November Seasonal Mode - Entrench

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DRK3

Forum veteran
I decided to create a new topic for this mode because every month when a new season begins, there is a thread but players use it mostly to discuss balance changes (or the lack of them in this case), stuff about reward trees and other things not related to seasonal mode.

Of the 12 seasonal modes, this was the only one i didnt even try last year, so this time i decided to give it a shot. In my opinion, its not one of the best but its also not one of the worst either.
Its not that complex, but i think i can still share some hints.

Rules: every played unit (and artefact, although this is likely not intended) gets resilience.

HINTS AND GENERAL INFORMATION:

-Resilience only lasts 1 round transition, so either from R1 to R2 or R2 to R3.

-Resilience is a status, so it can be purified, and that is the main goal of this mode: purify (or remove) as much of your opponent's cards as you can, while keeping as many of yours with resilience.

-Because of these rules, R3 is usually not very important, the match is mostly decided on R1 and 2, with short R3s.

-Only PLAYED cards get resilience, if its spawned or summoned from the deck it wont have resilience. This makes only a few cards and leaders actually good for this mode, i will say which later on.

-Engines can be very deadly in this mode, most of what i've faced so far attempted this, whether it was NR charges or NG assimilate. Also 2 artefacts seem popular: Ale of Ancestors and Sihil, since they're basically engines and cant be purified as easily as units.

GOOD CARDS AND LEADER ABILITIES FOR ENTRENCH:

Purify: Caretaker is the MVP, at 7pts he is hard to remove and can purify every 2 turns. All factions have a 7provision gold purify unit but unless it can do multiple purifies i dont recommend them. Sigfried purifies everything, which includes your units, so its not good.

Bronze purify units are rare: you have pellar, then MO and ST have their own faction versions.
Then you have tempest and spring equinox - these cards see 0 play on standard modes, but here they are very popular so use them and SPREAD YOUR UNITS ON DIFFERENT ROWS to play around these.
Spring equinox doesnt work on artefacts, have yet to try tempest, otherwise Heatwave might be a good choice for those 2 pesky artefacts.

Play:
There are a few golds that let you play 2 units, i recommend these as you get several resilient units, making it harder for your opponent to deal with them all.
Neutral: Triss TK (into something that plays a unit - NG and SK have those; or into Spring Equinox); Gascon Iron Falcon, Dandelion Poet (too expensive)
MO: Auberon (amazing, specially since you can get another purify unit with him)
NR: Adalia
NG: Vigo, Braathens, Ramon
SK: Harald the Cripple
SY: Walter Veritas (i know he's considered memey but a little better in this seasonal)

Leaders:
I will only recommend the leaders that generate more resilient units, but there are other good choices, for ex. Shield Wall is always good.

MO: Force of Nature (the one im using). OH is bad because consumes remove your resilient played units, also leader charges are spawns.
NG: Doublecross, Enslave, Tactical Decision. Imposter spawns a copy, so it doesnt get resilience, but its still good to stop engine decks.
NR: Uprising (havent tried it though, to see if its better than SW on this mode, probably depends if you re pushing R2 or being pushed)
SY: Pirate Cove
ST: Call of Harmony
SK: Patricidal Fury

Note: these leaders work the same if left for R3, but im seeing most players using leaders earlier, so if you use yours earlier too, these are the ones that get resilence, giving you an edge on the next round.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I've only used 1 deck so far - Force of Nature. Got 7 wins, 1 loss, so must be doing something right.
Its pretty simple, and not that different from standard MO decks, with thrive units, some control (Parasite, Adda Striga, Geralt), and a lot of those cards i recommended above (Auberon, Gascon IF, Caretaker, Triss TK, Tempest, Spring Equinox, 2 WH purify units and 2 WH move units)

The only match i lost was vs a NG, because i though spring equinox purified artefacts, and tried to purify an ale of ancestors, then had lost too much tempo and with seizes he had too many resilient stuff for R2 so i forfeited.

Losing R1 wasnt that bad, most players pushed me R2 and that was good for me, when i have last say on R2 and was able to put a resilient woodland spirit, and often even got CA and many more resilient units for R3.

Sorry this guide got so big, it was meant to be small, and hope this helps and please share your insights into this mode too :cool:
 
I've tried several deck so far and I still haven't success with this mode yet. I'm looking forward to any good deck though.

If anyone have 70%+ win rate deck, please let me know.
 
