I guess it would make kinda sense to give Pincer Maneuver a passive ability and reduce the amount of boost it applies and/or it's provision bonus instead because right now imho that skill is pretty lame.
Fair enough. Its a valid point of view. On the contrary though the tutor cards counter the RNG of the game which benefit skill play. I'm not saying leave NG as it is. But make the other factions more coherent
If we really want skill based play, we reduce RNG by making the disparity in quality of cards much lower (so there becomes no such thing “drawing bad cards” or “missing key cards.”) Then get rid of tutors so players actually have to adjust to what is drawn rather than playing a fixed, desirable sequence by tutoring anything needed.
I realize this is not pragmatic as too many cards of wide power disparity are already established, but I still prefer it as a goal over adding more tutors to improve “consistency” (which is becoming more and more “uniformity”.)
I am ok with the current RNG rate. I think there is a good balance between skill and luck. All I am trying to say is that NG cards are more consistent across the board with all the leaders than the rest of the factions. I'm not saying that their cards are not overpowered or underpowered. Not saying that they are balanced or their abilities are spot on. But you can play the majority of their cards under any leader. Something that doesn't exist in such extensive on the other factions.
But in that case you just flatten the difference between cards ine one's deck, which again robs them of their sharp identity.
The aim should be for one's plan to be somewhat consistent, rather than it being irrelevant which of your gold cards you draw, which would make them more bland and return to the issue of the horrendous early homecoming.
Gwent already has quite decent consistency, considering that opening 1 specific Gold out of one's deck is about 50% (slightly below for red coin, above 50% for blue coin), if you consider cards like tutors for them you get about 75% consistency of opening them, which is reliable.
Beyond that things are a lot less fixed than you are willing to admit, given that one runs 1, maybe 2 tutors for the top end, still leaving a lot of room for variation and adjustment in one's gameplan.
I just wanna add to the Lockdown discussion.
The playrate of Lockdown is affected by the fact that Lockdown got 3 meta decks now (2.5 back then maybe: Ball, clog and not yet so meta back then Madoc). So for example, NR Witchers which is the only meta deck on Uprising should be more popular than any single Lockdown deck. Same with PS Madoc. This is partly because all the other NG leaders are omegashite.
Also, direct nerf to Lockdown will ruin NG again. NG got no good leaders (maybe Enslave but meh...). I know NG is hyper-frustrating right now but that is mostly the clog. Nerf Kolgrim to 10-12p and problem solved (maybe), and nerf those Mentors. I think Lockdown Ball is perfectly balanced now with how good and bad matchups line up for it.
Personally, I wanna see a Formation comeback. I liked the NG back then.
The playrate of Lockdown is affected by the fact that Lockdown got 3 meta decks now (2.5 back then maybe: Ball, clog and not yet so meta back then Madoc). So for example, NR Witchers which is the only meta deck on Uprising should be more popular than any single Lockdown deck. Same with PS Madoc. This is partly because all the other NG leaders are omegashite.
Also, direct nerf to Lockdown will ruin NG again. NG got no good leaders (maybe Enslave but meh...). I know NG is hyper-frustrating right now but that is mostly the clog. Nerf Kolgrim to 10-12p and problem solved (maybe), and nerf those Mentors. I think Lockdown Ball is perfectly balanced now with how good and bad matchups line up for it.
Personally, I wanna see a Formation comeback. I liked the NG back then.
But that's the point he's making. That identity doesn't appear to be a problem with NG. So either it needs to be treated the same as the other factions or the other factions need to be just as consistent. Right now, it's not consistent. Their leaders pretty much work with several cards while others have to build their deck around a leader and it so happens that the only faction that doesn't have to do that, can also disable your leader.
Good question... but I'd venture a guess those stats right now wouldn't shock you as much as they would have last year. Blue coin is pretty powerful with witchers NR or Kelly.
The need to handle both sides of a coin flip is a crucial part of deck design — and helps balance the game.
