Rant and some attempt of analysis of what is wrong in this game.

[HTMekkatorque]

Let's look at some staple bronzes in other decks.

Skellige: Savage bear - no comment really. it is easily a 10+ point play against any deck that spawn units. Almost exponentially more if you pair bear with axeman or two. Queensguard - 12 pts play at the bare minimum, actually more as they are almost always disgarded via King Bran ability. Shieldmaidens - 15 pts play at the round one and more deck thinning, 18 at the round 2, 21 at the round 3.

Monsters: Wild hunt hound - while it worse than Bear but it also thins the deck and could be 10+ play if not countrered. In any case, drawing opponent weather counters have value of its own. Celano harpy - 10 point play without any setup from one card, if you manage to eat one or the both eggs it is 15 to 20 points play. Even freaking Wild Hunt warrior is a 10 point play especially against Mulligan deck with Wardancers.

Northern Realms are hard to quantify because sheer amount of synergies that their units have between each other but in any case - 10 point play from a bronze card is not something unusual for them too without even mentioning the Reavers.

Nilfgaard simply have a 10 point bronze (with a downside of course) out of the bat and almost no one uses them. Tossers? 6 pts at the minimum, up to the infinity if they were used succesfully. Nauzicaa brigade (if anyone would ever run them instead of tossers for spy clearing) - 11 to 14 point play.



Yes, you can pull stuff from the deck pretty reliably (if mulligan didn't screw you over by drawing two witchers consequently for example) and you actually need that reliability because your cards almost totally lack sinergies and locked into very specific combos.

The entire ST faction has two cards with any GY interplay. One is a leader and the other a gold. Both are restricted to playing specials. Every other faction has medics except Monsters. Even Monsters gets GY access, although less then some others. Monsters also has deathwish/spawn effects all over the place. In any case, every other faction has the ability to replay important card combos, typically their deck win conditions, in multiple rounds. On the other hand, ST is forced to rely on two separate avenues to win rounds. The difference is bronze/silver, lower value cards vs golds and leaders.

Dwarves is the lone exception to needing multiple setups to win 2 rounds. There the whole point is to spam beautiful tempo building dwarfs and either burn enough opponent resources or get significant carry-over via resilience. If you can't do either one, usually both, you lose.

I'd have to disagree about ST having plenty of deck pulls as well. For one, elven mercs are too RNG to give reliable thinning. You might draw 0-3 in a game. The spells they pull at any given time may not be useful. The only way they make sense is if you use one of the whole three ambush units. Too... much... baggage... BMC thins by 2 but can be a mulligan problem. It's also not a particularly useful card unless it's moved. It's quite vulnerable to a number of cards before it's moved as well. Wardancers may thin but they're also a single play bronze 3. After that you have 2 silvers, two golds and one leader, most of which only synergize with certain units. The only ST decks where it doesn't make sense to run neutral thin cards is Spell/DBP, which uses FL's, and possibly mulligan.

Ithlinne, Aglais, etc. do create big power swings, sure. Most ST power swings come from leader/Saskia, certain specials, golds, or well setup/orchestrated combos. Most of these plays are tied to golds and silvers and cannot be re-executed. Conversely, Monsters, SK, NR and NG can execute them with bronze units as the centerpiece. Most importantly, they can execute the very same play in multiple rounds. The main reasons being graveyard interplay, bronze units being the focal point and well designed cards. And... as Crueldwarf pointed out, a card combo like shieldmaidens can create as much as a 21 pt R3 play as a bronze. Hence why I called it the bronze version of Tibor without the card draw in another thread.

crueldwarf

Skellige
1.You complain about savage bear but vrihedd dragoons do the exact opposite of this card.
2.You say shieldmaidens grant 21 points on round 3 but how many times does your opponent have a damaged creature with 4 health left for this to trigger?

Monsters:
1. I think celaeno harpies are particularly weak to aoe effects and if you see this being an issue, you can run Ard, he may even set up a combo for you or two.
2. wild hunter warriors are conditional and need to eat something to get to 10 points, otherwise a fairly run of the mill 8 point creature.

Nilfgaard:
1. you can ping the flesh he tosses at you with dol blathana archers, this actually would grant you a 2 point swing in your favour.

restlessdingo32

no other faction can so reliably pull spells out of their deck, it's like your trying to make a creature zoo deck, that can also be really versatile with spells. I would call this a unique mechanic specific to ST and if more people played that faction, there would be uproars about like, why can ST pull silver special cards when some of them are insanely strong power swings of 12 or more points. You have so much that no other faction can do and you wonder why each unit comes out on average maybe 1-2 point difference lower. You even have the strongest lock unit in the game, by two points, and a better ability to evade weather than most other factions. A lot of the deck thinning problem can also be solved by running the witchers and roach.

