I just want to say how RIDICULOUSLY overpowered arachas consume decks are, needs nerfing

+
Too many cards combo in too many ways to all the other cards, so you literally wont have enough removal to stop an arachas deck. I have vsed arachas players several times and get absolutely obliterated using an otherwise extremely strong Syndicate Profit based deck. I can barely even win one round, and lose even with card advantage to consume decks, because they somehow collect 50+ power virtually every round without fail.

Im sure many people agree how ridiculous consume is, it requires heavy nerfing. The damage output is f*cking insane, as well as simultaneous boosting. The only way to beat arachas consume is by out-powering it with your own combos, and even that hasn't worked for me. I beat basically all other decks except this one. Im very annoyed.
 

4RM3D

Ex-moderator
A syndicate player is complaining that an AQ deck is overpowered. Am I the only one that sees the irony in that?

Anyhow, ever since the buff to the AQ leader, the deck has been tier 1. However, it has never become overpowered. The deck has some weaknesses. For example, it really wants to win round one for a Glusty finisher. But, if it cannot, one tall removal card usually finishes off AQ. Furthermore, AQ can suffer from tempo, especially when you can stop the early consume engines. This also makes it vulnerable to bleeding. I have a fairly decent win-rate against AQ with my Syndicate deck. Though, it remains a challenging opponent.

TL;DR: AQ doesn't require any nerfs.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Ahhhh, how far we've come, since Homecoming launched and i was using a "weird Arachas meme deck" while everyone was using Big Woodlands. How the tables have turned...

It's true that Arachas is pretty powerful now. But the OP isnt clear on his complaints. Cant stop an Arachas consume deck? Is he talking about Ruehin/Dethlaff HV? You know there's a thing called locks. I know SY players are too busy with OP cards so they tend to skip those, but they can be useful.

Also, 'damage output'? Since when does Monsters have any insane damage output? Does he mean cyclops killing the aforementioned Ruehin/Dethlaff to do 4/5dmg, or maybe the Vran Machinegun after the whole board is setup? Because MO has always been the weakest faction at direct damage, maybe tied with NG.
 
if you loose to artefacts: tech drill.
if you loose to something else: tech tinboy.
(or if you do not own him: improve your gameplay/tech lock or bannish)
SY should not have any trouble to deal with a specific deck..
hope I could help :)
 
In all fairness Glusty arachas is dumb. I too have a Syndicate deck and for all the removal and control i've got (bounty spamming + witch hunters for removal) i still cannot stay ahead. It's always a close call, and they always save glusty for last, while forcing me to dispose of hugely powerful enemies like speartip, or a boosted-to-shit kayran, or an ozzrel that eats up a 7 power ice giant, or a boosted-to-shit brewess, or any of the other stupid units that eat deathwish units and end up getting higher power and spawning even bigger units (or damaging/killing mine). I never won a game against glusty arachas, because there is only so much control and damage i can throw at them before i run out, while glusty itself is safe in hand and i cant do anything to it. Kayran is already a strong card, it works well for all monster builds but glustyworp itself (not the rest of the build) is overpowered imo because it is too powerful in addition to the already powerful kit at the monsters disposal. And dont even get me started with the damn dettlaff caranthir combo. Just give glusty order instead of deploy, i think that should fix it.

And just to clarify, syndicate is not overpowered, it does have powerful cards, i agree, but i do get my ass kicked by other decks too, mostly nilfgaardian slave infantry (as well as a few other nilfgaard decks sometimes) and skellige. But these decks are fair and powerful, and when i say fair, i mean you can actually combat these deck's core mechanics if you manage your coins and cards well, whereas glusty can't be dealt with unless you get stupidly lucky and manage to banish glustyworp with a viper witcher (after which they forfeit 90% of time, topkek). Makes me wanna go back to witcher usurper.
 
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I keep hearing abouy how op SK is, but against this deck I feel like I have no chance. Their engines are more resilient and their tall units are bigger.

It might be a solution to make the activated ability spawn all 3 arachas at once, making ut easier to disrupt the deck on other rounds.
 
SY is far from OP, ive played, won and lost a lot of games, SY has no effective engines which arent quickly killed, locked or banished by opponents. Scoiatel in particular, not only has extreme synergy boosting but removal as well, there's nothing in Syndicate that can compete. To win with syndicate at high ranks requires lucky draw for you, and shit draw for your opponent.

Bounty mechanics arent useful. Once a card has a bounty, you need removal to kill it. There is only one Graden. Caleb Menge costs money.

