Scoia'tael Deck Strategies

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Scoia'tael Deck Strategies

This thread is for those building a Scoia'tael deck. Let us know your tips, strategies, weaknesses, etc.

I've found it to be a lot of fun thus far. Limiting the other side's options by laying traps is can be fun to watch. Also having so many mobile units is a huge plus. I've been deferring to the other deck at the start of the game, and using the first draw at the start of round 2 for my leader ability - it's a good point to rebuild your deck in hopes of adapting to the other side's strategy.

EDIT: Users are welcome to use this topic to discussing varying Scoia'tael Deck strategies.
 
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There is nice strategy with mahakam guards. You need to build deck for them with many buff up cards. So you use guards in first round (preferebly after some bluff cards for distraction), then you buff them up, and they stay for all three rounds with sometimes 15+ points. Ofcourse it can be easily contra-attacked with thunder or scorch, but even then this deck can go wild with all those buffing.
 
There is a super shooting combo with blue montain commando and dol blathanna archers, allowing for some 6 x -5 on the opponent side, which is huge. I think the Scoia'tael deck can become an awesome counter deck to any power strength building opponent. Basically, the trend here is to constantly lower the opponent total strength while growing your own little by little. In fact, I am sure that even with a deck countaining half the base total strength of the opposite deck, you can still win with scoia'tael.

Edit: The combo Eithne + Aglais is just insane. Tested it last night.
 
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So I've been looking at the Scoia'tael Deck-builder. I think I'm gonna go towards the 26 (25 + leader) card deck below.

LEADER (1 card)
Eithne - choose any card on board, copy and replay it.

MELEE (6 cards)
Gold - Geralt [12]; Ciri [8] - return to hand if you lose round; Regis [6] - When removed spawn gold higher vampire [10]
Silver - Vesemir [7] - muster other witchers; Lambert [6] - muster other witchers; Eskel [6] - muster other witchers
Bronze - Mahakam Defender [2] - keep on battlefield at end of each round

ARCHERS (0 cards)

SEIGE (3 cards)
Silver - Yarpen Zigrin [7] - keep on battlefield at end of round played
Bronze - 2 Dwarven Skimishers [4] - take 3 from opposing units, add +2 to this unit if other unit not destoryed

MOBILE (12 cards)
Gold - Agalis [7] - take non-gold special card from graveyard and play it
Bronze - 3 Vrihedd Brigade [7]; 3 Blue Mountain Commando [4] - Choose, copy and immediately play bronze card on battlefield; 2 Dol Blathanna Archer [2] - Take 5 from chosen enemy unit; 3 Hawker Healer [1] - +3 to all units in row

SPECIAL (4 cards)
Silver - Commanders Horn - Double all non-gold cards in row; Yaevinn [11] - take 2 strength from non-gold units in row & draw 1 card
Bronze - Clear Skies - remove weather effects; Fireball trap [1] - take 5 points from next non-gold unit, create to neophyes if unit destoryed

EDIT: This deck has two edges, you are one of them.

EDIT AGAIN: I'm not there yet, but my deck on the way to this is fairing pretty well thus far. Need to get Aglais & Regis next - come on kegs and scraps. Healers + Commandos + Eithne can kill in round 3.
 
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I win almost all of my games with Vrihedd Dragoons, units that triggers their ability (mainly Hawk healers and Blue Mountain Commando) and Thunderbolt Potion. All units placed in siege row. And Toruviel, Ciri and White Frost are relatively cheap cards that helps easliy outsmart opponent. My deck isn't finished yet but i feel like only really expensive decks / REDs can beat it.

Combos:
White Frost + Vriheed Officer = Meele and Ranged clear
Neophytes + Thunderbolt = powerful and (due to random spawn) hard to clear units. Combo executed in 1st or 3rd round depending on cards avaliable and opponent will of fight.
In 3rd round Johhny + Ciri = Geralt (most of the time)

Imo Dragoons should be 4 power, right now they're way too hard to clear.
 
I'm currently running an almost all dwarf deck, exceptions being the commandos, yaevinn, iorveth, geralt, and igni.

tons of synergies, especially with the commandos because of the nature of dwarfs. zoltan is amazing since he stays on each round as well and at gold 5.

barclay els is really the main guy in the deck, +1 to all dwarfs.