Once again with the shieldmaidens, letting them get to round 3 with a damage card still in hand and not saving your golds for this round, knowing that they have this card in hand would be a mistake on your part. Shield maidens are usually worth at best 14-16 points on round two but even then for the most part you usually have to have ensured that you only have one copy in your hand and that you haven't been forced into discarding any prior to this with ermion or there are various other bread and butter cards that can draw out your own shield maidens, as bad as this is, it's a little bit luck based to meet the condition to play this card in that faction while typically running ermion and considering the discard mechanic is used in half of skellige decks as a means of putting queensguards in your graveyard or thinning your deck with raiders.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

I simply don't think ST needs any interaction with their graveyard, although you are not correct about that completely because Eithne can resurrect a special card from either players graveyard which can be anywhere from an 11ish point swing to a 20 point swing in the right meta, also because they can so reliably pull things from their deck. The only real reason cycling your graveyard is so strong right now is that the card pool is so small and the difference between the best and worst card in your deck is so vast, not to mention you can't cycle through gold's but where ST makes up for that is in cards like ithlinne that can reliably pull a 20 point swing in your favour, a card like schirru, that can pull you a second scorch is also going to be crazy into certain metas. If you don't have a scorch, pull a bear or pull a mardroeme and kill an axeman, pull a potion and give your 3 creatures +3 stat boost. That and if you really want to graveyard manipulate in ST then pick up necromancy, upset that you only get to use it once? Use ithlinne on it.

People are just too set in thinking there are cards for mulliganing, therefore a mulligan archetype must be in vogue, there are movement based creatures therefore this archetype must be a thing. Just forget about those cards for now, they will come into play some expansions later, no card games in the history of ever have every archtype viable in the first set and ST is definitely the best case example of this but also think deeper than picking francesca for mulligan pure decks because vrihed officer into elven wardancer in a deck that doesn't try anything else mulligan related is still a good deck thinning way to get 10 power on the board from a bronze, and whats best about that is you have two bodies in separate rows. Those two creatures + some neutral bears + dol blathana trappers + some spells and you've got a pretty sexy looking hybrid deck that can reliably pull things from your deck.

Eithne does not resurrect a special card from either graveyard. Just your graveyard.

I wouldn't say that Ithlinne can reliably pull 20 points. Aside from pulling in two protectors you would need 3 units next to each other to thunderbolt. This can work much of the time but there will also be games that you don't have ithlinne in a round where you have those units lined up.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

crueldwarf

Skellige
1.You complain about savage bear but vrihedd dragoons do the exact opposite of this card.

Dragoons aren't even close to being the opposite of savage bear.

Shield maidens are usually worth at best 14-16 points on round two but even then for the most part you usually have to have ensured that you only have one copy in your hand and that you haven't been forced into discarding any prior to this with ermion or there are various other bread and butter cards that can draw out your own shield maidens, as bad as this is, it's a little bit luck based to meet the condition to play this card in that faction while typically running ermion and considering the discard mechanic is used in half of skellige decks as a means of putting queensguards in your graveyard or thinning your deck with raiders.

Shield Maidens shouldn't have the veteran tag and even then they are extremely good bronze cards.

 

[HTMekkatorque]

Eithne does not resurrect a special card from either graveyard. Just your graveyard.

I wouldn't say that Ithlinne can reliably pull 20 points. Aside from pulling in two protectors you would need 3 units next to each other to thunderbolt. This can work much of the time but there will also be games that you don't have ithlinne in a round where you have those units lined up.

That is true, you could run royal decree in such a deck. Deck thinning with witchers, blue mountain commandos, elven wardancers. Hell even running cards like last wish pull two cards from your deck to play one. You could even run renew and recycle ithlinne on another round, whats another free 20 points? and if you want to press a row stacking theme to get thunderbolt potion, spawn 2 bears with bloodcurdling roar, you can summon zoltan chivay or sheldon skaggs and you've baited their weather and negated it. If they were blue mountain commandos, then even better you've just scored yourself a bonus 6 points.

You just can't run ST like it's something its not, because people keep wanting it to be a warrior but be a mage, but be this or that or something else.

 

[HTMekkatorque]

If you think shieldmaidens are too strong to warrant a veteran tag then go play skellige and I'll go play ST, I don't think debating my points is incredibly valid, it's a matter of perspective, I believe I was watching a stream by a professional where he was saying how northern realms was the weakest faction in the game by his oppinion and then in that very week the tournament was played where it was 4 nilfgard decks, 3 skellige and 1 northern realms deck. At which point you gotta say well this guys a pro, he knows what he's talking about, but then some other pro went and picked northern realms anyway.

The game is actually quite complicated to the point where a few stat swings here or there probably won't make a good player lose to a bad player based on the archetype but would be much more based on skill and luck, I started playing this game a week ago so I'm not going to float some rank here or there, but I have played other cardgames in the past where I've traditionally run decks I've created because net decks were out of my reach and I still faired quite decently in the top few percentage. Probably largely due to luck and time commitments and what not as well. So go have fun with whatever it is and however serious it is you want to play the game, but I assume CDPROJECT red have gathered their own statistical analysis of what is overpowered and I would bet it has no correlation to how overpowered an archetype is. Take for instance, hearthstone, the rogue quest that everyone complains about on their forums, has only a 51% win ratio reportedly by Blizzard, people are very much sheep and will just play whatever net deck people tell them to and will often swap to a deck of someone who beat them. Maybe the #1 skellige player is crushing everyones souls but if you try replicate that well then, you're perhaps not as good as they are and it won't translate because the game is understanding meta, strategy and everything surface level but a pro will also be thinking I have 20% chance to draw this, 20% chance to draw that. Or Else they also have a lot of experience, for instance someone who has drawn into another shield maiden in round 3 with ermion.