Crime cards and Intimidate mechanic are not powerful. Say you have 4 intimidate cards on the field, and play 2 crime cards over two turns. Thats +8 bonus over... how many turns in total? Did you count the fact most factions bring out big monsters WITH REMOVAL too?

What about Monsters getting +4, +5 PER TURN from consuming Ruehin, Detlaff or any of the deathwish respawn with boost units.

The profit mechanic is not useful either. 1 coin translates to 1 effective power point, you can use that for damage or for boosting. Any coin-gathering cards you play can easily be killed or locked by meta cards from other factions, and even if you hit 9 coins, thats 9 effective damage. As if thats useful against a charge-counter boosting deck which constantly gives +1 charge to damage output units, that can do anything from 4 to 12 damage or more per turn?


To win with Syndicate, you need an absurd amount of locks and removal just to survive. The Syndicate engines just arent good enough. Im losing interest in pursuing Syndicate because im pretty sure I have the strongest syndicate deck possible and I still get destroyed by other factions when they get their engines running. I'll probably go back to Starcraft 2 lol, and return when the game has thousands more cards and metas to choose from. Right now Scoiatel is the strongest faction, period.

I only started winning reasonably when I included 2 alzurs thunder, Bekkers rockslide, three locks (Dorregaray of Vole, Aguara and Kurt) and I think one other 6 damage removal. Doesnt leave a lot of space for actual Syndicate cards huh?
 
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SY is far from OP, ive played, won and lost a lot of games, SY has no effective engines which arent quickly killed, locked or banished by opponents. Scoiatel in particular, not only has extreme synergy boosting but removal as well, there's nothing in Syndicate that can compete. To win with syndicate at high ranks requires lucky draw for you, and shit draw for your opponent.

Bounty mechanics arent useful. Once a card has a bounty, you need removal to kill it. There is only one Graden. Caleb Menge costs money.

Crime cards and Intimidate mechanic are not powerful. Say you have 4 intimidate cards on the field, and play 2 crime cards over two turns. Thats +8 bonus over... how many turns in total? Did you count the fact most factions bring out big monsters WITH REMOVAL too?

What about Monsters getting +4, +5 PER TURN from consuming Ruehin, Detlaff or any of the deathwish respawn with boost units.

The profit mechanic is not useful either. 1 coin translates to 1 effective power point, you can use that for damage or for boosting. Any coin-gathering cards you play can easily be killed or locked by meta cards from other factions, and even if you hit 9 coins, thats 9 effective damage. As if thats useful against a charge-counter boosting deck which constantly gives +1 charge to damage output units, that can do anything from 4 to 12 damage or more per turn?


To win with Syndicate, you need an absurd amount of locks and removal just to survive. The Syndicate engines just arent good enough. Im losing interest in pursuing Syndicate because im pretty sure I have the strongest syndicate deck possible and I still get destroyed by other factions when they get their engines running. I'll probably go back to Starcraft 2 lol, and return when the game has thousands more cards and metas to choose from. Right now Scoiatel is the strongest faction, period.

I only started winning reasonably when I included 2 alzurs thunder, Bekkers rockslide, three locks (Dorregaray of Vole, Aguara and Kurt) and I think one other 6 damage removal. Doesnt leave a lot of space for actual Syndicate cards huh?
May I ask what Rank are you playing?
 

rrc

Forum veteran
SY is far from OP, ive played, won and lost a lot of games, SY has no effective engines which arent quickly killed, locked or banished by opponents. Scoiatel in particular, not only has extreme synergy boosting but removal as well, there's nothing in Syndicate that can compete. To win with syndicate at high ranks requires lucky draw for you, and shit draw for your opponent.

Bounty mechanics arent useful. Once a card has a bounty, you need removal to kill it. There is only one Graden. Caleb Menge costs money.

Crime cards and Intimidate mechanic are not powerful. Say you have 4 intimidate cards on the field, and play 2 crime cards over two turns. Thats +8 bonus over... how many turns in total? Did you count the fact most factions bring out big monsters WITH REMOVAL too?

What about Monsters getting +4, +5 PER TURN from consuming Ruehin, Detlaff or any of the deathwish respawn with boost units.

The profit mechanic is not useful either. 1 coin translates to 1 effective power point, you can use that for damage or for boosting. Any coin-gathering cards you play can easily be killed or locked by meta cards from other factions, and even if you hit 9 coins, thats 9 effective damage. As if thats useful against a charge-counter boosting deck which constantly gives +1 charge to damage output units, that can do anything from 4 to 12 damage or more per turn?