I run 3x Mahakam Defenders, yarpen zigrin, gold zoltan, 3x dwarven mercenaries, 3x dwarven skirmishers, 3x dwarven mercenaries, 2x commandos

the commandos are very synergistic with dwarves because dwarves have so many effects that take place when played.

the weakest card is probably the silver 10 strength vanilla dwarf because he adds no utility, I'll replace him when I get more cards.

and so far I've only used the starting leader card, which is great because a deck that's so flexible can really use a 2nd mulligan to deal more specifically with what threats your opponent plays.

the other cards I run are a clear weather, scorch, lacerate, and commander's horn.

best strategy would be to use your defenders intelligently. don't overbuff them just because they stay on board. it's best to use them to close a small gap if it would put you at a card disadvantage, since it ends up not being a disadvantage in board presence. Yarpen is greatest to use in the 2nd round. Barclay Els or Zoltan should always be the first card you play if you get either of them, since Barclay nets you more value the earlier he's used.
 
I just get rid of all useless cards, here's 1st version of my cheap Scoia'tael deck that I can show to the world:
http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/4644-snajper315-scoiatael-deck-cheap

Deck will be updated regularly, if you like it you can visit it every few days. I got 2 "problems" with it:
Toruviel doesn't activate when opponent run out of cards and game auto pass, bug or intended?
Anybody knows where can I find original f2p Scoia'tael deck? I'm curious how much scrap you need to craft it.

zoltan is amazing since he stays on each round as well and at gold 5
Didn't have chance to play him yet, but he seems to be really weak gold card. You get value out of card only if you play him 1st round. Also can't be buffed by Barclay Els. Only synergy you can get out of him is Dwarven Mecanary and +2 power isn't impressive.
 
I am still missing a lot of nice cards you can build deck around, but Scoia'tael are quickly becoming my favorite faction. Right now I am playing "swarm" deck with healers, dragoons and blue mountain commando, but I'm really looking forward to build some ambush/weather control.

So far I'm really impressed with Ciaran. Sometimes he can give you two card advantage and most of time it's atleast one card advantage in exchange for one round loss. After he did his job he is also really good target for Francesca's replacement.
 
http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/4673-fight-until-the-end

Here's the deck I'm trying to build toward. The idea is that you buff up your units and keep them around for as many rounds as possible.

This is what I currently have, and I'm already having some decent success with it.
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Of course there are downsides. The most common one being weather; however you can still buff them up again after the weather. Then there's Scorch; to counter this you should always try to spread your buffs around and keep them around the same level but not exactly the same, so that when Scorch is used only one is taken out and you don't lose too much power. Finally there is the Borkh Three Jaws which I believe is just a hard counter to this deck and there is no way around it...
 

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Currently I'm running the following:

http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/4695-scoiatael-blink

It has been doing well for me so far. The basic idea is all your units act as Special Cards allowing you to free up slots. You do run a trio of Lacerates which allows your Elven Mercenaries to always hit Lacerate taking some randomness out of your game. More importantly this allows you to use blink effects to play other Lacerates from your deck. You will burn through all 3 copies almost every match that you see a Mercenary. If your opponent is going "big" instead of "wide" you can use archers with blink effects to the same effect. Healers are the opposite of the Mercs, they sweep boost your board and can be blinked. Boosts given to your dwarves will carry on into the next round.

Eventually, Geralt will probably be replaced with Triss but I need a lot more scrap.
 
"Two Edges" - which is what I'm calling my build until I come up with something better (Yay Eithne reference!) - is pretty fun

LEADER
Eithne - choose any card on board, copy and replay it.

GOLD - 4
Geralt (original version), Ciri, Iorveth, Aglais
- Planning on replacing Geralt with Regis (for two round effect - essentially an uber cow ) or maybe Triss (may use bleeding effect twice in combo with Eithne).

SILVER - 6
Yarpen Zigren, Cow, Commander Horn, Scorch, Demitrium Bomb, Yaevinn
- Planning on replacing Cow with Toruviel
- Planning on replacing Yarpen with Aeromancy

BRONZE - 15
Hawker Healer x 3, Dol Blathana Archer x 3, Vrihedd Brigade x 3, Blue Mountain Commando x 2, Dwarven Skimisher x 1, Vrihedd Dargoon x 1, Clear Skies x 1, Frost x 1
- Planning on replacing 1 Vrihedd Brigade with 1 more Vrihedd Dargoon
- Planning on replacing Frost with 1 more Blue Mountain Commando (once I have Aeromancy)

It's a solid build focused on bleeding (which seems oppropriate given Scoia'tael guerrilla tactics from a lore perspective), trying to build up a card turn lead for the third round (Ciri & Yaevinn help with this) using healers effectively and trying to appropriately balance special cards with unit cards. Ethine can be used to great effect with hawker healers, Iorveth or Aglais (preferable). I like playing it because it is pretty powerful, but also adaptive. I'm not locked into any one strategy, but can adapt to multiple decks without moving cards. I would say I win two out of three hands with it. I've thought about adding a hawker support unit in place of the dwarven skirmisher unit, but feel like they get nuked at first site normally making them too easy to counter in most games.
 