I've played magic, hearthstone, duelist, duel of champions, bethesda card game, plus about 5 other random CG's and the only recurring theme is that nobody is happy with the balance, I just find blizzard's hearthstone a particularly special case to reference on because they "VERY RARELY" change a creatures stats and the game is so much more simple on a surface level but 3 months later and the pro's have realised that X and Y deck that they thought was once good is terrible, and it's not always just a swing in metashift, sometimes the popularised decks are never even good to begin with. But it does make you particularly counterable, and in playing axemen, which I got today from a keg, I realised that everyone is running mardroemes or 5ish point kill cards, any card imaginable to counter this card and where it was strong 1 week ago I watched SuperJJ's stream yesterday and everybody was playing so many tech cards just to disrupt his decks capabilities.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

That is true, you could run royal decree in such a deck. Deck thinning with witchers, blue mountain commandos, elven wardancers. Hell even running cards like last wish pull two cards from your deck to play one. You could even run renew and recycle ithlinne on another round, whats another free 20 points? and if you want to press a row stacking theme to get thunderbolt potion, spawn 2 bears with bloodcurdling roar, you can summon zoltan chivay or sheldon skaggs and you've baited their weather and negated it. If they were blue mountain commandos, then even better you've just scored yourself a bonus 6 points.

You just can't run ST like it's something its not, because people keep wanting it to be a warrior but be a mage, but be this or that or something else.

My point was that Ithlinne is not a free 20 points. You won't always get that even if you have it in hand and the thunderbolt in your deck. Sometimes your opponent will mess up your board so you can't use Ithlinne as you planned.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

If you think shieldmaidens are too strong to warrant a veteran tag then go play skellige and I'll go play ST.

Maidens are a must in Skellige decks because of how ridiculously good they are. It's insane that they actually can generate as many or more points than the witchers. 3 SILVER cards.

 

[Norinoo]

Bypassing all the comments and the discussion (sorry about that :s ) i'll express my thoughts on the title of the post as they come into my head:



"..what is wrong with the game/Gwent".

- Well, i can't figure out why Weather has a permanent effect, though i do know many pro players do not complain or give any suggestion about it.

- 25 limit decks. Super consistency, ok. Less RNG, ok. More predictability, getting bored more easy and this kind of repetition is quite boring.

- Many Faction archetypes lack tools and synergy.

- Weather, again, alongside synergy. Weather forced them to introduce units that clear Weather, at the same time most of these units lack synergy within an archetype, or are restricted within one archetype. Factions have multiple archetypes as you well know. I figure Weather mechanics thus are flawed and make the balance of the game much harder if not impossible. The introduction of Armor similarly is an archetype for a Faction, not for all. At the same time the Armor archetype is lacking hugely on tools and synergy in every Faction and archetype.

- In general i see a huge lack of tools and synergy within many Factions/Archetypes and every balance pass seems to completely ignore really obvious things, and feedback for what matter.

 

[Skryba86]

HTMekkatorque I think you need to get some of your facts straight =S

Ithlinne can't pull silvers, so no, you can't use double necromancy. Dol blathanna archers doesn't ping units, it pings enemies, so no you can't ping the cow carcasses. Eithne, as already mentioned, does not resurrect from either graveyard, just your own.

Vrihedd dragoons has zero impact on the board, very much unlike SK bear. It also isn't even close to having the same raw value in terms of numbers, even if you put aside the fact that affecting your hand is very different from affecting the table (in some situations better, like with hawker support, with which you're working for a carry over, but not so much with a slow buff unit like dragoons, which has basically means you are committing to a 6 power unit that will only affect your hand and not help you with the board at all) and the fact that removing power is almost always better than adding power. The fact that the bear pings spawned units is huge and extremely significant for its potential value.

SK has about 6834943867 very resilient ways of damaging units, not even counting weather, so yeah, most often than not, by a large margin, the shield maidens will activate for full value.

To argue that if harpies seem too troublesome you can run Ard is absurd. You suggest a gold card as a solution to a single bronze. That makes no sense, whatsoever. Not only is it a bad counter, it doesn't help with dealing with 3/4 harpies your opponent can pull.


There are definitely bronzes which are way too powerful when compared to the rest, and shield maidens, bears and harpies are definitely amongst the worst offenders as they require basically 0 compromise, no deck building around them to make them work, and are simply extremely effective in any build of their faction.

 

[HTMekkatorque]

HTMekkatorque I think you need to get some of your facts straight =S

Ithlinne can't pull silvers, so no, you can't use double necromancy. Dol blathanna archers doesn't ping units, it pings enemies, so no you can't ping the cow carcasses. Eithne, as already mentioned, does not resurrect from either graveyard, just your own.

Vrihedd dragoons has zero impact on the board, very much unlike SK bear. It also isn't even close to having the same raw value in terms of numbers, even if you put aside the fact that affecting your hand is very different from affecting the table (in some situations better, like with hawker support, with which you're working for a carry over, but not so much with a slow buff unit like dragoons, which has basically means you are committing to a 6 power unit that will only affect your hand and not help you with the board at all) and the fact that removing power is almost always better than adding power. The fact that the bear pings spawned units is huge and extremely significant for its potential value.

SK has about 6834943867 very resilient ways of damaging units, not even counting weather, so yeah, most often than not, by a large margin, the shield maidens will activate for full value.

To argue that if harpies seem too troublesome you can run Ard is absurd. You suggest a gold card as a solution to a single bronze. That makes no sense, whatsoever. Not only is it a bad counter, it doesn't help with dealing with 3/4 harpies your opponent can pull.