To win with Syndicate, you need an absurd amount of locks and removal just to survive. The Syndicate engines just arent good enough. Im losing interest in pursuing Syndicate because im pretty sure I have the strongest syndicate deck possible and I still get destroyed by other factions when they get their engines running. I'll probably go back to Starcraft 2 lol, and return when the game has thousands more cards and metas to choose from. Right now Scoiatel is the strongest faction, period.

I only started winning reasonably when I included 2 alzurs thunder, Bekkers rockslide, three locks (Dorregaray of Vole, Aguara and Kurt) and I think one other 6 damage removal. Doesnt leave a lot of space for actual Syndicate cards huh?
Honestly, at first I thought you were being sarcastic, saying SY is weak and implying ST is better than SY. But when I read fully, I understood that you are serious. Lets go over where SY is insanely OP and what may be the mistake you are doing.

I am assuming that you are an young new player who still isn't fully familiar with SY and how it should be played and give you idea/advice on how to play it effectively. (I am also not a pro player, but currently in Rank 3, my best till now playing SY. Previously I reached Rank 3 once with Brouver, that was before SvalBlod was given a ton of testosterone. After 3 seasons of trying and failing to even touch Rank 5 with ST, I reached with ease Rank 3 playing SY)

Bounty - If you want to kill the Bounty unit for free, yes, there is only one option, Graden. But there is a unit called Executioner who is also ridiculously powerful when combined with Bounty units. Caleb is not the only unit who can put a bounty on an enemy. You should use Caleb as late as possible and use Witch Hunter and Slander (crime card, which gives you 3 coins and when you put a Slander on a 5 power card, deploying Executioner, you can kill that card and get 5 coins back. How freaking insane is that?) to begin with. Build at least two units with Bounty with those 4P cards and then deploy executioner and kill them both and having more coins also after that.
Imagine the frustration of an MO player who plays Foglet and you put a bounty on it. The the MO player plays Pugo and you put a bounty on the Pugo. Now kill the Pugo with Graden and boost him by 10 points and get 9 coins in hand to summon Radanian Ship. You should throw in Swindle too (an excellent proactive play which will allow you to wipe the opponent's board). Bounty is so oppressive that I feel bad to play it and moved on to trying something else. It is that OP. If you don't accept it, you will realize what I am saying when you face a decent SY opponent.
Initially when I tried, I had bricked Graden a few times, but with good planning of bounty units, deck-building and mulligans, you can always get him to work.

I agree that Intimidate sucks and to get good amount of value you have to play a lot of low tempo turns. Just forget about intimidate and just add good crime cards: Swindle, Slander, Dip In Pontor, Eavesdrop (and initially, before you master coin management, Pickpocket). Do not try to make Intimidate work. If you get any intimidate proc, it is good, otherwise, don't depend on Intimidate units as a main win-con.

Ruihen you say? Just seize him with Phillipa. Botching, Octvist, Ruihen and even Bearmaster (yes, that 1 power card, which will make the opponent's resurrect special cards bricks) are all Phillipa's tasty targets. You may say 'but she uses all coins'; yes, she does; slowly you will learn to manage your coins.

Charges can be interacted. Charge units can be locked/killed/seized/banished, effectively making the charges' worth as 0 points, but coins are uninteractable!

Killing opponents' unit with SY is the easiest. You have bounty, Phillipa, the brothers, DipInPontor and even Boris. You are saying that SY is so weak that you want to add neutral cards. I would say that you are adding too many neutral cards that you are making your SY deck weak.

My advice would be to plan your deck and learn to manage your coins well. Blindly add Slanderx2, Witch Hunterx2, Witch Hunter Executionerx2, Caleb, Graden, The Brothers, Phillipa and some profit Crime cards and before you know it, you would have ranked up easily to a much higher rank. If you still need help, share your deck in this forum and ask for advice. Good Luck.
 
Honestly, at first I thought you were being sarcastic, saying SY is weak and implying ST is better than SY. But when I read fully, I understood that you are serious. Lets go over where SY is insanely OP and what may be the mistake you are doing.

