Skellige Deck Strategies

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So, Skellige players, what do you think about the oncoming patch? I believe we've been hit pretty hard. I don't know yet how useful the Shieldsmiths will be now, but their buff has been nerfed greatly. We lost chain Freya's res, ok, 9 points don't mean much, but Sigfrida's ability won't buff her sufficiently now.
Also, the DB upgrade makes Madman Lugos much less effective. Not only you must survive two rounds keeping him to use effectively, but he can be now destroyed by DB and players will keep it to the third round assuming you've got Lugos.
From the other side, Cerys is upped and Morkvarg will finally return when discarded, but what point in playing him as he can't be buffed much now?
What do you think about changing strategies?
 

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ladymacbeth94;n6980800 said:
So, Skellige players, what do you think about the oncoming patch? I believe we've been hit pretty hard. I don't know yet how useful the Shieldsmiths will be now, but their buff has been nerfed greatly. We lost chain Freya's res, ok, 9 points don't mean much, but Sigfrida's ability won't buff her sufficiently now.
Also, the DB upgrade makes Madman Lugos much less effective. Not only you must survive two rounds keeping him to use effectively, but he can be now destroyed by DB and players will keep it to the third round assuming you've got Lugos.
From the other side, Cerys is upped and Morkvarg will finally return when discarded, but what point in playing him as he can't be buffed much now?
What do you think about changing strategies?

One thing you missed: Discard decks can now be more effective, because the Clan An Craite Raider will both play and trigger discard bonuses when discarded. Which of course is good news for our Clan Dimun Pirate Captains and War Longships.
 
I'm still waiting to see a full discard deck that can compete correctly though. Sure it's better that they corrected a bug with the raiders, but it feels so underwhelming. Everything can kill a pirate captain at round one before you can discard a card to buff it, a single swipe kills all the war longship aligned, and obviously the base strength of units is extremely low as a whole, so single dbomb means that no matter what you're facing, the base strength of the enemy will probably be higher. Pirate captains are 1->3, war longship are 3->5, Raiders are 4->6, and the best is pirates with 6->8. The two golds we use for discard deck (birna bran and Ermion) actually gives -2 strength when together (or -4 against nR) so they can't be counted on. silver discarders are in the negative as well (give card advantage as a whole tho) when put together. Lugos' buff can be wiped out as well and his base strength is lower than a war longship by round 3.
The only saving grace is that no one but ST can use D-bomb twice, and that our whole ranged row is immune to fog. That's it, really. At least from what I'm seeing.
 
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ladymacbeth94;n6980800 said:
So, Skellige players, what do you think about the oncoming patch? I believe we've been hit pretty hard. I don't know yet how useful the Shieldsmiths will be now...

The shieldsmith nerf is probably one of the few this I didn't like about the patch. I think 3 instead of 4 would have been better, but now my Clan Tuirseach Skirmisher + Priestess of Freya combo is pretty much not an option anymore. Time to switch to Shieldmaidens, right?
 
Zefyris;n6996880 said:
I'm still waiting to see a full discard deck that can compete correctly though. Sure it's better that they corrected a bug with the raiders, but it feels so underwhelming. Everything can kill a pirate captain at round one before you can discard a card to buff it, a single swipe kills all the war longship aligned, and obviously the base strength of units is extremely low as a whole, so single dbomb means that no matter what you're facing, the base strength of the enemy will probably be higher. Pirate captains are 1->3, war longship are 3->5, Raiders are 4->6, and the best is pirates with 6->8. The two golds we use for discard deck (birna bran and Ermion) actually gives -2 strength when together (or -4 against nR) so they can't be counted on. silver discarders are in the negative as well (give card advantage as a whole tho) when put together. Lugos' buff can be wiped out as well and his base strength is lower than a war longship by round 3.
The only saving grace is that no one but ST can use D-bomb twice, and that our whole ranged row is immune to fog. That's it, really. At least from what I'm seeing.

This is a deck I use as my main deck right now and I have won the last 8-10 games in a row against all factions in play right now. My main gameplay tactic runs around throwing cards to gain card advantage especially with decoy and Ciri. I don't always end up even using Bran as I nearly always get all the cards I need.

http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/7012-cerys-and-guard-card-advantage
 
Thaurdol;n7008290 said:
This is a deck I use as my main deck right now and I have won the last 8-10 games in a row against all factions in play right now. My main gameplay tactic runs around throwing cards to gain card advantage especially with decoy and Ciri. I don't always end up even using Bran as I nearly always get all the cards I need.

http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/7012-ce...card-advantage
Sorry, I should have precised that when i was talking about full discard, I was talking about using the war longship and pirate captains (or at least one of the two as a core part of the strategy) Your deck looks a bit like mine except that I still run morkvarg+shieldsmith temporarily and that I don't use the guards any more since I don't have Cerys, so a few tweaks here and there but the "discard part" of your deck looks a lot similar. I don't have decoy and I use last wish instead of bran.
Nice example of deck tho, if I had cerys I would definitely try that kind of play.
 
