New player, need advice

[KoncertMajstor]

I played Gwent before homecoming, and had a fairly good grasp on the game. I had a nice Nilfgaard deck that I could win quite often with.

I recently got back into the game and I can barely win any games now.

I decided to start with Monster, since I wanted to back Dettlaff in the leader battle (just because I enjoyed W3:BW). My original card collection got completely scrapped, so I tried to build something from the kegs I got from rewards and from the ore.

I have never seen a Skellige deck. Every North deck uses Bloody Flail, or abuses some sort of charge mechanic, and after a while, all of their characters are decimating me, or growing by 3-4 power every turn. Scoia'tel decks drop 3-4 cards in a single turn, then the dryads just keep summoning more op sht on the board and again, growing to about 40 power by the time I have about 15.

This is getting pretty frustrating. Is the player base so small that it can't match me with other new players? I'm in play mode, but took off ranked since I wanted to try things out. Or is unranked the place where people bring their netdecks to try them out before heading back into ranked?
If that's the case, should I just start with ranked and go from there? I don't want to start wasting my scrap making cards I don't know if they're going to work well or not yet...

I also haven't tried the season thing yet, with the summon double cards or whatever it said.

I don't remember the game being this broken before... I had a moderate collection of cards, and could play casually at the very least with my own ideas. I forgot what rank I climbed to, but it was something ok. Like I said, is unranked not advisable, or has the game just been fundamentally broken with the latest updates?

Or do I just need to google gwent meta decks and join the ranks?

 

[BrokeCiri]

The game is not broken, it's just that your'e not yet familiar with the new game play, Just give it a few days or weeks of adjustment and maybe you will be on track again. Play on ranked mode so that matchmaking is more balance because in casual mode you encounter all kinds of players. What faction do you want to main or play most of the time?

 

[Guest 4344268]

The current meta skews heavily towards removal so you'll want to avoid deck-building strategies that revolve around one or two particular cards (also generally not a great idea due to limited thinning tools). There are a lot of good "mid-range" decks out there that don't really care very much if a particular card gets removed (since the cards get instant value). You can also protect key engines by baiting out removal with lesser-engine cards or other targets that your opponent might prioritize by mistake. (This bait-and-switch "strategy" is pretty standard, so you'll need to learn which cards to target and which to ignore.) The new shield mechanic in Crimson Curse also has a lot of potential, especially in engine-heavy NR.

Anyway, the game is in a pretty good place right now but it will definitely take some getting used to.

 

[Kaczor79]

In beta Gwent even with basic starter deck you had chance against meta deck now in Homecoming things just changed drastically.

 

[KoncertMajstor]

The game is not broken, it's just that your'e not yet familiar with the new game play, Just give it a few days or weeks of adjustment and maybe you will be on track again. Play on ranked mode so that matchmaking is more balance because in casual mode you encounter all kinds of players. What faction do you want to main or play most of the time?

Ya, I'm fine with losing more games than not while getting used to it, but have seen so many insane combos that I was wondering if they turned it into heavy combo based, rather than the more tit for tat methodical game it was way back when.

I have been trying to build a monster deck that uses bleed/vampires/deathwish (dettlaff). While the blood moon works well when I get it off, more often than not, all of my vampires just get removed.

I'll just start with ranked, since casual seems to have way too many insane decks (I'm assuming people testing out new meta decks)

 

[OG.laloquaint]

Try to include a card that removes artifacts in every deck you make, they might come in handy sometimes. A lot of artifacts can be really strong if left on the board.

There is a lot of people using meta decks at the moment, but trust me, that won't go away. You really just have to deal with it or come here and complain about them lol. I'm personally just getting back into Gwent again after taking a short break from it. The game can be really frustrating at times so I understand how you're feeling. Try to include cards in your decks that you KNOW will always get value and you will start winning more often. Hope this helped a bit. If you need more tips, I'll be more than happy to help.

 

[C7Racehead]

Artifact removal is not necessary at the moment unless SirPumpkin's NR list starts taking over.

Speaking of SirPumpkin, you should watch his videos that he posts on YouTube. It'll prove to be useful.

 

[KoncertMajstor]

I'll check it out, thanks. I also came across green cricket, which looks useful.
And i definitely think there should be some sort of hidden MMR rating for casual. I just started ranked and it's night and day (starting at rank 30). I know it wouldn't look good on the game if they did, but I would be in favour of CDPR adding a disclaimer to unranked: "warning you can face any rank, or people with large card collections".
I do like how they avoid showing losses, as it encourages more experimentation when it just shows you how many wins you got each season. I know not everyone cares, but there's something in my competitive nature that frustrates me when I see losses permanently kept in your history, which is made all the worse when it's public (ahem, starcraft 2). But that's my own personal gripe.

In any case, at low ranks, other players are also dropping bears, and making obvious errors (at least, what I perceive to be errors). Also, there are a bunch of people who just insta-forfeit... not sure if they're trying to smurf so they can farm quests faster, but I hope not.

 

[C7Racehead]

Ya Green Cricket is good too. I would say that the best Youtubers to watch would be:

Sir Pumpkin
Swim
Green Cricket
Freddybabes

Swim is the most interesting one to listen to and is the most creative one out of the bunch. Yet I would say that you're going to get the most competitive advice & lists from SirPumpkin

 

[dwavenhobble]

OP start with Seasonal because ranked and Unranked these days seem filled with Meta decks (not that Seasonal is doing much better) but hyper random madness of seasonal gives you more of a chance of winning early on