire abilities "x" times
Trigger resupply abilities "x" times.
Skellige:
Heal "x" damage
Trigger Bloodlust abilities "x" times
(Double and triple progress could be granted for Bloodlust 2 and 3. I already completed the Assimilate and Harmony contracts before the release of Iron Judgment. Can anyone confirm whether Haromony 2 and Assimilate 2 count for twice a much? I'll test with intimidate 2 when I get the chance.)
Alchemy?
Neutral:
Play units with or give units resilience "x" times. (When I say "or" , I mean both, as opposed to the use of "/" earlier on which means CDProject Red should choose one or the other. There simply aren't enough cards with resilience naturally to ignore adrenaline rush, and I think some of the most fun resilience strategies use adrenaline rush on tall decks. Also, sausage maker gains resilience as its fee ability and even Gabor doesn't technically have resilience until it's deployed on the melee row.)
Iron Judgement (to reiterate):
Trigger Barricaded abilites "x" times
Trigger Exposed abilites "x" times
Give units "x" armor
Do "x" damage to enemy units' power while they still have armor.
Play a match with an arena deck comprised entirely of iron judgement cards.
Contracts could be added pertaining to each faction's signature special card type as well to give them comparable contracts to the "intimidate" and proposed "resupply" contracts for crimes and warfare respectively. I don't know what'd they be but I'm open to suggestions.
Ideally any progress already made towards the achievements could be grandfathered in. The fact that the game furnishes a list of each user's most played cards indicated that CDProject Red does some sort of record keeping in the backend. Even if it's just the amount of any specific card played by a specific user, they could assume that any time a card with a specific keyword was played, that keyword was triggered, if applicable, once. This would likely overestimate the amount of progress made on a specific contract (although it would severely underestimate thrive, for example) but it would be used to calculate the initial progress existing users start with, and progress would be made normally from there.
Maybe an allowance would also be made for cards that had keywords removed. Archespore for thrive and Mahakam Marauder for resilience come to mind. If the records don't indicate WHEN the cards were played, and instead just give a total of how many of the cards were played so far, they could just give players the benefit of the doubt and say that ALL archespores played up until the release of the thrive contract, and ALL Mahakam Marauders played up until the release of the resilience contract, would grant one progress of thrive and resilience respectively. If there are any other examples of cards that gained or lost keywords with reworks since contracts were added to the game, let me know.
Worst case scenario, the contracts could be added with all progress beginning at zero at the time of their inclusion. When contracts were added the first time, did they register the progress users had already made? If someone who was around when the very first contracts were added, let me know. I wasn't.
I'll clean this list up as I receive feedback and get some of those questions answered. I'll also check the wording of existing contracts to make sure the proposed contracts are consistent. " I don't remember if "trigger __ abilities" is the exact phrase used in game. Also the arena achievement is definitely worded wrong.