Zefyris;n7008590 said:
Sorry, I should have precised that when i was talking about full discard, I was talking about using the war longship and pirate captains (or at least one of the two as a core part of the strategy) Your deck looks a bit like mine except that I still run morkvarg+shieldsmith temporarily and that I don't use the guards any more since I don't have Cerys, so a few tweaks here and there but the "discard part" of your deck looks a lot similar. I don't have decoy and I use last wish instead of bran.
Nice example of deck tho, if I had cerys I would definitely try that kind of play.

I tried warships and pirate captains, problem is that they are extremely weak and easy to kill off. Rarely you'd be able to play more than 1 of either before your opponent catches wind of your play and immediately counters it. Once those cards are gone your left with trying to go with pure strength but you dont have enough since you sacrificed some strong combos to get the captains or warships in your deck of 25. Any more cards than that and you risk not even finding a captain or warship in your starting cards.
 
Thaurdol;n7011020 said:
I tried warships and pirate captains, problem is that they are extremely weak and easy to kill off. Rarely you'd be able to play more than 1 of either before your opponent catches wind of your play and immediately counters it. Once those cards are gone your left with trying to go with pure strength but you dont have enough since you sacrificed some strong combos to get the captains or warships in your deck of 25. Any more cards than that and you risk not even finding a captain or warship in your starting cards.

Totally agree. It's about 4 out of 10 games when your captains and ships don't get removed. Absolutely not worth it as there's no chance to play a strong combo with such deck without them
 
Thaurdol;n7011020 said:
I tried warships and pirate captains, problem is that they are extremely weak and easy to kill off. Rarely you'd be able to play more than 1 of either before your opponent catches wind of your play and immediately counters it. Once those cards are gone your left with trying to go with pure strength but you dont have enough since you sacrificed some strong combos to get the captains or warships in your deck of 25. Any more cards than that and you risk not even finding a captain or warship in your starting cards.

Thaurdol;n7011020 said:
I tried warships and pirate captains, problem is that they are extremely weak and easy to kill off. Rarely you'd be able to play more than 1 of either before your opponent catches wind of your play and immediately counters it. Once those cards are gone your left with trying to go with pure strength but you dont have enough since you sacrificed some strong combos to get the captains or warships in your deck of 25. Any more cards than that and you risk not even finding a captain or warship in your starting cards.
Yes that's my problem with them too. From what I can think of, pirate captains enters a category of units that has low strength to begin with (tsuirseach axemen, Sarah, sigrdrifa, reinforced siege towers and hawker supports) that selfbuff everytime a certain thing happens. And of all of them they're the lowest in str. They're also the only one immune to weather except for sarah who is silver (and kind of forced to be immune anyway), which is super cool and really attractive but... That immunity against weather is mostly useful against monster weather right now. And monster weather usually have 2 or 3 WH warrior that can exactly poke one strength.
Also, they're the only units among the bronze ones that do not buff back itself when a dimeritium bomb is cast. Axemen do it because the dimeritium damaged buffed str around, and hawker supports do it because it's a spell. Pirate captain are naked after a dimeritium bomb.
Also, they're the only ones that do not react to opponent's doing. Axemen react to your opponent wounding you, hawker react to any spell the opponent is using just as much, sarah reacts to any weather cast by the opponent and sigrdrifa reacts to any resurection spell as well from the opponent.
And lastly, their strength buff is the only one among them that is bound to the silver/gold cards you have (minus the pirate, any discard card is silver+) whereas weather, specials, wounding effects of all kind, and rezs are not.

That type is also quite simmilar to the "spawn unit every times event X happens" btw since the result is the same (except they're not vulnerables to the same stuff), and on that point the arachas behemoth are 6str. I'm not asking for 6, but seriously, one?

Can't help but think that wit hall that said, they could be 2 str seriously. That would make them 4 by the third turn, definitely nothing especially impressive but suddenly able to survive lacerate during 1/3rd of the game.


