I_Axii_your_Mother;n7136110 said:
I think there is a reason the lead game designer mains Skellige, they are very consistent. I’ve also been noticing nothing but buffs for them in the coming patch. They got base STR increases on pirate captain, and the Dimeritium Shackles can be seen as nothing but a buff for Skellige. Either play it on your huge base strength unit, or use it to “demote” your opponent’s strongest card. Plus I don’t see how giving Golden Madman Lugos a countdown allows for any counter play as they stated. Maybe if you are NR and you can demote him, where as they completely neutered Isengrim to allow for counter play. I guess at least now we can see Lugos coming at us with his pants down two rounds in advance.
Your points are biased. The buffs are pretty much only on cards that you almost never see in any Skellige decks right now, because they're nowhere near competitive, and in some case, their viability itself is seriously questionable. Meanwhile, stronger cards that gets picked all the time mostly got nerfed instead. King bran was a leader that was almost not picked, he got a small buff. Pirate captains and war longship, same (pirate captains actually also got a nerf in compensation for the buff in survivability btw). Kambi, same. Young bear had a bug corrected. Skjal was in no deck at all (I think I saw him ONCE in hundred of games). Morkvarg was hit very very hard by the shieldsmith's nerf, it's only fair he's getting a +1 str buff. The shieldsmith's buff in str is simply restoring the initial value of that card, since as I pointed out, the nerf didn't simply nerf the impact of that card on following round, but it's impact during the played round, and THAT was bad for skellige with already so few cards above 6 str during first round.
Ermion and Birna Bran got nerfed, savage bear got nerfed. Hjalmar got nerfed (but I don't understand why for this one). Lugos got nerfed. Harald got change, some peoples will call that a buff, I'm not convinced. He lost a lot of the "fear factor" that the -4 to all wounded was giving by only being there, and with the savage bear being removed more easily and the tremors hitting both side, it's an indirect nerf to the possibility of keeping your opponent wounded regularly. Sigrdrifa got nerfed too.
You also forgot to consider that last patch, most of the "always used" skellige units already got hit by serious nerfs, too.
Also, there's tons of counter to Lugos now.
D bomb, d shackle and demoting aside, the counter also allows for
Radovid
Triss
Iorverth
Roche
So without even going further, 2 NR, 2 ST, and one neutral card can kill him before the countdown reach zero. 2 neutral spells can deal with him afterwards, one is a simple single target bronze card. You can also try something with 2 cards combo as well, but it's a bit more ackward, like yen+harald or Yen+ Imlerith.
Anyway, there's plenty of counter for him, and at least one is available for all faction.
If later patches introduce more ability to wound gold, they're all going to be able to counter him as well, since his 4str makes him pretty much killed by every single single target ability who can damage gold.