How does Shield work?

[Ringlin]

How does Shield work?

I see that it doesn't protect against Scorch, perhaps because Scorch isn't technically a power-reduction. But I just lost a round where it didn't work against Ragh Nar Roog, either.

RNR's text reads "Turn Start and When Cleared: Damage the Highest Unit on the row by 3." Is Shield's failure to stop that a bug?

I'm not ranting about RNR (which does seem, er, a tad strong), but rather trying to understand the surprisingly limited role for Shields. No good vs Weather? What about Mardroeme and associated "reset" effects by other cards?

Shield prevents only direct damage, when your unit is specifically chosen as a target?

 

[zhiphius]

quen\shield should protect against one round of weather damage. I've played Blue mountain commandoes with quen and gotten frosted, but the quen absorbed the first round of damage.
Quen\shield should also protect against thunder, direct damage from units and such. Only lock, reset and direct kill effects should be able bypass it from what i know.

Might be RNR and drought are unique since they are gold weathers.

 

[Treamayne]

Shields protect against 1 damage event (not sure if they protect against weaken). In the case of RNR it might have stopped the first three damage when it was played, but the shield would be gone the next turn when it triggered. You should see the shield disappear after it has prevented one Damage event.

 

[Arsenal96]

Quen shields used to protect against all damage I thought i.e. play a scorch on a shielded Golem and all it would do is break the shield? Odd that this appears to be no longer the case as I wasn't aware of this.

 

[MechanicalLamb23]

Quen shields used to protect against all damage I thought i.e. play a scorch on a shielded Golem and all it would do is break the shield? Odd that this appears to be no longer the case as I wasn't aware of this.

Think of scorch and similar cards as hard removals, not damage dealing cards. If you've played Hearthstone and if I remember correctly about gwent, Quen/Shields work exactly (at least almost exactly) the same why. They protect against one damaging event, however, hard removals completely ignore them. To my knowledge, and somewhat meh memory, Quen/Shields never protected against hard removal cards

 

[Alts-Gamer]

Shield prevents only direct damage, when your unit is specifically chosen as a target?

Not really. Long story short, shield protects only from units that have "Damage" wording. If you see "weaken", "reset" etc, it will not work. Anything that deals with base strength (Peter Saar, Maerdrome etc) will still make your card weaker. Also, the wording of G:Igni, Scorch, Vilgefortz does not say anything about "Damage". It destroys card completely. Letho too.
Basically, I would say Quen is useless and the only more or less decent use is in ST special cards deck.

 

[Ringlin]

quen\shield should protect against one round of weather damage.

Agreed. But it didn't. Feature of RNR, or a bug?

In the case of RNR it might have stopped the first three damage when it was played, but the shield would be gone the next turn when it triggered. You should see the shield disappear after it has prevented one Damage event.

Right. That's not what happened here. RNR removed the shield and damaged the unit in the same round.

Quen shields used to protect against all damage I thought i.e. play a scorch on a shielded Golem and all it would do is break the shield? Odd that this appears to be no longer the case as I wasn't aware of this.

I wish it were like this, but as Mechanical Lamb explained, shields protect only against damage, not direct removals.

Long story short, shield protects only from units that have "Damage" wording.

I haven't been able to re-test this with RNR to see if it happens reliably. Maybe it was a rare fluke, but I'd like to know. Anyone else have a chance to test shields with RNR?

 

[Treamayne]

If you have not already done so, I would suggest you report this to CDPR. If it happens again, try to get a screenshot or video. Make sure to mention in the comments that you don;t have RNR so you can;t test the interaction yourself. If on PC, load thge DX diag first, and most of the other information will auto-populate.

 

[krswoodward]

I see that it doesn't protect against Scorch, perhaps because Scorch isn't technically a power-reduction. But I just lost a round where it didn't work against Ragh Nar Roog, either.

RNR's text reads "Turn Start and When Cleared: Damage the Highest Unit on the row by 3." Is Shield's failure to stop that a bug?

I'm not ranting about RNR (which does seem, er, a tad strong), but rather trying to understand the surprisingly limited role for Shields. No good vs Weather? What about Mardroeme and associated "reset" effects by other cards?

Shield prevents only direct damage, when your unit is specifically chosen as a target?

shield is used to negate "1 power reducing effect". This is hard for effects too like weaken but not events like destroy or remove. In the case of something like "Rot tosser's" "Cow Carcass" witch stats Destroy. This would negate the shield and just destroy the card all together. DB Heavy Cavalry which "Removes 2 armour". Or a better "Remove" would be "Overdose" which does "3 damage and 3 armour removal to 3 adjacent units". The shield would take the hit for the damage but the armour would still be removed since armour is not technically power. As for RagNR it shouldn't have negated the shield and its a bug if it did.Report It.

 

[Ringlin]

Good thoughts, thanks. I haven't had an opportunity to see if I can duplicate the problem, but I ha've sent as much relevant info about this case to CDPR. Cheers.