I ended up growing to love the insanity of the Season of the Cat, so I can say with relative ease that Mahakam is the only Seasonal mode I truly don't like, so far at least since I've only played seven of them. Technically, I didn't love Viper, but I found it tolerable once they fixed all the glitches; also, it was the first Seasonal I attempted, so I didn't experience it as fully as the rest of them. I'm not even really sure why, but all the Resilience and Purifying of Entrench just doesn't appeal to me. All the other modes gave me numerous interesting deck ideas, but I'm mostly drawing a blank with this one. The only interesting thing I've noticed is that status decks, like Vampires, are actually somewhat playable because no one is going to purify their own units.
 
The only interesting thing I've noticed is that status decks, like Vampires, are actually somewhat playable because no one is going to purify their own units.
Yes, vampires seem to work great. Journey forced me to play seasonal, so I built a full-on vampire deck and it feels great to play; watching the opponent's units slowly bleed to death while my own units only get stronger.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I've tried several deck so far and I still haven't success with this mode yet. I'm looking forward to any good deck though.

If anyone have 70%+ win rate deck, please let me know.

I would recommend you read my OP, the last section in particular if you dont want to read everything - i describe most of the deck i used. And yes, it had 70+% winrate, although i only played 8 matches with it and that is not enough of a sample, although every gwent player that advertises a deck with X% winrate rarely does enough matches to provide a valid sample anyway.

I also need to point i did my matches early on, when the seasonal was very recent and a meta hadnt been established. Are players in seasonal still trying NR and NG engines, with Sihil and Ale? My deck didnt even have counters for those but it had enough pointslam so it could keep up easily, and had enough purifies so rarely anything of the opponents was left with resilience.
 
I would recommend you read my OP, the last section in particular if you dont want to read everything - i describe most of the deck i used. And yes, it had 70+% winrate, although i only played 8 matches with it and that is not enough of a sample, although every gwent player that advertises a deck with X% winrate rarely does enough matches to provide a valid sample anyway.

I also need to point i did my matches early on, when the seasonal was very recent and a meta hadnt been established. Are players in seasonal still trying NR and NG engines, with Sihil and Ale? My deck didnt even have counters for those but it had enough pointslam so it could keep up easily, and had enough purifies so rarely anything of the opponents was left with resilience.
In my experience, my stockpile deck with sihil has an easily win agaist all mo - force of nature deck -, specialy if they start with andrega's larva.

but i think the best decks are NG with ball and thristy dames
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
In my experience, my stockpile deck with sihil has an easily win agaist all mo - force of nature deck -, specialy if they start with andrega's larva.

but i think the best decks are NG with ball and thristy dames

And how do you destroy those larvae? With archers+sihil? I got 2 movement which tend to do really well vs engine decks which usually rely on row-locked units. I didnt need to counter sihil because even if it gets to 5-6 damage, its still not enough for the point output i can do.

The NG ball might be really good, but im guessing most seasonal mode players are using Heatwave, and when they see that ball, its gone just as quickly.
Dames are good, getting buffed with each resilient enemy unit, but i would still rather rely on putting as many different bodies on board so they cant all be purified/removed in one turn.
 
And how do you destroy those larvae? With archers+sihil? I got 2 movement which tend to do really well vs engine decks which usually rely on row-locked units. I didnt need to counter sihil because even if it gets to 5-6 damage, its still not enough for the point output i can do.

The NG ball might be really good, but im guessing most seasonal mode players are using Heatwave, and when they see that ball, its gone just as quickly.
Dames are good, getting buffed with each resilient enemy unit, but i would still rather rely on putting as many different bodies on board so they cant all be purified/removed in one turn.
No. O usually use another card wich gain One charge Everytime you play a card with order (cant remember The name of the card right now).

So If i AM first i play it, give One charge to it and veil (Tactical advanrage).

My opponent puts larva, than i put sihil. My card Will have 3 charges and sihil One. I kill The first larva and left One charge.

Than problably i Will put another engine with orders, and in The other round i could kill The larva If i whant or another creature.

Also i have boilg oil, that other special card wich give 8 damage. That another card Who set The power of a non buffed unit to One.

Also korathi to kill a tall unit that i couldnt kill with my charges/sihil.

My sihil goes betwen 5 a 8 damage, so its really easy to kill everything on The board.

BUt against NG with lockers and poison its dificult
 
Spring Equinox should be banned in this seasonal! Other then that it can be quite fun. But with a 4 provision card that basically wipes out your entire row = bullshit.
 
Spring equinox is, however, very low tempo — a full round putting up no points, and virtually useless in the final round.
 