There are definitely bronzes which are way too powerful when compared to the rest, and shield maidens, bears and harpies are definitely amongst the worst offenders as they require basically 0 compromise, no deck building around them to make them work, and are simply extremely effective in any build of their faction.

I think I must have made an error in names or something along the line, eithne and ithlinne have very simillar titles, but what I am saying is you can cycle silvers from your graveyard or pull two spells from your deck with ithlinne (of bronze value). Either way I'm not very experienced, I did not have access to the open beta game nor have I really looked into this game any earlier of as of a week ago, but if you've ever played magic the gathering at a high level of gameplay you'll understand how powerful this faction can be, I know other card games, you cannot interact with special cards in this sort of way so I've seen a lot of misplayed scola'tael decks and all I can gather is that you base your premise off of a horrible understanding of what I perceive to be the faction with the most depth. In fact it is so new that I doubt a lot of people commenting on this thread have even had a chance to play with many of the cards at mention, but at face value you can pull big swings with them under the right instances, and you seem to be so narrow minded in thinking that shieldmaidens can always pull a 21 point swing in turn three, only deck where that would happen is one that makes sacrifices to ensure this card is the crux because holding onto an archer, frost, or a clan brokvar hunter.

You know I come to this forum to debate the usefulness of cards, perhaps be helpful and offer some advise on what I perceive good synergies given that a lot of people playing gwent have never played anything similar cannot draw these similar conclusions without gazing at cards for hours whereas I can see similar combinations I've pulled off in varying other card games. I didn't join in on this discussion to be ganged up on by vultures and I know many of you are ST fans that think you've been robbed by the game developers who don't agree that your faction is weak, and haven't given you that buff that you think you're deserving of, but I even more so think a lot of you are trying to make a faction be about something it's not. It is a thread FOR ST players to beg for a nerf on skellige, and you've probably not even tried many other archetypes to realize that certain deck types are favorable over axemen decks, the dev's have already weakened queensguard and many other notable characters. If you're not having a fun time with ST then try something else, try skellige, watch it get countered by so many things, learn how to counterplay even and become a better player. I've given my honest oppinion in that it's not "too unbalanced", nothing is perfect, nor is it set in stone, but where ST may have a few weak bronzes, skellige has a few bad epics, it doesn't own a proper weather clear, the game is not particular even in every matchup, nor should it be. The game is about rotations and counterplay tactics, and this is why if you're so set in playing one faction purely, then you're not going to have answers to every single cycle or matchup because you're confining and restricting yourself to a much smaller card pool then the general population that can embrace change.

 

[Skryba86]

HTMekkatorque sorry, but you're completely off on your aim. I played MTG for years, competitively. I play quite a few other board games and card games as well. I've also been playing gwent since closed beta, even if not from the very beginning.

I've played monsters, consume and weather builds in open beta and in closed beta, as well as NG and SC.

I'm also not defending that I've been robbed of anything at all, I didn't even play SC during closed beta, even though I I appreciated the faction.

I play control mostly in MTG, btw, so I'm perfectly well aware of how powerful spell manipulation is.

It just looks like you're still a bit unexperienced in gwent, and you need to get better acquainted with the game overall and individual cards and factions, before you can come to certain conclusions on your own.

My post was strictly about showing you some misconceptions you had about a few cards, and discussing balance in the game overall. Not at all whining about SC being bad or SK being good.

Regarding shield maidens, you don't need them to work in turn three, they can work in turn one or turn two, to a much better use too, as they'll thin your deck. But if you do want to wait for the swing on turn 3, it's not hard to do at all either, when you play a faction that has 5 resurrection cards, of which 4 are auto include units in every build, that bring back that archer/bear/hunter that you really didn't need to hold unto, well, because you can just rez him. So yeah, again, it is extremely consistent that the shield maidens will pull full value whenever you play them, as long as you have half a brain.

 

[HTMekkatorque]

HTMekkatorque I think you need to get some of your facts straight =S

Ithlinne can't pull silvers, so no, you can't use double necromancy. Dol blathanna archers doesn't ping units, it pings enemies, so no you can't ping the cow carcasses. Eithne, as already mentioned, does not resurrect from either graveyard, just your own.

Vrihedd dragoons has zero impact on the board, very much unlike SK bear. It also isn't even close to having the same raw value in terms of numbers, even if you put aside the fact that affecting your hand is very different from affecting the table (in some situations better, like with hawker support, with which you're working for a carry over, but not so much with a slow buff unit like dragoons, which has basically means you are committing to a 6 power unit that will only affect your hand and not help you with the board at all) and the fact that removing power is almost always better than adding power. The fact that the bear pings spawned units is huge and extremely significant for its potential value.

SK has about 6834943867 very resilient ways of damaging units, not even counting weather, so yeah, most often than not, by a large margin, the shield maidens will activate for full value.

To argue that if harpies seem too troublesome you can run Ard is absurd. You suggest a gold card as a solution to a single bronze. That makes no sense, whatsoever. Not only is it a bad counter, it doesn't help with dealing with 3/4 harpies your opponent can pull.


There are definitely bronzes which are way too powerful when compared to the rest, and shield maidens, bears and harpies are definitely amongst the worst offenders as they require basically 0 compromise, no deck building around them to make them work, and are simply extremely effective in any build of their faction.