As for the war longship, they're basically the type that "fire randomly when a certain event happens". The only units I can think of are the reinforced balista and nithral. Nithral is silver so lets leave him outside of the equation here. Reinforced balista are 4 str. That... makes a HUGE difference of survivability in this game. 3 and 4 don't have the same problem against lacerate, so aligning several reinforced ballista and several war longship isn't the same. Both are vulnerable to water, but reinforced balista only fire by one rather than two. However, tons of bronze cards can make that thing fire, not even counting henselt ability who can by itself wipe out the opposite side if made on a swarm of ban ard adapts for example, whereas even a gold card in skellige can only make the WL fire 3 times.
So yeah, the str seems a bit too low on both.
 
So, I thought it would be awesome to play Hjalmar, kill Undvik, use Udalryk to steal Undvik back and play him on my side, kill him again, then use Sigrdrifa to resurrect Undvik and kill him a third time for +30 on Hjalmar.

​Sadly, it only gives the buff on the first kill. :( sad day
 
Many Skellige players say that Lugos is trash after the patch and I thought that way too but continued to use him in order to check if this is really truth. It's not. If opponent's DB hasn't been used during the 2nd round, I start the 3rd considering he has it except it's a monster or NR promotion player. It works to start resurrecting without playing Lugos. There're not many cards left so the opponent will probably use the DB to skip a turn (and also thinking I don't have Lugos), if he's got it, before I play Lugos. As a result, Lugos looses about 3-5 points.
But most of the games go normally and I don't need to perform such trick. My Lugos was crushed with DB maybe just twice out of many-many games since the patch came out.
 

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bleagh;n7069980 said:
So, I thought it would be awesome to play Hjalmar, kill Undvik, use Udalryk to steal Undvik back and play him on my side, kill him again, then use Sigrdrifa to resurrect Undvik and kill him a third time for +30 on Hjalmar.

​Sadly, it only gives the buff on the first kill.
sad day

Good idea though, and you made me think about this.
 
I play Lugos, and my tctics is to reduced the cards of me and the opponent to 1 in Round 2. Then play Lugos round 3 with power from 18 to 22. In the most games is that the Win. There is not so much that can create so many Power with only 1 Card in round 3.
 
Lugos has been my only hope against weather decks, and still is. once the weather deck as practically nullified my defense i lay lugos down, wait it out 3 turns and then hit him with tremors. works extremely wll so long as i have both in my hand.
 
A little hint from a Skellige player ~

The leader card Harald the Cripple (causes 4 damage to wounded units) also works with weather effects.
If you manage to get your hand on Ragnarök, you will lower all units health to 1 and then you can use the leader to destroy all cards on the field.

*boom*
 
EmperorZorn;n7118430 said:
A little hint from a Skellige player ~

The leader card Harald the Cripple (causes 4 damage to wounded units) also works with weather effects.
If you manage to get your hand on Ragnarök, you will lower all units health to 1 and then you can use the leader to destroy all cards on the field.

*boom*
That sounds... cruel :p

I just recently crafted my Harald, but didn't manage to test him properly yet. Seems like a good card as long as I learn how to use it properly. Have to test that weather strategy :)

My opponent had Harald some time ago. Oh boy, I have never before been so afraid of Tremors :D
 
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I'm happy when I was clean all my opponents card and win them with their 0 point strength.

I'm Warrior of Skellige and I'm really want fighting on battlefield not use any exploit as other factions.
 
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Sunsibar;n7134750 said:
That sounds... cruel :p

I just recently crafted my Harald, but didn't manage to test him properly yet. Seems like a good card as long as I learn how to use it properly. Have to test that weather strategy :)

My opponent had Harald some time ago. Oh boy, I have never before been so afraid of Tremors :D


Hahaha, I can understand that ~

It's great to see someone else play the Skellige deck, keep up that Skellige love !
If you discover a new tactic, send me a raven ...or... whatever else they use at Skellige to deliver letters.





 
EmperorZorn;n7148750 said:
If you discover a new tactic, send me a raven ...or... whatever else they use at Skellige to deliver letters.
Sirens?

Skellige is probably my favorite deck at the moment. Seems to have numerous ways of how to play. I have graveyard/medic deck, self wound/war cry deck, weather proof/discard/pirate deck, Harald/war cry deck and discard deck. Two latest ones are still under investigations and more testing.

Weather proof hasn't been very victorious so far (but not terrible either), but it's fun to play against monsters with it :) Not really sure if they know that Skellige can handle weather pretty well.
 
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