Spring equinox is, however, very low tempo — a full round putting up no points, and virtually useless in the final round.
Low tempo? If there was commitment in R1 or R2, it can basically remove 3, 4 or 5 cards from the next round! Imagine heatwave x3 or x4. :[
Sure it's useless in Round 3 but the point is you're very likely to be able to draw it in R1 or R2 and it's 4 Provision so including it will never be considered expensive. - Just for the sake of this Seasonal mode, they should redo this card to be "purify 2 random units on a row" and voila, after November they can bring it back it the previous form, doesn't matter.
I mean, if you're losing (or God forbid if you were winning lol) and the opponent passes R1, you can keep on playing 2 or 3 more cards to win, and if by removing 3 or 4 cards from the opponents side on the next round you will practically still be ahead with cards for the next round unless he purified all of yours already. And now the opponent is in a situation where he can't lose AND he is in a serious disposition.
 
Just for the sake of this Seasonal mode, they should redo this card to be "purify 2 random units on a row" and voila, after November they can bring it back it the previous form, doesn't matter.
No, they should not. Changing a card just because someone thinks it's too strong for one seasonal would make no sense.
Like you said yourself, the card is so cheap that including it is no problem -- so include it. A 4P card that is hardly used outside of this one seasonal mode does not need to be nerfed.

(Besides, the seasonal will return every November assuming it doesn't get changed.)
 
It is dishonorable to wield such a card in such a manner, I shall not blacken my soul with such gangster tactics.
And they could make 2 versions of it, one for Entrench and one for normal game, it's possible, I mean if humanity can send robots to Mars surely this one simple thing is also doable.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Spring Equinox should be banned in this seasonal! Other then that it can be quite fun. But with a 4 provision card that basically wipes out your entire row = bullshit.

So, a card that sees absolutely 0 play - specially after last expansion where we got Siegfried for niche decks like SK Corrupted Flaminica or MO's Mourntart, removing the need for Equinox - and on the only mode where it's actually kinda useful, you would ban it?

The card is not even too powerful in this mode, specially since it plays for 0 tempo. On the other hand you have Tempest which costs just a bit more but can deal up to 6 damage and purify 3 units at the same time, should that be removed from this seasonal too?

Then you have tempest and spring equinox - these cards see 0 play on standard modes, but here they are very popular so use them and SPREAD YOUR UNITS ON DIFFERENT ROWS to play around these.

This is what i said in OP, and its that simple to play around those cards. You should never rowstack, specially in this mode where the threat of these cards can put you at a serious disadvantage.

In my seasonal deck i had 2 equinoxes + Triss TK for a 3rd but i ended up barely needing them because i had so many other purifies, which actually also put points on the board.

I think you're just having a hard time accepting how different this seasonal is from standard modes.
 
I read this post before even attempting to play seasonal. For the newest journey quest, I built an enslave 5 assimilate hybrid deck using DRK3's methodology . I went 10-0 without using spring equinox because of the point lead in round 1. The Sihils I faced could not find good enough targets consistently enough in round 1, so it was late in round 2 before they reached 4 damage, and by then it was a wrap.

My MVP was definitely Treason of all things, consistently removing 12 - 14 points for 7 provisions (maxing out at 20 points, thanks to hitting an Yvgern) with a nod to Imperial Diviner, which usually ended up gaining 3 or 4 points through Assimilate on top of the purifying on enemy units.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I read this post before even attempting to play seasonal. For the newest journey quest, I built an enslave 5 assimilate hybrid deck using DRK3's methodology . I went 10-0 without using spring equinox because of the point lead in round 1. The Sihils I faced could not find good enough targets consistently enough in round 1, so it was late in round 2 before they reached 4 damage, and by then it was a wrap.

My MVP was definitely Treason of all things, consistently removing 12 - 14 points for 7 provisions (maxing out at 20 points, thanks to hitting an Yvgern) with a nod to Imperial Diviner, which usually ended up gaining 3 or 4 points through Assimilate on top of the purifying on enemy units.

Glad i could be helpful.
Enslave is a good choice - i didnt mention before but seizing is very good for this seasonal, as there are lots of engines going around, if they're resilient, their seize is even better; and also for example seize with sweers and you are getting 2 resilient units instead of one, for just 8 prov.

Treason is a great card, i use it a lot in many different NG decks, although great players tend to play around it, and if you use movement or dmg charges to set it up, you are telegraphing your Treason.
I didnt mention Imperial Diviner but thanks for pointing it out - not only is she one of the cheapest purifies, she's also an assimilate engine and you can easily play more than 2 with Operator and copy strategies, thus removing the need for equinox or extra purifies.
 
It is dishonorable to wield such a card in such a manner, I shall not blacken my soul with such gangster tactics.
And they could make 2 versions of it, one for Entrench and one for normal game, it's possible, I mean if humanity can send robots to Mars surely this one simple thing is also doable.
Lmao, I actually ended up purifying my own row by accident!! xD Haha, My finger slipped.. It tricked me that this is maybe the only card in the game that can be played by targeting ANY part of the board.. = Instant ragequit. :/
 
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