I offer up Ard as a counter to harpies because you can manipulate their whole front or middle line and push it back and destroy it with weather, if used correctly will deal more than a blow to just the harpies, so yes it is a well justifiable gold slot in my oppinion, but it was just a suggestion and no I didn't say it was the only way to get around them, if you think you don't have a spare gold slot for it then there are plenty of bronze and silver solutions as well, I can't name you every solution but ida emean is a good way to get aoe into your silver and dol blathana marksman into ard is a brilliant combo in certain ST decks.

If I could trade cards, I would happily have taken a swap of my SK or NR epics into your epics, because I think ST is a valuable faction. I don't even understand what people mean when they say, oh but it can't put value onto the board. This game isn't a rush to 100 points, it's a game where throwing a round to take another round is viable, or throwing extra weak cards can make up for keeping back strength, but I would also raise you the idea that the bear is a little bit worse than the dragoon in terms of single targetting as it doesn't effect golds, whereas the dragoon unconditionally will boost a creature in your hand by one each turn, the only instances where a bear can obtain more value is with the axemen but you also have synergy with the dragoon into braenn and you have a surprise factor, which is actually valuable for instance, ambush creature goes down, it's toruviel, it could not be anything else, so you do all the math in your head 8+6 is 14 so if I pass now I can match your power, but then flips up and oh wait it actually got boosted by that dragoon that was on the board for two rounds in turn one. That and you say weather is a good way of damaging your units, when skellige has no faction specific way of providing weather, nor would it be useful at all to run weather, if axeman strategy wasn't a thing. It's a BIG sacrifice in power to add these biting frosts into a skellige deck. That and basing a whole argument based on every unit being equal goes against gwent's nature, each faction has rediculous slots in some form of bronze, silver or gold card, that is compensated by some sort of weakness in some sort of area. I don't want to play a game where every bronze has to be worth a point value, every silver has to be worth a point value, every gold has to be worth a point value.

I can welcome idea's about a weather mechanic needing to be changed or even that some cards don't synergise well with anything, discard decks are not really in much better of a situation then mulligan decks, but when you start complaining about counter decks being too tough, their creatures having too many points, their combos being too easy to pull off. Well then play that faction, if you believe said thing can be done easily, go buy 3 of them with scraps and on your way, in the mean time I'll play another faction because it's not overpowered at all. shieldmaidens can be accidentally pulled with udalryk, you can be against northern realms and not be able to penetrate through the armour quick enough to damage a unit, or you damage a unit and it gets healed the next turn. It's a combo that everybody knows how to counter, and have tech solutions in their deck for.

I'll even accept that you have your opinions but I don't agree with many of them, I think much of the forums is based off of complaints and obviously people enjoying themselves are happily in game scrimming randoms, making new decks, embracing change, if you have an idea for a new game mechanic, I'm sure the developers would love to hear about it, if you have a thought about an interaction or strategy I'm sure people would love to hear about it. But your complaints are getting very old and I don't know enough about how you play ST to know what you're doing wrong or why you're so aggrovated today, but it's probably not because SK is too powerful, it's probably not because ST is too weak.

 

[Skryba86]

I offer up Ard as a counter to harpies because you can manipulate their whole front or middle line and push it back and destroy it with weather, if used correctly will deal more than a blow to just the harpies, so yes it is a well justifiable gold slot in my oppinion, but it was just a suggestion and no I didn't say it was the only way to get around them, if you think you don't have a spare gold slot for it then there are plenty of bronze and silver solutions as well, I can't name you every solution but ida emean is a good way to get aoe into your silver and dol blathana marksman into ard is a brilliant combo in certain ST decks.

If I could trade cards, I would happily have taken a swap of my SK or NR epics into your epics, because I think ST is a valuable faction. I don't even understand what people mean when they say, oh but it can't put value onto the board. This game isn't a rush to 100 points, it's a game where throwing a round to take another round is viable, or throwing extra weak cards can make up for keeping back strength, but I would also raise you the idea that the bear is a little bit worse than the dragoon in terms of single targetting as it doesn't effect golds, whereas the dragoon unconditionally will boost a creature in your hand by one each turn, the only instances where a bear can obtain more value is with the axemen but you also have synergy with the dragoon into braenn and you have a surprise factor, which is actually valuable for instance, ambush creature goes down, it's toruviel, it could not be anything else, so you do all the math in your head 8+6 is 14 so if I pass now I can match your power, but then flips up and oh wait it actually got boosted by that dragoon that was on the board for two rounds in turn one. That and you say weather is a good way of damaging your units, when skellige has no faction specific way of providing weather, nor would it be useful at all to run weather, if axeman strategy wasn't a thing. It's a BIG sacrifice in power to add these biting frosts into a skellige deck. That and basing a whole argument based on every unit being equal goes against gwent's nature, each faction has rediculous slots in some form of bronze, silver or gold card, that is compensated by some sort of weakness in some sort of area. I don't want to play a game where every bronze has to be worth a point value, every silver has to be worth a point value, every gold has to be worth a point value.

I can welcome idea's about a weather mechanic needing to be changed or even that some cards don't synergise well with anything, discard decks are not really in much better of a situation then mulligan decks, but when you start complaining about counter decks being too tough, their creatures having too many points, their combos being too easy to pull off. Well then play that faction, if you believe said thing can be done easily, go buy 3 of them with scraps and on your way, in the mean time I'll play another faction because it's not overpowered at all. shieldmaidens can be accidentally pulled with udalryk, you can be against northern realms and not be able to penetrate through the armour quick enough to damage a unit, or you damage a unit and it gets healed the next turn. It's a combo that everybody knows how to counter, and have tech solutions in their deck for.