I am assuming that you are an young new player who still isn't fully familiar with SY and how it should be played and give you idea/advice on how to play it effectively. (I am also not a pro player, but currently in Rank 3, my best till now playing SY. Previously I reached Rank 3 once with Brouver, that was before SvalBlod was given a ton of testosterone. After 3 seasons of trying and failing to even touch Rank 5 with ST, I reached with ease Rank 3 playing SY)

Bounty - If you want to kill the Bounty unit for free, yes, there is only one option, Graden. But there is a unit called Executioner who is also ridiculously powerful when combined with Bounty units. Caleb is not the only unit who can put a bounty on an enemy. You should use Caleb as late as possible and use Witch Hunter and Slander (crime card, which gives you 3 coins and when you put a Slander on a 5 power card, deploying Executioner, you can kill that card and get 5 coins back. How freaking insane is that?) to begin with. Build at least two units with Bounty with those 4P cards and then deploy executioner and kill them both and having more coins also after that.
Imagine the frustration of an MO player who plays Foglet and you put a bounty on it. The the MO player plays Pugo and you put a bounty on the Pugo. Now kill the Pugo with Graden and boost him by 10 points and get 9 coins in hand to summon Radanian Ship. You should throw in Swindle too (an excellent proactive play which will allow you to wipe the opponent's board). Bounty is so oppressive that I feel bad to play it and moved on to trying something else. It is that OP. If you don't accept it, you will realize what I am saying when you face a decent SY opponent.
Initially when I tried, I had bricked Graden a few times, but with good planning of bounty units, deck-building and mulligans, you can always get him to work.

I agree that Intimidate sucks and to get good amount of value you have to play a lot of low tempo turns. Just forget about intimidate and just add good crime cards: Swindle, Slander, Dip In Pontor, Eavesdrop (and initially, before you master coin management, Pickpocket). Do not try to make Intimidate work. If you get any intimidate proc, it is good, otherwise, don't depend on Intimidate units as a main win-con.

Ruihen you say? Just seize him with Phillipa. Botching, Octvist, Ruihen and even Bearmaster (yes, that 1 power card, which will make the opponent's resurrect special cards bricks) are all Phillipa's tasty targets. You may say 'but she uses all coins'; yes, she does; slowly you will learn to manage your coins.

Charges can be interacted. Charge units can be locked/killed/seized/banished, effectively making the charges' worth as 0 points, but coins are uninteractable!

Killing opponents' unit with SY is the easiest. You have bounty, Phillipa, the brothers, DipInPontor and even Boris. You are saying that SY is so weak that you want to add neutral cards. I would say that you are adding too many neutral cards that you are making your SY deck weak.

My advice would be to plan your deck and learn to manage your coins well. Blindly add Slanderx2, Witch Hunterx2, Witch Hunter Executionerx2, Caleb, Graden, The Brothers, Phillipa and some profit Crime cards and before you know it, you would have ranked up easily to a much higher rank. If you still need help, share your deck in this forum and ask for advice. Good Luck.
[...]

I'll explain more in depth why bounty is not viable competitively, at least against pro players.

1. You need to give a unit bounty, there are only a couple of cards capable of this

2. You need to kill the unit (Borsodi, Boris etc) or have a witch hunter on hand, or two in case, or some other form of removal. But chances are that can be quickly removed or countered too.

3. You need to have some way of utilizing those extra coins. Only a few cards effectively utilise coins, and again, they can easily be removed by most factions.

What makes Monsters so good is that there's no reliance on heavy sequences of cards like this, virtually every card in a consume deck can work effectively with every other card. Graden is useless without a bounty. Witch hunter likewise is dead weight without bounty. Renegade mage is shit without coins. Current meta decks have enough removal to ensure your bounty-oriented cards will be eliminated in the blink of an eye. Its simply too unreliable of a system right now that can have too many things go wrong.

Also lol @ "Just seize ruihen". Lemme quickly just check the odds and consistency of drawing 1 Philippa in a 25 card deck.

"Slowly you will learn to manage your coins"? Coins and coin mechanics do not produce enough value in comparison to the endlessly interconnected metas of other factions. Coin generation and utilization relies on specific cards, while other faction cards have power independently

You speak of charges being locked and banished as if lock and banish is infinitely at SY disposal. It isn't. You cannot run a decent amount of lock and removal in an SY deck without limiting the efficiency of the SY mechanics themselves. Locks and removal runs out, you will not have enough to counter a deck in which every card uses charges and continuously deals 1,2 and 4 damage multiple times per turn.

Killing opponents with SY ***can be convenient*** but it is by no means the easiest. There are too many cards you need to rely on. A competitive deck is one which cannot be prevented from winning, and will provide pressure until the very last card.

SY isn't the best because it relies too heavily on card draw and is plainly too slow tempo. You can only win if you have a good draw and an opponent has a shit draw. If a Scoiatel or Skellige opponent has a good draw, even your best sequence will never win, because you wont generate enough effective power.


I wonder if anyone has stats on the average round point score of each faction at rank 0. Hm. Interquartile range would be nice too lol.

Edited. -Drac
 
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[...]

I'll explain more in depth why bounty is not viable competitively, at least against pro players.

