I believe NG design is a lot better compared to beta. There is still quite some potential and they definetly need more synergies, but compared to Beta where every single of their archetypes was heavily flawed designwise it is a great improvement.
The biggest problem that I see is that their golds are far too generic and are much better on their own than at supporting archetypes, which is the main concern of this thread too.
They had archetypes that were working, but they weren't good designwise at all.I'm not seeing how this is an improvement. It doesn't even feel like they have any archetypes right now. Spies doesn't work, Reveal was messed up and scrapped. They have decent soldier synergies and that's about it. Beta NG was popular and had good archetypes that worked.
They had archetypes that were working, but they weren't good designwise at all.
Spying was just a MacGuffin. The player spammed the entire enemy board with spies without spy positioning mattering at all, or any other card profiting from placing units on the enemy side of the board. The only purpose of getting those spying tokens was to trigger the two own engines. And if the enemy didn't play consume or selfwounding he couldn't even do anything against spies stacking up on his side of the board.
By now, while spying isn't fully fledged out spies has become a lot more healthy. There are cards interacting with the actual placement of the spies (Mangonel), and with placing units on the enemy side of the board (Magna and Slave Hunter).
Reveal was also mainly a MacGuffin. Reveal is a mechanism to give information about the enemy cards, but instead of interacting with that by having cards allowing the player to adapt his strategy to the enemy hand, the old reveal just got value out of pointlesssly revealing as many cards of both players as possible and revealing cards in your own hand for even more value.
I don't think I have to talk about mill, as that was always really controversial.
Alchemy was just another MacGuffin, forcing players to include as many alchemy cards to give a single core card value without any further real synergy from those alchemy cards.
And soldiers was just never fleshed out.
Reveal was also mainly a MacGuffin. Reveal is a mechanism to give information about the enemy cards, but instead of interacting with that by having cards allowing the player to adapt his strategy to the enemy hand, the old reveal just got value out of pointlesssly revealing as many cards of both players as possible and revealing cards in your own hand for even more value.
I don't copy any decks, I made my own. TBH I find it surprising that people use Sweers. 10 provisions, 3 power and take a 3 power card. Not exactly overwhelming. Some people even say he is overpowered, I don't get it. For me it is a no brainer to not include it. I was never a big fan of Roach for my own decks. It just seems like a way to burn provisions. A decent card in many ways, I see some good uses for it, but I never use it.
I use Leo instead of Geralt, simply because he is Nilfgaard and because he has an additional option. I like the Vivienne card, I admit. I do use that alot.
Assire, nope. Not my type of card.
Letho, Serrit and Auckles, good cards, but I don't really use them either.
I don't copy any decks, I made my own. TBH I find it surprising that people use Sweers. 10 provisions, 3 power and take a 3 power card. Not exactly overwhelming. Some people even say he is overpowered, I don't get it. For me it is a no brainer to not include it. I was never a big fan of Roach for my own decks. It just seems like a way to burn provisions. A decent card in many ways, I see some good uses for it, but I never use it.
I use Leo instead of Geralt, simply because he is Nilfgaard and because he has an additional option. I like the Vivienne card, I admit. I do use that alot.
Assire, nope. Not my type of card.
Letho, Serrit and Auckles, good cards, but I don't really use them either.
Sweers gives solid value but more importantly its a really good counter card. You take an engine and not only did you stop your opponents engine but now you get even more value from it yourself. If you happen to take a gold engine with it that can also be game winning.
It's a common play in high rank for NG players to take roach from other NG players. Taking away 3 points from the final round.
10 provs for 9 point swing AND take a card/disrupt play is great value.
Everybody uses Leo, and Vivienne (and Assire, Roach, Letho, Serrit, Auckes, Nauzicaa, Magne, Imperva!). Last week I played against NG 2 out of 3 times (match history backs this up) and see the same cards every time. Maybe it's not just NG, maybe the whole game is just stale. Didn't play once all weekend, nor did I feel the need to. Hundreds of cards yet maybe 30% are useable, and everything is just a different iteration of countering your cards. It's more or less just "how do I counter your counter? Aha, with a counter". If you try to play 'your own way', you'll just get countered, so have no choice but to run counters - and so begins the netdecking, the limited scope for interesting play, and so on.
On a side note, had an idea for a cointoss; why not have both players play a card at the same time (computer 'holds' them then reveals at the same time) and the highest provisions value goes second? Needs work. Actually wondered if this style of play - where both players are playing a card at the same time - would actually make for a decent card game, next-gen style of playing.
Well, as I said: I play my own decks, not copy decks. Perhaps many people just copy decks? I've seen many of those decks you talk about as well.
Why does ANYONE think "hmm, I know what I'll do, I'll buy a tonne of scraps and cards to make that same dull as crap NG deck everyone else uses"? The game suffers a MASSIVE amount from boring players who have less imagination than Thronebreakers' AI.