I'll even accept that you have your opinions but I don't agree with many of them, I think much of the forums is based off of complaints and obviously people enjoying themselves are happily in game scrimming randoms, making new decks, embracing change, if you have an idea for a new game mechanic, I'm sure the developers would love to hear about it, if you have a thought about an interaction or strategy I'm sure people would love to hear about it. But your complaints are getting very old and I don't know enough about how you play ST to know what you're doing wrong or why you're so aggrovated today, but it's probably not because SK is too powerful, it's probably not because ST is too weak.

Ok, so, I'm really not sure you're talking to me or if you simply quoted the wrong post. I didn't say weather was a good way for SK to do damage at all, and I didn't even say SK needed to include weather in dmg builds, in fact I said quite the opposite.

I'm also pretty much lost on what you mean by "my complaints are getting old", as I really haven't complained about.. All that much? I'm also not aggravated at all, you on the other hand kinda seem to be a bit aggressively defending the deck you play for some reason, even if I'm not attacking it at all, just stating some truths that I believe should get looked at.

I'll stop derailing the thread, though, as we don't seem to be getting anywhere with this.

 

[HTMekkatorque]

Ok, so, I'm really not sure you're talking to me or if you simply quoted the wrong post. I didn't say weather was a good way for SK to do damage at all, and I didn't even say SK needed to include weather in dmg builds, in fact I said quite the opposite.

I'm also pretty much lost on what you mean by "my complaints are getting old", as I really haven't complained about.. All that much? I'm also not aggravated at all, you on the other hand kinda seem to be a bit aggressively defending the deck you play for some reason, even if I'm not attacking it at all, just stating some truths that I believe should get looked at.

I'll stop derailing the thread, though, as we don't seem to be getting anywhere with this.

I'm actually defending the deck this other guy plays, but he's saying it's horrible so I'm saying play something else. I'm just offering up my opinion, a little bit of strategic advise, don't twist peoples words.

I don't play any deck solely, I scrapped pretty much my whole set for scraps when a full refund was offered so I looked at my decks and my Starter decks were 17/25 cards. Maybe when I do decide to spend my scrap I'll spend it on ST but... I'm saying it doesn't need a buff as is, and I'm also offering up that another deck that I also don't think is overpowered isn't overpowered, because I was watching a streamer player it in pro's and he wasn't doing very well with it. That's all I'm saying, people have too many tech cards against it right now.

 

[Crueldwarf]

crueldwarf

Skellige
1.You complain about savage bear but vrihedd dragoons do the exact opposite of this card.

What? OK, let's compare two situations. Mulligan deck is facing against SK deck. SK deck have the first turn and put the bear on the board. What is the best opening move for the Mulligan deck? Dropping three witchers, so they would not come back to the hand via mulligans. Witchers are 17 pts swing but because of the bear on the field they instantly became 14 points swing and bear already generated 9 points of value at the first turn. How many turns a Virhedd Dragoon require to generate 9 points of value? 3.
You also can open with a officer+wardancer. In that case bear generated 'just' 8 value on the first turn. Or you can thunder the bear and reset the board. After which SK player will put another bear on the board or simply rezzed prevbious one.And Mulligan deck simply do not have space to run more than 2 or 3 spells and Thunder do not really fit into it anyway, you are in general better with shackles and mandroeme.

2.You say shieldmaidens grant 21 points on round 3 but how many times does your opponent have a damaged creature with 4 health left for this to trigger?

Practically always.

Monsters:
1. I think celaeno harpies are particularly weak to aoe effects and if you see this being an issue, you can run Ard, he may even set up a combo for you or two.

Geralt Aard against Harpies? What? And if you use AoE against eggs (which AoE? Lacerate or maybe Fire trap from Trappers?) then you just dealt 5 damage to your enemy with your aoe (+10 potential if he had eating the eggs in mind) which is less than 7 str which remained on the board after Harpies spawned from the eggs. Do you really see this as efficient play? No, it is not. Mulligan decks usually have precisely two aoes in form of two DB Trappers and wasting them on eggs is insanely stupid.

2. wild hunter warriors are conditional and need to eat something to get to 10 points, otherwise a fairly run of the mill 8 point creature.

Officer+wardancer combo is conditional too. You need both of them in the hand.

Nilfgaard:
1. you can ping the flesh he tosses at you with dol blathana archers, this actually would grant you a 2 point swing in your favour.

Firstly, no you can't. DBA can only target enemies. Marksmen can target your own units but there is no place for marksmen in mulligan deck.
Secondly, you don't run more than one DBA in Mulligan deck, you do not have space as you arleady spend too many slots on too many units.

 

[HTMekkatorque]

What? OK, let's compare two situations. Mulligan deck is facing against SK deck. SK deck have the first turn and put the bear on the board. What is the best opening move for the Mulligan deck? Dropping three witchers, so they would not come back to the hand via mulligans. Witchers are 17 pts swing but because of the bear on the field they instantly became 14 points swing and bear already generated 9 points of value at the first turn. How many turns a Virhedd Dragoon require to generate 9 points of value? 3.
You also can open with a officer+wardancer. In that case bear generated 'just' 8 value on the first turn. Or you can thunder the bear and reset the board. After which SK player will put another bear on the board or simply rezzed prevbious one.And Mulligan deck simply do not have space to run more than 2 or 3 spells and Thunder do not really fit into it anyway, you are in general better with shackles and mandroeme.



