Iron Judgment 1st Impressions

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DRK3

Forum veteran
This thread is to share what we think of the expansion so far, for those who've played it quite a bit already. Here are mine:

- you can see already there's an half of the new cards that will see a lot of play, while the other half will join the forgotten, unpopular cards.

- we got a lot of tall units, most associated with armor, and if exposed they die. These cards are very vulnerable, even to bronzes, and their provisions seem off. Living Armor for 12 provisions? There are so many 10pt units that are less risky.

- Defenders is a really interesting concept, i thought it just meant damage, but it also stops you from locking or putting other status on units of that row. Locking defenders also doesnt work, since its a status, so you have to move it, destroy it (usually hard), seize it or damage the row through indirect means, i guess its the new immunity.

- we got 2 new swarm decks: monster's new bugs and SC's new dwarves. They both seem strong, but dwarves is definitely more resistant: those stupid rowdy dwarves have no counter! they have 2pt 1 armor, that means unlike the bugs, they can survive the new Lambert Swordmaster and Gimpy, and lacerate and the "new lacerate" (the one that also removes 2 armor) arent good solutions when the rowdy dwarves are spread on the 2 rows. I think we'll be seeing tons of dwarves this season.

- NG's soldiers werent considered strong, but were already fleshed out, i feel making the knights also soldiers is a bit stupid, even if useful. The assimilate archetype also got a nice boost.

- i havent tried NR but it seems it's the faction with the least interesting new cards, barely saw any NR, and the ones i did see were using old decks

-every SY deck now has Azar Javed (the scarabs are the only unique defenders) and Savolla, for a 6+12 point slam play, plus the other powerplays like Phillipa and bounty guys

What do you guys think?
 
Luisa & Savolla are quite insane with a coinspender in play, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. I guess you can pass if your opponent somehow can't wait till round 3 to play it. And Azar's there to keep your hard removal - if you have it - from hitting. Only faced it once (and won), but it's a boatload of points that you get for absolutely no buildup. Even without Azar it's simply 24 points (and 2 coins) for 18 prov handed to you on a platter, and you don't even have to sequence them.

Luisa's ability should be an order limited to the turn. It's an exception to the turn rule and will probably be very confusing to new players. Afaik, there's no other lasting round-effects that just float around and aren't inscribed on cards. There's not even a token to keep track of this. The game should be more consistent in its mechanics. Plus in this case it'd make it a bit trickier to pull off the "combo".

Out of all the decks I've seen, the Fran Dwarves were by far the strongest. I saw NG the most but those were the weakest decks.

But so far I like some of the new cards. Great art as well by Long Artist Name.
 
I like the strategy of defenders but they are probably a bit OP. I can't say for sure but it feels like so many strong decks are going to feature defenders protecting their win conditions.

I'm sort of sad dwarves are so strong. I liked it when they weren't very popular and I was crushing with them :)
 

Bruele

Forum regular
Yes, defenders are OP. Maybe combine block and purify in a single effect... So block can also purify...
 
purify should remove defender status. it even removes cursed, so i dont see any reason why it should not remove defender aswell
 
The amount of absolutes in this thread it's scary.

I am sure it's going to end up like the "Francesca is dead" meme before she wrecked last season
 
gwent rip. thats all what i think
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I really like the new cards.Visually they are Great, exzept of Iron Falcon troubadour, which is very Ugly y and poorly animated.I appreciate all the effort they put into the game. The new loading screens are great too. The versus-Screen is still ugly and will always be, as Long as they dont change the visuals and animations of The Leaders.
 
I might have timed my joining to gwent especially bad. :D
my opinion might not weigh much as I have only played a month and dont know the game that well.

My first impression is that that the new cards with armor powercreep old ones and render together with the changes the starter decks useless (but maybe they were weak before too? so it might not be a big thing, or I just leveled too fast).

Overall single target damaging units as means to isolate threates and holding enemy field down lose their value. Everything moves towards field building and the competitions of those fields (buffing and continous damage from protected cards).

As a new player I have choosen Nilfgaard as primary faction because it gave me this control faction vibe. Seeing this release I am getting uncertain about this decision. Assimilate is many things but not control. Its like the faction itself is slowly changing its nature.

With the massive increase of options to summon/create several units within the same turn I have the impression:
Control is dying?

At least single target control. AOE might gain value with this. I wonder if this trend will continue or whether they will release even more broken control cards and card destruction to keep up with this mass summoning.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I might have timed my joining to gwent especially bad. :D
my opinion might not weigh much as I have only played a month and dont know the game that well.

My first impression is that that the new cards with armor powercreep old ones and render together with the changes the starter decks useless (but maybe they were weak before too? so it might not be a big thing, or I just leveled too fast).

Overall single target damaging units as means to isolate threates and holding enemy field down lose their value. Everything moves towards field building and the competitions of those fields (buffing and continous damage from protected cards).

As a new player I have choosen Nilfgaard as primary faction because it gave me this control faction vibe. Seeing this release I am getting uncertain about this decision. Assimilate is many things but not control. Its like the faction itself is slowly changing its nature.

With the massive increase of options to summon/create several units within the same turn I have the impression:
Control is dying?

At least single target control. AOE might gain value with this. I wonder if this trend will continue or whether they will release even more broken control cards and card destruction to keep up with this mass summoning.