1. You need to give a unit bounty, there are only a couple of cards capable of this

2. You need to kill the unit (Borsodi, Boris etc) or have a witch hunter on hand, or two in case, or some other form of removal. But chances are that can be quickly removed or countered too.

3. You need to have some way of utilizing those extra coins. Only a few cards effectively utilise coins, and again, they can easily be removed by most factions.

What makes Monsters so good is that there's no reliance on heavy sequences of cards like this, virtually every card in a consume deck can work effectively with every other card. Graden is useless without a bounty. Witch hunter likewise is dead weight without bounty. Renegade mage is shit without coins. Current meta decks have enough removal to ensure your bounty-oriented cards will be eliminated in the blink of an eye. Its simply too unreliable of a system right now that can have too many things go wrong.

Also lol @ "Just seize ruihen". Lemme quickly just check the odds and consistency of drawing 1 Philippa in a 25 card deck.

"Slowly you will learn to manage your coins"? Coins and coin mechanics do not produce enough value in comparison to the endlessly interconnected metas of other factions. Coin generation and utilization relies on specific cards, while other faction cards have power independently

You speak of charges being locked and banished as if lock and banish is infinitely at SY disposal. It isn't. You cannot run a decent amount of lock and removal in an SY deck without limiting the efficiency of the SY mechanics themselves. Locks and removal runs out, you will not have enough to counter a deck in which every card uses charges and continuously deals 1,2 and 4 damage multiple times per turn.

Killing opponents with SY ***can be convenient*** but it is by no means the easiest. There are too many cards you need to rely on. A competitive deck is one which cannot be prevented from winning, and will provide pressure until the very last card.

SY isn't the best because it relies too heavily on card draw and is plainly too slow tempo. You can only win if you have a good draw and an opponent has a shit draw. If a Scoiatel or Skellige opponent has a good draw, even your best sequence will never win, because you wont generate enough effective power.


I wonder if anyone has stats on the average round point score of each faction at rank 0. Hm. Interquartile range would be nice too lol.

Edited. -Drac

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I think sometimes, you play a different game not Gwent...
 
Exactly. I'd much rather deal with point slam like AQ or Cyrus than decks that cram as much removal in as possible. At least point slam lets you play the game.

This deck reminds me very much of a MTG combo deck. There is very little interaction on its part, it just does its thing and tries to be as resilient/redundant as possible. They can be quite fun to play, but a bit of a yawn to play against (depending on your deck).


I was actually thinking of putting this one together because I do have most of the cards, it seems. I'm just wondering if these types of decks are policed within this game by nerfs. I'd really hate to spend the shards as a new player, then have it pulled out from under me. Are there any re-balance plans that I should worry about?
 
In my opinion, the problem with consume deck isn't so much in the consume mechanic, but in how Afflictio and deithlaff : Greater vampire work with it. Deithlaff and kraken (or deithlaff + Slyzard, or deithlaff + anything) net a ridiculous 20 point combo + the consumer base strengh. With afflictio, it's even worst. While you have more leeway to counter it, since afflictio can be eaten only once per turn, he ll continually come back if not locked,banished or stolen, netting an absolutely ridiculous amount of point. Not to mention Caranthir ar feineil + Deithlaff, which give a second deithlaff to be eaten for another 16 point.


With kraken and Slyzard unit, you can basically add Deithlaff and Afflictio in every single monster deck and be sure it ll work well. I feel like lowering the strengh of afflictio to something like 2 , and adding only one respawn counter to Deithlaff(maybe putting him to 6 strengh) would be nerf enough. Think about it : Deithlaff would still be worth 12, which is more than decent, and eating afflictio 5-6 time would net 10-12 strengh, potentially more. It'd also nerf Caranthir ar feiniel + Deithlaff.

Another card I have issue with is Imlerith. With Eredin leader and Caranthir, it has the same kind of issue except you can't even play, because your card will get instant killed one after another unless you scorch/steal/lock, making you instalose the round. I Feel it's even worst than consume, because with consume you can at least try to make your engine work and compete with the monster's one. Against a set up double imlerith, if you don't have that lock / steal / scorch in your hand, its game over. There is too much snowball potential, compare it to Saskia which has huge requirement of deck building for the same effect, or to pavko gale, or to the witcher that deal 2 dmg and gain one charge each time you play a witcher. I think the cd should be nerfed to 2 or 3 turn.
 
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Right now Scoiatel is the strongest faction, period.

Can you expand on this quote please? I don't want to attempt to argue with this until I hear everything you have to say and understand where you are coming from. At what ranks are you playing do you see this? What decks are you seeing that make you come to this conclusion?
 
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