Removal meta

[Fargothwave]

...needs to stop for the good of the game and people playing it.

There's a thread about poison, there's an NG thread (foolishly) created by me and more stuff like that. Having discussed some of these things, I now realize what most of these threads miss, namely scope and addressing the underlying issue - prevalence of removal over one's ability to produce points. Currently, nearly everything you try to put on board early in a round is destroyed briefly. If 4p specs don't get them, poison will. If it miraculously doesn't, there're always Vincent and YI...
...ahem, my anti-NG sentiments get the better of me again. Yet NG aren't the only ones who do it (they're just the worst offender due to having no value ceiling on far too many of their unconditional removals).

Certain SK/SY decks have the same effect - whenever my spider senses hint at the the presence of Gord or (or six damage specials in case of SK) in the enemy deck I feel a strong compulsion to just surrender that game even though it's easily winnable with what I am running. It just isn't fun to play. It got to the point where I started running several designated sacrificial lambs (Mantelet and a couple of Makhakam Defenders for anyone wondering) who I didn't even expect to achieve anything, but in the end it wasn't enough and now I only have five meaningful cards in my deck and they all play as one climactic little-to-no-setup finisher (a certain safe-ish instant 28 value gain combo + some heavy row punish), while the rest of them is basically meant to delude my opponents into thinking I have a greedy strategy of sorts and nothing else. I'm genuinely surprised every time I manage to gain some value from them and keep it. Most of the time, though, they could as well be a bunch of Elder Bears and it honestly would't matter. I hate Cerys or Geydineth Lippy, Elf Swarm and Uprising with passion, yet I perfectly understand people playing that. They got metabullied into this misery (still have 0 sympathy for people who decide to join the abnormal cell growth NG squad for same reasons).

The only real way to try and keep anything is to plop down a defender, and considering there's a hate-laden glowing-hot thread discussing those, you can safely assume they're at least somewhat controversial.

My point is rather simple, though. We need more viable shielding/armor options, less unconditional oneshots and maybe higher base values for most units (+1 may suffice), so that they finally have a reasonable chance to survive (and maybe disincentivize investing in damage so heavily, instead making people focus on creative ways to gain points instead of ruining their opponents', which is way more fun ultimately).

 

[wonderboy870]

...needs to stop for the good of the game and people playing it.

There's a thread about poison, there's an NG thread (foolishly) created by me and more stuff like that. Having discussed some of these things, I now realize what most of these threads miss, namely scope and addressing the underlying issue - prevalence of removal over one's ability to produce points. Currently, nearly everything you try to put on board early in a round is destroyed briefly. If 4p specs don't get them, poison will. If it miraculously doesn't, there're always Vincent and YI...
...ahem, my anti-NG sentiments get the better of me again. Yet NG aren't the only ones who do it (they're just the worst offender due to having no value ceiling on far too many of their unconditional removals).

Certain SK/SY decks have the same effect - whenever my spider senses hint at the the presence of Gord or (or six damage specials in case of SK) in the enemy deck I feel a strong compulsion to just surrender that game even though it's easily winnable with what I am running. It just isn't fun to play. It got to the point where I started running several designated sacrificial lambs (Mantelet and a couple of Makhakam Defenders for anyone wondering) who I didn't even expect to achieve anything, but in the end it wasn't enough and now I only have five meaningful cards in my deck and they all play as one climactic little-to-no-setup finisher (a certain safe-ish instant 28 value gain combo + some heavy row punish), while the rest of them is basically meant to delude my opponents into thinking I have a greedy strategy of sorts and nothing else. I'm genuinely surprised every time I manage to gain some value from them and keep it. Most of the time, though, they could as well be a bunch of Elder Bears and it honestly would't matter. I hate Cerys or Geydineth Lippy, Elf Swarm and Uprising with passion, yet I perfectly understand people playing that. They got metabullied into this misery (still have 0 sympathy for people who decide to join the abnormal cell growth NG squad for same reasons).

The only real way to try and keep anything is to plop down a defender, and considering there's a hate-laden glowing-hot thread discussing those, you can safely assume they're at least somewhat controversial.

My point is rather simple, though. We need more viable shielding/armor options, less unconditional oneshots and maybe higher base values for most units (+1 may suffice), so that they finally have a reasonable chance to survive (and maybe disincentivize investing in damage so heavily, instead making people focus on creative ways to gain points instead of ruining their opponents', which is way more fun ultimately).

I’m sorry but your position just seems wrong to me. There are only 3 types of cards. Cards that add points, cards that subtract points, and cards that have some utility function. Moving is a good example of utility, and while helpful in some cases it is useless in others. MO is a good example of a deck that can outscore most opponents. Sure there are some NR decks that can compete, but without removal and damage point slam overruns.

