The shieldsmith change is devastating. They fixed morkvarg, but considering the shieldsmith change, i'm not sure he's still worth playing. He won't even raise enough his strength to be an efficient lightning rod for scorch, is still completely countered by frost, and will require one shieldsmith buff pert turn just to... keep it at the same strength on the next turn. And one more everytimes he gets killed (which is quite easy considering his starting strength).
So to keep morkvarg at a laughable 5 strength in the 3rd round, you already need 2 smith, and if he got killed once you even need 3. Then, if you got all smith on the first round and had the time to use them all, and had 3 rez on the second round and had the time to use them all, he will enter the 3rd round with... 13str if never killed that's with a full use of SIX smith buff, mind you, so an almost perfect situation with your cards (only thing that could make it better would be if one of the smith was killed in the first or second round and that you used a 4th rez for it).
13str with the use of SIX TURNS/CARDS to support him and if not killed in between. 11 if killed once, 9 if killed twice. 2 strength bonus per unit above 6 in a above perfect scenario where everything went the way you want. BTW currently that combination of 7 cards was bringing (accross the 3 rounds, assuming you did a perfect Morkvarg+3 shieldsmith first round then morkvarg + 3 rez->shieldsmith on the second round) was bringing to the melee row the base strength of 17-(end of first turn)+27(end of second turn)+25 (beginning of third round)= 69 strength, so an average of... 10 strength per unit used (it brought some to the siege row as well, 9 on the first turn, 18 on the second, so the grand total is 69+27=96 so almost 14 per card, 10 on the melee and a bit less than 4 on the siege row). Seems pretty solid, a very valid tactic; but that's a 7 card combo going smoothly with no one hindering it (no weather from start to finish, no lacerate, no scorch, no early kill of Morkvarg). a 7 card combo on the NR side that goes unhindered can easily reach far more than one hundred. Very, very easily.
But anyway, what about next patch? that's 11+15+13=39 on the melee and on the siege row it's 6 more than before so it's 33 now. 39+33 =72. So 72 points gained from a 7 card combo unhindered. 10 points value per card. ANd that's without talking about the unability to rez 2 of those priestess used on the second round, which is -4 angain, or -8 if you used a skall on the final siege row. I'm not talking about a horn either, that could multiply the loss on one of the turn by two.
Same goes for the cheaper neutral option Olgierd. He's one strength more so just add one above, and that guy isn't even a scorch lightning rod anyway. Honestly, I saw the way NR uses it in combo with Roach (buffing+ promote then buff+ promote roach, so that he calls automatically Roach at every round even if you don't have any gold card/promote remaining). And i can't help but think that he makes a far better NR card than a Skellige card after this patch, especially if what is said about the D-bomb post patch is true.
Speaking of which, I'll ask the question here as well :
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Can someone confirm me with an official source that the change to how dimeritium bomb affect buffed units promoted to gold is :
-only removing the +2 buff from the NR passive
-removing both that buff and the str that unit received from buffs before being promoted.
I see Yenni above being quite sure of himself, and he seems very knowledgeable about the game, but is that really the change here? Does it means that the "I'm NR so I like to play alone, please pass I'll present you with the final product and then watch you play alone against it" completely anti multiplayer behaviour is in line with the game design ?
That's what make me doubting it, because I have a hard time thinking it is especially since I saw a dev saying that next patch would get anti promote counter. In this patch note, if that dimeritium bomb change isn't the so-called "promote counter" then I don't see it.
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^because if that's true, that almost feels like a bigger nerf to skellige (Lugos and Hjalmar) golds than to NR. Almost.
But back to what I was saying, this also nerf the use of weather resistant units buffed by shieldsmith and brought back to later round in order to counter heavy use of frost. This tactic will feel reaaaally underwhelming now... And so is the idea of buffing the 3 queensguard. Although, it's still a good addition. As long as there's no frost, I mean. And no Phillipa, as usual.
I suppose rezing the skirmisher is still doable since they get +4 in rez (that's now equivalent to 2 shieldsmith buff lol...), so buffing with shieldsmith the skirmisher is still viable (but we're not rezing it due to the shieldsmith buff , it's just a nice little add to it),although less strong. And still awfully vulnerable to Griffin and caretaker, as well as to a lesser degree, ghouls and Uldaryk. And Philippa. Always Philippa.
And all of this is going together with a nerf of chain rez, which nerf the priestess of Freiya, but also indirectly the Restauration card, Siegrdrifa, the skald ( 2 less unit on the siege row =4 less strength brought by it), a buff to d-bomb that will make more peoples use it meaning that the two units that buff themselves (axeman and pirate captain) will get even more of a hard time keeping their buff all across the decisive round (and still killed in one hit by pretty much any mosquito bite). I suppose wounding Skellige will still be able to fight, due to the good amount of synergies (Many thanks to the savage bear, and Harald becoming cheaper to buy) I'm looking at the whole Skellige roster and I don't know how I could win anything next patch with a Skellige Rez/discard type of deck, except if matched with player with far cheaper decks and lower experience than right now.