[Disclaimer: I am not an NG fanboy. I used to hate NG when it was so toxic with poison (YenInvo, Vincent) packages, but lately I am fine with NG being NG.]
This season post 7.3, I wanted to try NG. With so many people saying it is very weak and unplayable, I was naturally lured into trying that. I didn't want to try Assimilate deck as it is a very strong deck and can completely destroy players not knowing how to play around it. Even otherwise, I consider Assimilate as a very strong coherent archetype.
So, I started with full soldier package without Ball (and without the Spy Soldier) with the idea of Slave Infantry + Repeat Bronze Soldier Deploy + Boost All Copies by 2 with Crossbowman and Ramon. To feed the Slave Infantry I included the guy who spawns 4 cows. In theory it seemed very strong, but in reality, it sucked. When I could pull off the combo, it was a definite victory, but getting all required cards in hand was too much.
Then I wanted to play Spy archetype with the Palmarine buff, but it was also too weak. If you don't draw Ramon, it is such a low tempo that it is hard to compete with anything.
Then I moved on to Status archtype with Dame and Ball and Poison, but everyone and their grandmother is running heatwave. The lack of proactivity was too much and it was very hard to pilot.
Then I tried Enslave 5 with Bribery/Stephan. It was good when your draws are good and against certain matchups, but didn't feel fantastic.
Overall, even though there are some individual bronzes which are very strong (like Dames - I still think this is one of the best bronzes in the game, SpySoldier, CrossBowman, Rot Tosser) and some really strong golds (Hefty, YenInvo, Ramon, Bratheens, Vincent) to get all of them to work in a deck is not possible. When you want to concentrate on Spying, you can't have Crossbowman, when you want to concentrate on Crossbowman, you can't have SpySoldier. When you want to add Dame, you can't have Crossbowman etc. Compare this with SK. They can close their eyes, filter with warrior and just add any top end gold with any bronze with any leader and they have a very good chance to win.
The individual strong bronzes don't work together AT ALL. Making players to go all-in with Assimilate or Single Ball with Soldier (damn.. such an awkard deck to pilot. When it works for the opponent you may think it is too strong, but playing it is super awkward.. In R3, you draw Ramon and no soldiers is such a f**king pain in the ass. Why add these package in status/poison you ask? Because that alone don't have a full solid deck).
Moreover, which leader I was going to use was the single biggest confusion I ever had in Gwent. Only Enslave and Double Cross have a solid backing archetype - tactics and assimilate. Imperial Formation is too weak and putting a 9P gold deck building restriction felt bad and awkward for the 3 boost thing this ability is about. Imprisonment is so awkward - the cards you want to kill with the 6P gold or seize with Vattier will now be less appealing. Playing Moorvan and draw 3 cards - I think this only works for the hypter-thin deck which I was not interested in trying - though I think it can be powerful.
Overall, I can relate with NG fans with their grief. It was hard to build a synergetic deck with NG even though there are some really strong bronze and gold simply due to the fact that they don't work together at all. I am not a strong NG player and may be it played a role in my struggle to build a good deck. Hopefully in the next expansion, NG gets cards to support some of their archetypes fully instead of needing to mix and match and making a mess in the deck to be competitive.
This season post 7.3, I wanted to try NG. With so many people saying it is very weak and unplayable, I was naturally lured into trying that. I didn't want to try Assimilate deck as it is a very strong deck and can completely destroy players not knowing how to play around it. Even otherwise, I consider Assimilate as a very strong coherent archetype.
So, I started with full soldier package without Ball (and without the Spy Soldier) with the idea of Slave Infantry + Repeat Bronze Soldier Deploy + Boost All Copies by 2 with Crossbowman and Ramon. To feed the Slave Infantry I included the guy who spawns 4 cows. In theory it seemed very strong, but in reality, it sucked. When I could pull off the combo, it was a definite victory, but getting all required cards in hand was too much.
Then I wanted to play Spy archetype with the Palmarine buff, but it was also too weak. If you don't draw Ramon, it is such a low tempo that it is hard to compete with anything.
Then I moved on to Status archtype with Dame and Ball and Poison, but everyone and their grandmother is running heatwave. The lack of proactivity was too much and it was very hard to pilot.
Then I tried Enslave 5 with Bribery/Stephan. It was good when your draws are good and against certain matchups, but didn't feel fantastic.
Overall, even though there are some individual bronzes which are very strong (like Dames - I still think this is one of the best bronzes in the game, SpySoldier, CrossBowman, Rot Tosser) and some really strong golds (Hefty, YenInvo, Ramon, Bratheens, Vincent) to get all of them to work in a deck is not possible. When you want to concentrate on Spying, you can't have Crossbowman, when you want to concentrate on Crossbowman, you can't have SpySoldier. When you want to add Dame, you can't have Crossbowman etc. Compare this with SK. They can close their eyes, filter with warrior and just add any top end gold with any bronze with any leader and they have a very good chance to win.
The individual strong bronzes don't work together AT ALL. Making players to go all-in with Assimilate or Single Ball with Soldier (damn.. such an awkard deck to pilot. When it works for the opponent you may think it is too strong, but playing it is super awkward.. In R3, you draw Ramon and no soldiers is such a f**king pain in the ass. Why add these package in status/poison you ask? Because that alone don't have a full solid deck).
Moreover, which leader I was going to use was the single biggest confusion I ever had in Gwent. Only Enslave and Double Cross have a solid backing archetype - tactics and assimilate. Imperial Formation is too weak and putting a 9P gold deck building restriction felt bad and awkward for the 3 boost thing this ability is about. Imprisonment is so awkward - the cards you want to kill with the 6P gold or seize with Vattier will now be less appealing. Playing Moorvan and draw 3 cards - I think this only works for the hypter-thin deck which I was not interested in trying - though I think it can be powerful.
Overall, I can relate with NG fans with their grief. It was hard to build a synergetic deck with NG even though there are some really strong bronze and gold simply due to the fact that they don't work together at all. I am not a strong NG player and may be it played a role in my struggle to build a good deck. Hopefully in the next expansion, NG gets cards to support some of their archetypes fully instead of needing to mix and match and making a mess in the deck to be competitive.
After building every deck I tried a few games in casual and then once I thought it would be good to try competitive I went ranked. This is the result. It felt awful to play NG. Again, I am not a good NG player. May be because I was a noob I had this experience. This is just my own experience and I don't want to generalize with this.