Your core principle is that decks with 12 removal special cards are bad for Gwent. Well putting aside the fact that some leaders are only viable running removal heavy decks, my question is how many is too many? At what point should we allow MO point slam or SY fee slam, or NR combos just overrun the game? Defense is a part of Gwent as much as offense. It may be frustrating to deal with, but that doesn’t make it any less viable. As long as there are Cerys or the eleven dudes who spawn two deadeyes, we need scorch. As long as there are 13 point tall cards we need big card removal. You can argue they are too binary, but they don’t put points on their own side of the board. As for poison, maybe the answer is to make purify more available as an alternative row option for some cards. Poison is limited by the single target nature of the effect. Play a deck with more small units and you protect yourself from poison.

If Gwent doesn’t have defense decks then the game is runaway offense. If the game doesn’t let weak leaders hide behind solid strategy then those contracts don’t get completed.

 

[Guest 4368268]

I’m sorry but your position just seems wrong to me. There are only 3 types of cards. Cards that add points, cards that subtract points, and cards that have some utility function. Moving is a good example of utility, and while helpful in some cases it is useless in others. MO is a good example of a deck that can outscore most opponents. Sure there are some NR decks that can compete, but without removal and damage point slam overruns.

Your core principle is that decks with 12 removal special cards are bad for Gwent. Well putting aside the fact that some leaders are only viable running removal heavy decks, my question is how many is too many? At what point should we allow MO point slam or SY fee slam, or NR combos just overrun the game? Defense is a part of Gwent as much as offense. It may be frustrating to deal with, but that doesn’t make it any less viable. As long as there are Cerys or the eleven dudes who spawn two deadeyes, we need scorch. As long as there are 13 point tall cards we need big card removal. You can argue they are too binary, but they don’t put points on their own side of the board. As for poison, maybe the answer is to make purify more available as an alternative row option for some cards. Poison is limited by the single target nature of the effect. Play a deck with more small units and you protect yourself from poison.

If Gwent doesn’t have defense decks then the game is runaway offense. If the game doesn’t let weak leaders hide behind solid strategy then those contracts don’t get completed.

The fear of Gwent turning into just blind point slamming is something I understand. We've seen it with Big Monsters of old or Dijkstra Townsfolk, that side of the coin is also very tedious. Scorch is a removal card I've zero issues with. I think cards like that are great. The removal I despise would be a Falibor or a Vincent or Syndicates' Phillipa. Control is and should always be an important aspect. But if you make it too low risk and too cheap then everyone will stockpile their decks with it and that's exactly what's happened.

I see Nilfgaard decks that consist of 70%+ removal cards in the form of locks, seizes and destroying. I see NR decks with next to no synergy or real gameplan other than hoping their Baron, Phillipa, Falibor and so forth go off for enough value.
Syndicate likewise. A meta of boost engines though will always be a meta of Yrden. Those kinds of engines (Temerian Drummer etc.) do not worry me a bit. The engines that can snowball for the worst though are cards like Redanian Archer/Hefty Helge/Pavko. They gain points by taking away yours. The only real answer to that is removing them, asap.
But these engines I'd consider a good example of the 'control heavy Gwent' problem anyways, rather than an 'engine' problem.

I'd rather my opponent Igni's me or Scorches me at the end of an interesting game and wins that way than to sabotage me every other turn of the game and I can't execute a strategy whatsoever. I don't necessarily need to win, but I'd like to have a shot at actually executing a solid portion of my plan.

 

[Fargothwave]

Your core principle is that decks with 12 removal special cards are bad for Gwent.

Here's the point where your analysis went wrong thanks to putting words i didn't say or mean in my mouth. I talked about overabundance of removal specifically, i.e. cheap options (after all, you can only cram so many 12p in a deck).

Korathi, Scorch, Yrden and Igni are healthy cards, because of the cost and certain risks you take when you add them. Poison spam, on the other hand, is cheap yet (almost) just as powerful as these ultra-costly cards. Sure enough, wide decks are doing rather fine against poison, but it's not okay for a single mechanic to make so many cards unviable anyway. Especially if it forces you to give up whatever you were trying to make work and play whatever counters it instead. Not only is it boring, but also less-than-perfect in many other matchups.

4/5p removals spam just prevents most combos from happening, which is hardly a good thing, too.
There're great many ways to fight pointslam in this game, but very few to actually try and succeed at pointslamming. 12-13 point tall cards all have certain dangerous caveats (and are actuallly quite expensive), and as such, countering them shouldn't be easy.

tl;dr I wasn't aruing against costly nukes, because we indeed need them to counter certain things gone out of control. Cheap damage, on the other hand, prevents anything interesting from ever happening.

 

[DRK3]

Removal has always been a problem in Gwent and its balance, particularly since Gwent HC. The dev team have tried and tried to stop it, but they've only been able to change it:

First it was the crazy spear and Sihil artefact spam that removed everything on your board, then it was Crach and Eithne's + bronzes that did 3/4 damage that removed everything, then they tried to stop that, and made only specials do that type of removal, so we got NG tactics removing everything you played, and after NR overhaul we got engine overload, that if you let them setup, then it snowballs from there and nothing you play sticks for a turn (this can be seen on NR engine mirror match, the one who starts wins).

FInally, we get to current meta, where poison is the popular removal, because its cheap and can kill both small or tall units while also putting points on the board, its not as "instant removal" as the previous metas, but it's just as toxic (no pun intended).