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I think I actually have all the cards for this deck as well as Toureveil. I may give this a try this evening as it looks fun.
 
Is the Eithne explanation wrong then?

As in game it says Choose any unit on your side of the battlefield. Return it to your hand and immediately play it again.

That didn't sound that great tbh but you can chose any card on the board, copy and replay it? Francesca has it's uses but that sounds like it's better.
 
MoleWitcher;n6686892 said:
That didn't sound that great tbh but you can chose any card on the board, copy and replay it?

No you don't copy it, you just replay it, but for certain cards it's extremely powerful. It gives you the cards effect (if it has one) a second time. Thus, if you play Aglais and then Eithne, you get Aglais effect twice and thus can reuse any previously played special card twice. This means you could get to play Scorch or Commander Horn, or something like that 3 times. Other uses include combining with Iorveth for -6 from any card (including golds) twice, or getting to reuse a hawker healer cards effect.
 
Rawls;n6858040 said:
No you don't copy it, you just replay it, but for certain cards it's extremely powerful. It gives you the cards effect (if it has one) a second time. Thus, if you play Aglais and then Eithne, you get Aglais effect twice and thus can reuse any previously played special card twice. This means you could get to play Scorch or Commander Horn, or something like that 3 times. Other uses include combining with Iorveth for -6 from any card (including golds) twice, or getting to reuse a hawker healer cards effect.

Oh right i definitely want that then, is it just your side by the way? Sounds a very powerful card either way.
 
I do have some surprising success with a halfbaked combination of neophyte hordes + ambushes (and some means to nuke hostile little guys or NR clone candidates, before they can get boosted).

The deck is still very halfbaked (not a great success rate - though getting better), so I am reluctant about posting it in detail. But it's extremely amusing because I can really see how it causes serious mindfucks on the other side ("WTF is this stuff?").

- All the ambush cards that I have got (missing some of them), 1 DB Sapper to blip the Fireballs and DB Trappers, in case the opponent does not want to touch that row anymore (but I decided that I want the trap sprung)
- 2 Alzur's, 2 DB Archer, 1 Lacerate (means to kill nasty stuff)
- varying amount of Neophyte creation cards
- some Hawk Healers to blip the Vri Dragoons and for more points
- some cards that use or buff the Neophyte swarm (Vri Officer, Thunderbolt, Yen, Aelirenn, Command Horn)
- Ciri
- using Fran because I don't have any other leader.


Of course, my current success streak might be caused by my massive losing streak during the last few days - matchmaking might have downgraded me rapidly. I might be just matched against newbs. :p


Word of warning though: significantly less GGs than with more open and less obscure decks, I suppose. People seem to be quite pissed off a lot.
 
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Here's a dwarve deck I built wich is, for playing it, pretty strong. (I only play Scoia'tael and only this deck) Especially by starting the battle with Barclay Els -> Milva -> Barclay Els to boost every dwarve card I have by 2 STR.
I think I could improve it by changing the 2 Vrihedd Brigade with another Dwarve Defender and another Dwarve Guard.

What do you think of it and would you have advice to improve it?
 

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http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/4974-rough-draft-scoiatael

What i'm using so far, i seem to have a very successful time with it tbh. Generally it's exactly what the name says a rough draft, but i do have some ideas behind it. I want to use the cards i have to buff as much as possible and use the traps to limit the opposition ( and in some cases buff my rows)as much as possible.

While having silvers which either increase my card count or allow me to play them in multiple rounds and the neutral golds usually finish the job. Once i get more cards in terms of gold and silver i'll probably adapt it to have a more clear strategy and maybe change some of the bronze cards to fit that strategy.

Toruviel and Dol Blathanna Trapper ( especially when i play it after Yaevinn) have been extremely effective for me.

As a matter of urgency i really want Aeromancy, as a lot of my cards can be placed in what row i want so i can combine that with Yaevinn and weaken their row at the same time. As well as Eithne as i feel it would more useful to my deck than Francesca, the other gold and silvers are up in the air and i'll have a better idea what i want once i have a clearer strategy to build around.

But so far it's an effective deck and really fun change of pace from the Northern Realms deck i was using previously.
 
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