... Or people just realize that no matter the effort, their "own original I'm-the-only-one-running-this" deck is not so original, somebody already thought of it before and concludes it was crap, so they will rely on competitive, optimized decks. Even if it hurts their pride a little.
A few percentage of players actually have enough knowledge of this game, and of CCG in general, to build such decks. There is no shame to rely on them you know.
I've played NG three times out of five today - every time it's the same cards. There's no plan, there's no strategy, they just plonk the cards down when it seems right and it absolutely bores the crap out of me - as usual I just look at my deal and know whether I'll win or lose. It's incredibly dull.
Why does ANYONE think "hmm, I know what I'll do, I'll buy a tonne of scraps and cards to make that same dull as crap NG deck everyone else uses"? The game suffers a MASSIVE amount from boring players who have less imagination than Thronebreakers' AI.
Understood, I just don't get it. Not about pride/shame, it's about playing a game as it's meant to be played....isn't it?
The concept of 'load up, copy deck, blast a few games out, get reward, quit' seems to be pointless even if it is modus operandi. Perhaps it's an issue with CCG in general; you can't really have any fun trying stuff out as all you ever face are the same decks/cards over and over and over again. It's no fun losing to META's either, so the choice seems to be either copy a net-deck (and use better players' experience) or just don't play. I wonder if this lack of middle ground is killing the game and behind the constantly diminishing player numbers?
You do realize that till today 8 out of 10 people will point to you that Spies was the pen-ultimate Gwent deck, until it was nerfed before the long break? I myself found it annoying cause it was all over the ladder for so long and so hard to deal with (still nothing close to what SK's GS deck became later).They had archetypes that were working, but they weren't good designwise at all.
Spying was just a MacGuffin. The player spammed the entire enemy board with spies without spy positioning mattering at all, or any other card profiting from placing units on the enemy side of the board. The only purpose of getting those spying tokens was to trigger the two own engines. And if the enemy didn't play consume or selfwounding he couldn't even do anything against spies stacking up on his side of the board.
By now, while spying isn't fully fledged out spies has become a lot more healthy. There are cards interacting with the actual placement of the spies (Mangonel), and with placing units on the enemy side of the board (Magna and Slave Hunter).
Reveal was also mainly a MacGuffin. Reveal is a mechanism to give information about the enemy cards, but instead of interacting with that by having cards allowing the player to adapt his strategy to the enemy hand, the old reveal just got value out of pointlesssly revealing as many cards of both players as possible and revealing cards in your own hand for even more value.
I don't think I have to talk about mill, as that was always really controversial.
Alchemy was just another MacGuffin, forcing players to include as many alchemy cards to give a single core card value without any further real synergy from those alchemy cards.
And soldiers was just never fleshed out.
This dude is talking about right things, but that way of card desing seems to be underused and underdeveloped for now. Anyone interested can read more about it (card design, faction and archetypes identity) here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DZTzq3rIx_iLWKmujBta7d1FkZ-gZfn6Aya5Mfepz-E/They had archetypes that were working, but they weren't good designwise at all.
Spying was just a MacGuffin. The player spammed the entire enemy board with spies without spy positioning mattering at all, or any other card profiting from placing units on the enemy side of the board. The only purpose of getting those spying tokens was to trigger the two own engines. And if the enemy didn't play consume or selfwounding he couldn't even do anything against spies stacking up on his side of the board.
By now, while spying isn't fully fledged out spies has become a lot more healthy. There are cards interacting with the actual placement of the spies (Mangonel), and with placing units on the enemy side of the board (Magna and Slave Hunter).
Reveal was also mainly a MacGuffin. Reveal is a mechanism to give information about the enemy cards, but instead of interacting with that by having cards allowing the player to adapt his strategy to the enemy hand, the old reveal just got value out of pointlesssly revealing as many cards of both players as possible and revealing cards in your own hand for even more value.
I don't think I have to talk about mill, as that was always really controversial.
Alchemy was just another MacGuffin, forcing players to include as many alchemy cards to give a single core card value without any further real synergy from those alchemy cards.
And soldiers was just never fleshed out.
NG has always been my favourite faction and, even though I suck playing with them and lose a lot, I used to still enjoy playing with them. Until the last update. I’m so sick of seeing the same repetitive net decks it’s unreal. Roach, Assire, repeat. Sweers, Serrit, Auckes. And of course, Slave infantry, slave infantry, slave bloody infantry!
Bore off people and find some variety!
Whether it's Calveit, Emhyr or Usurper, the deck is always EXACTLY the same. Always viper witcher trio, always Roach/ Assire/ Vivienne, always Sweers, always Muzzle, always Leo. Some "spice things up a bit" with Vrygheff+Vreemde on Daerlans or Slave infantries...