Practically always.


Geralt Aard against Harpies? What? And if you use AoE against eggs (which AoE? Lacerate or maybe Fire trap from Trappers?) then you just dealt 5 damage to your enemy with your aoe (+10 potential if he had eating the eggs in mind) which is less than 7 str which remained on the board after Harpies spawned from the eggs. Do you really see this as efficient play? No, it is not. Mulligan decks usually have precisely two aoes in form of two DB Trappers and wasting them on eggs is insanely stupid.


Officer+wardancer combo is conditional too. You need both of them in the hand.


Firstly, no you can't. DBA can only target enemies. Marksmen can target your own units but there is no place for marksmen in mulligan deck.
Secondly, you don't run more than one DBA in Mulligan deck, you do not have space as you arleady spend too many slots on too many units.

Okay so what I would do in these situations.
1. against the bear:
play golds, get a good point lead, you can let 2-3 mobs get hit and then the bears still only worth 8-9 which is still fairly average and he probably won't drop axemen on turn one so you're pretty safe in that regard.
The main reason why you would want to take out the first round so badly is obvious, you're trying to hard win it so the opponent can't pass on the second round, but if you have to give up the first round sometimes it's handy to have yaevin or whatever faction specific spy, because you can stay in a round, give your opponent the lead so whereas he can't take you for a joy ride in turn two he'll probably actually just pass when he sees his point lead is 20 in which you dump 2 cards, win the round and you're tied 1-1 going into the third round.

2.against the harpies:
I tend to make sure I smash round 1, I draw the round out with weakling creatures generally, then when it comes to turn two and he's got a ton of 3 creatures or some thingies from the golems I would instantly pass, I know this is not a great fix, it's a strong card but that particular deck tends to drop a lot of strength into round 2, have a scorch and some shackles handy for if he decides to consume something and make it big. Scorch can be your best friend if he does consume the eggs.

3.wild hunter being better than my suggested combo:
Try running 3 of the officers and 1 of the wardancer, you get 3 rerolls, it's a good reroll target if it doesn't work out for you, I also tend to run a lot of tech cards and I run sarah so I can shuffle things back into my deck, helps sometimes, but not much can be helped about topdecking it

4.the flesh tossers:
I did mention earlier that bloodcurdling roar is a great card and it works with many factions to get rid of flesh tosser junk, fake ciris, lugo whales

 

[Crueldwarf]

Okay so what I would do in these situations.
1. against the bear:
play golds, get a good point lead, you can let 2-3 mobs get hit and then the bears still only worth 8-9 which is still fairly average and he probably won't drop axemen on turn one so you're pretty safe in that regard.

ST do not have golds that generate big point swings without previous board setup. The best Gold combo that ST Mulligan have is Franceska + Saskia which also uses three of your mulligan attempts and you really want to get rid from the Witchers before using Francesca. The rest of your golds is probably Shirru (which give you Scorch that you do not want to use immediatly most of the time as SK simply do not have good targets for Scorch), Ciri and Avalach/Aglais/Ithlenne of which only Avalach is ablte to put some gold strength on the board but you also do not want to use him early and before Francesca because he could draw a Saskia to your hand.
So which Golds Mullgan deck suppose to play?

The main reason why you would want to take out the first round so badly is obvious, you're trying to hard win it so the opponent can't pass on the second round, but if you have to give up the first round sometimes it's handy to have yaevin or whatever faction specific spy, because you can stay in a round, give your opponent the lead so whereas he can't take you for a joy ride in turn two he'll probably actually just pass when he sees his point lead is 20 in which you dump 2 cards, win the round and you're tied 1-1 going into the third round.

The thing is that with Skellige matchup your best chance is to win the first round because Skellige is at their weakest in the first round. So you want to push him as much as possible in the first round to force him to use as many cards as possible because Skellige can replay almost all their stuff and you cannot.

2.against the harpies:
I tend to make sure I smash round 1, I draw the round out with weakling creatures generally, then when it comes to turn two and he's got a ton of 3 creatures or some thingies from the golems I would instantly pass, I know this is not a great fix, it's a strong card but that particular deck tends to drop a lot of strength into round 2, have a scorch and some shackles handy for if he decides to consume something and make it big. Scorch can be your best friend if he does consume the eggs.

Again you entirely miss the point which is not that Harpies are impossible to dealt with but that they are way better card than any bronze that Elves have bar DBPs and maybe Vanguards. And they do not require setup, they are available as is at the first round.

Try running 3 of the officers and 1 of the wardancer, you get 3 rerolls, it's a good reroll target if it doesn't work out for you, I also tend to run a lot of tech cards and I run sarah so I can shuffle things back into my deck, helps sometimes, but not much can be helped about topdecking it

By removing wardancers from the deck, you remove good targets for mulligan. And if you do not have good targets for mulligan (whcih are Saskia, Witchers, Wardancers, Vanguards and maybe Roach) then why do you need to run three officers? You will have no good targets for mulligan in your hand more often than not. Mulliganing away potentially useful cards is almost always a loosing propostion because you will not draw a more useful card most likely.
Ergo, if you do not keep cards for mulligan in your deck then there is no need to play Francesca and run Officers at all. Single wardancer is good for thinning in any ST deck which have bronze slot to spare.