You're right, and that's something i forgot to mention on the OP - there's definitely a powercreep with this update, easily seen by comparing the bronzes with the old ones, there are a few that are straight-up upgrades. Syndicate, when it was released, was a powercreep faction too.

This might be a bit unfair, but i think CDPR's strategy for expansions is to make new cards stronger, to allure players to buy kegs and packs, then only on the following month bothers to balance them with the rest of the game.

On the NG topic, NG is indeed the control faction, but not with damage/removal - at least it's not meant to be, until Hyperthin appeared twisting the faction's identity. With NG you have locks, seize, copy, mess with opponent's deck, etc.

But Assimilate is definitely not a control archetype, it's similar to some monster archetypes of 'point slam and leave me alone', which i guess is good in the sense it gives NG more variety of playstyles.

It's too early to say, but i doubt Control will lose it's edge. It's always been a safe option through all of the stages in Gwent, even when pointslam decks were dominant, there was almost always some control deck that was effective against it.
 
I would like to see Northern Realms defender with some sinergies with its faction.
Sindicates one gives coins on death.
Skellige has self damage sinergie.
Nilfgard procs Assimilate, Deploy and play a Tactic.
Scoiatel create 2 dwarves
Monsters is big enough to proc dominance or thrives
Northern Realms does nothing... Would be great that it procs something... Warfare? Orders? anything...
(ah: Shield is worthless, no synergie at all cause the whole archetype is bullsh...)
Please gives some love to the Realms at least during its explansion... Radovid in NR or not?
The new "Armor" is even better in other factions than in NR.
We are playing NR with almost the same cards as when Homecoming was released. I'm so tired of playing Prince Anseis, Botchling, Anna, Arbalest, Vincent, Draug, Seltkirk, Commandos, etc...
 
I would like to see Northern Realms defender with some sinergies with its faction.
Sindicates one gives coins on death.
Skellige has self damage sinergie.
Nilfgard procs Assimilate, Deploy and play a Tactic.
Scoiatel create 2 dwarves
Monsters is big enough to proc dominance or thrives
Northern Realms does nothing... Would be great that it procs something... Warfare? Orders? anything...
(ah: Shield is worthless, no synergie at all cause the whole archetype is bullsh...)
Please gives some love to the Realms at least during its explansion... Radovid in NR or not?
The new "Armor" is even better in other factions than in NR.
We are playing NR with almost the same cards as when Homecoming was released. I'm so tired of playing Prince Anseis, Botchling, Anna, Arbalest, Vincent, Draug, Seltkirk, Commandos, etc...

Maybe the iron judgement is a judgement of NR? After all, all armor seems to conter the excess single damages from NR pretty well. The only synergy I see is the shield for King Roegner and the damned socress

Still I think that NR defender defends is already a great thing. If they enable the combo of more fragile units it can be still great. Like Syanna. I was contemplating on her in context of mill but a single cards destruction is not worth 13 points. But NR has such nice expensive deploy abilities worth to copy like vernon roche, philippa blind fury or maybe just an other round hen gaidth sword on sabrina glevissig?
 
I'm wondering about the bandits. Maybe i'm being dumb here but with the exception of Wagenburg, Wandabur... the war wagon that gives armour to adjacent units they feel a bit too underwhelming to use and be useful outside of situational use.

I also agree about NR - on the one hand Troy the Defender is very powerful. On the other hand the other cards feel like the weakest of all the IJ faction additions.

On the Syndicate front i was thrilled to see the Salamandra (Salamandra-s?) being brought in as a new faction, from a not purely tactical perspective of the game that felt like the biggest news of this expansion and i loved it just as i loved seeing the old faces come back.
Also a question here - i racked my brain to the ages back when i played the original witcher game and i cannot remember azar having any link to beetles, is that a completely new ability of his or have i forgotten something?
 

Guest 4368268

Guest
I would like to see Northern Realms defender with some sinergies with its faction.
Sindicates one gives coins on death.
Skellige has self damage sinergie.
Nilfgard procs Assimilate, Deploy and play a Tactic.
Scoiatel create 2 dwarves
Monsters is big enough to proc dominance or thrives
Northern Realms does nothing... Would be great that it procs something... Warfare? Orders? anything...
(ah: Shield is worthless, no synergie at all cause the whole archetype is bullsh...)
Please gives some love to the Realms at least during its explansion... Radovid in NR or not?
The new "Armor" is even better in other factions than in NR.
We are playing NR with almost the same cards as when Homecoming was released. I'm so tired of playing Prince Anseis, Botchling, Anna, Arbalest, Vincent, Draug, Seltkirk, Commandos, etc...
Ironically the NR defender is an insta-lose against Nilfgaard seize (while the defender should offer protection against that sort of deck) because they take it and then play Damien+Letho Kingslayer next to it.
 
Ironically the NR defender is an insta-lose against Nilfgaard seize (while the defender should offer protection against that sort of deck) because they take it and then play Damien+Letho Kingslayer next to it.
Same with SC defender and then they usually add one more through Bribery and/or play they own creating an indestructible row where Damian and other usual suspects can happily chill.
 

Guest 4368268

Guest
Same with SC defender and then they usually add one more through Bribery and/or play they own creating an indestructible row where Damian and other usual suspects can happily chill.
Bribery always just seems to grab the defender lol. Both for me and against me it does that. It's almost as powerful as when create cards used to be able to get you an extra spy, it's way too strong.
 
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