4.the flesh tossers:
I did mention earlier that bloodcurdling roar is a great card and it works with many factions to get rid of flesh tosser junk, fake ciris, lugo whales

It is a very good card. You just do not have space for it in a Mulligan deck. You already run 12 to 15 bronze units in the deck. And most of the time it is 14 to 15 units actually (3 wardancers, 3 officers, 3 vanguards, 2-3 brigades, 2-3 trappers, 1 archer, some people combo Mulligan with Move and run some commandoes). Obviously you can drop trappers as they do not have any synergies with the deck but is actually one of the better Elven cards that is capable of producing good value on the board.

 

[HTMekkatorque]

ST do not have golds that generate big point swings without previous board setup. The best Gold combo that ST Mulligan have is Franceska + Saskia which also uses three of your mulligan attempts and you really want to get rid from the Witchers before using Francesca. The rest of your golds is probably Shirru (which give you Scorch that you do not want to use immediatly most of the time as SK simply do not have good targets for Scorch), Ciri and Avalach/Aglais/Ithlenne of which only Avalach is ablte to put some gold strength on the board but you also do not want to use him early and before Francesca because he could draw a Saskia to your hand.
So which Golds Mullgan deck suppose to play?


The thing is that with Skellige matchup your best chance is to win the first round because Skellige is at their weakest in the first round. So you want to push him as much as possible in the first round to force him to use as many cards as possible because Skellige can replay almost all their stuff and you cannot.


Again you entirely miss the point which is not that Harpies are impossible to dealt with but that they are way better card than any bronze that Elves have bar DBPs and maybe Vanguards. And they do not require setup, they are available as is at the first round.


By removing wardancers from the deck, you remove good targets for mulligan. And if you do not have good targets for mulligan (whcih are Saskia, Witchers, Wardancers, Vanguards and maybe Roach) then why do you need to run three officers? You will have no good targets for mulligan in your hand more often than not. Mulliganing away potentially useful cards is almost always a loosing propostion because you will not draw a more useful card most likely.
Ergo, if you do not keep cards for mulligan in your deck then there is no need to play Francesca and run Officers at all. Single wardancer is good for thinning in any ST deck which have bronze slot to spare.


It is a very good card. You just do not have space for it in a Mulligan deck. You already run 12 to 15 bronze units in the deck. And most of the time it is 14 to 15 units actually (3 wardancers, 3 officers, 3 vanguards, 2-3 brigades, 2-3 trappers, 1 archer, some people combo Mulligan with Move and run some commandoes). Obviously you can drop trappers as they do not have any synergies with the deck but is actually one of the better Elven cards that is capable of producing good value on the board.

So Like I've said earlier, I don't really have any of these cards, but here is a proposed list I have created:
http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/23072-h...ques-hybrid-st

After a lot of thought, I decided trappers were too easy to deal with, archers 4 damage really had no place as it can't remove bears and axemen don't get played around turn 1. There are some obvious candidates you could include like the spy which would be good for a beggar combo, but you already have the ability to create a slow tempo play into a ambush unit, into a beggar. You also don't need brigades because you can pull chivay most of the time and run away from the weather and if you can't you can always salvage your dying minions with bears. elven merc, is just for some more versatility in pulling your spells when you need them but you can also pull it back over to your side with one of the few ambush characters I suggested.

I will be crafting renew and ithlinne, beggar, toruviel. I think are the main necessities, however I think silver spells you can use white frost instead, or run yaevin. aelirens most likely swap would be roach, I would do this so that I could recycle necromancy with eithne as soon as the round starts and have a target for it, this way you can snake SK's high value minions after winning round 1 in some cases. Or you could get rid of potential rez targets against monster in case of caretaker or katakan, that consume can be quite scary. You can also lock hjalmer and tibor and kayran if they let you and use its power against them.

I've included a single DBP, hopefully you've deck thinned and you have this in your third round, if it's 1 card for 1 card I do not think theres a card that could match the power of this creature bar some golds, providing you've drained the strength out of their graveyard (hopefully) or mardroemed big threats.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

I mean no disrespect Mekka, but I think you're out of your depth.

ST is having a hard time right now precisely because they're not very flexible and anything the viable builds can do someone else can do better. The tempo decks can put up huge points, sure. You lose much of your ability to control the opponent, they themselves are vulnerable to control and other factions can generate just as much, if not more, tempo. Even the ST Spell decks are vulnerable to popular/powerful cards, they're not the only faction able to bomb spells and decks like SK Axemen arguably play the "murder units and gain ridiculous points at the same time" concept better given their stronger deck synergy, numerous viable win conditions and ability to eat counters to the grill and keep on trucking. In fact, most other factions can universally apply the same concepts available to ST with greater flexibility, consistency and synergy.

In terms of countering SK.... The only viable way to handle them seems to be getting at least 2 CA with an early pass or going hard in R1, with locks/killing their problem units as much as possible. The former is going to burn you, and likely turn to a loss, if they run certain builds. The latter creates problems because it takes a ridiculous number of well played counters, and often leads you naked and/or overwhelmed R2 or R3. Neither option is easy to pull off. And even if you choose right and pull it off they pull out some BS with cards like Gremist/Medics/Bloodcurdling Roar (that spell should NOT be on a mage), Kambi+Hjalmar or 20+ pt R3 Shieldmaidens. They're overpowered at the moment. Anyone disputing it is blind or playing it.

 

[Burza46]

We are looking into weather, since it's become auto-include in most archetypes.