(I'm glad I stumbled upon this thread today. I was actually preparing a write-up about my impressions from Wild Hunt this patch so a lot of the following pieces might seem a bit weird, but it's since this was meant to be a separate thread before I found this current one.)
Last season I tried to construct my own deck based on the Wild Hunt (and Frost subsequentially) mechanics/synergies. Even before stepping into a ranked game I didn't find the end result satisfactory and decided to drop the idea. Since the (heavy admittedly) buffs the deck received with patch 9.1 I decided to give it another try and see how it plays out this time around. While the deck certainly showed potential at times, there was also a general feeling of the deck having blatant weaknesses, and a lot of its synergies (particularly the ones between the Wild Hunt units and Frost itself) being weak.
Admittedly I understand the inherent weaknesses of a weather deck (any engine heavy deck in general, and yes Frost is an engine). Relying on long rounds, getting bled on round 2 or the slow ramp up are all understandable parts of any deck that is engine focused. And I don't really care to focus on those parts since I believe these are all part of a fair and good game. But the issue I encountered that even in long, 10 card, rounds, Frost was outpointed by a wide variety of decks and didn't felt intimidating enough.
Before I transition myself from the intro to the actual discussion of Frost and Wild Hunt, let me just state a simple fact: I utterly lack the qualifications to make any of the claims I will make below. My opinions are derived from personal anecdotal evidence and your experience may vary. I am not a game or card designer, I am not a high ladder finish player, I am just a player that wants to see Wild Hunt become a little better. Now my ideas may be completely rubbish, or insanely broken, or straight up incorrect, but I continue to write this in the hopes of sparking a discussion that would lead to the betterment of the Frost/Wild Hunt archetype (if there is the need to do so).
Now let's march on forward and take a look at our main event for the day, the Wild Hunt. Below is a list of all Wild Hunt cards currently in the game, neatly packaged into what archetype I believe they best fit in.
Package A: Dominance (tall bois)
Imlerith. Imlerith's Wrath, Nithral, Naglfar's Taskmaster, WH Warrior, WH Hound, WH Navigator, WH Rider, Eredin
This package for the most part seems to work fine and as intended. Some of these cards are meant to be more introductory to the concept of Dominance, and as such are intentionally weaker than others (specifically WH Warrior and Navigator, but not to say that are bad cards). Nothing wrong with that of course. Now is probably a good time to address the connection between Dominance and Frost. This weather effect was changed to hit the highest unit in an attempt to incentivize its usage in Dominance heavy decks. The idea is that you use Frost to bring down enemy units so you can keep having the higher unit on the board. A novel idea in itself but one I do not believe works quite as intended. The cards that have seen competitive success that included the Dominance keyword the past couple of months were played in decks that tried to gain Dominance by playing their own high power units (see Barghest in Viy, Nithral, Hound and Taskmaster in Kelltullis), rather than relying on Frost. One possible explanation for this is that these effects trigger on your turn, while Frost ticks at the start of your opponent's turn, leading you to a loss of points in the meantime. Another thing to note is that, as I mentioned, Frost was swapped with Fog a long time ago now, which inadvertently made Frost worse for controlling the board. What do I mean by that? Let's say your opponent plays an 8 strength unit (with an order ability) into a Frosted row. You have Parasite in hand. Back when Frost hit the lowest unit you would use the Parasite and have Frost finish up the unit in question, whereas now you have to wait for Frost to hit once, then use the Parasite. That turn you missed is going to be enough for the opponent to trigger the Order ability. You might say this is a specific and exaggerated example but I felt the whole concept of lowest versus highest unit is worth talking about and that's why I'm mentioning it. Of course you can counter this argument by saying that (besides the Dominance synergy) Frost hitting the highest unit makes it less likely to lose value, cause Fog will overkill an 1 strength unit. After this long write up what is the conclusion for this package? Well, as you can see, my thoughts on this subject are all over the place, but I can't really say that I find something particularly faulty with most of the cards here. Just giving points to some of them for no reason is more likely to lead to problems than solve the current ones.
P.S. There is a card that I included in this package that I didn't directly address and it doesn't quite fit, but I urge you to be patient for now, we will get to him.
Package B: The Cool kids (frosty bois)
Eredin, Ard Gaeth, Winter Queen, Red Riders, WH Bruiser, Naglfar's Crew
This will surprise you but for the most part this package is quite solid aswell. Now your next line is going to be “if package B, which is the frost centered one, is mostly fine, then what is the problem with Wild Hunt?”. Dear reader, the devil hides in the detail. There is one card here that should have been far more intimidating than the others, an actual threat for the opponent and a real boost for the Wild Hunt, but he hasn't been nowhere near as impactful so far. Of course I'm talking for none other than Eredin. The final boss of The Witcher 3, has ended up being lackluster in Homecoming so far. Now that I have the introduction out of the way, I will throw you a cliffhanger and tell you that we are going to discuss Eredin further down the line, when I will present my idea for his rework.
I don't really have much to add for the non-Eredin cards of this package, I really like what all of them do, I think they are strong and provide solid foundation for the archetype in general.
Package C: Wildcards (aka can be played in a wide variety of archetypes)
Auberon King, Naglfar, Caranthir, Ge'els, The Apiarian Phantom, Aen Elle Conqueror
Just to clarify, Ge'els is included here just because you can just play him in a deck that includes Naglfar and Imlerith's Wrath. I wouldn't do it and I don't recommend anyone doing it, but theoretically it's possible. He is a better fit in the Frost package and it is there that you will more than likely see him.
The rest of the cards don't really need much introductions or explaining as to why they are here, since they have seen play in a wide variety of decks across Homecoming's history, and have been largely unchanged since their inclusion in the game (I'm still a bit sad that Caranthir can't copy neutrals but I have learnt to live with that). Before the White Frost buff I would have argued on Auberon getting back his 1 base strength, but now I'm a bit hesitant to do so.
Now that I have -somewhat- addressed every card with the Wild Hunt tag, let's move on to more exciting things, like the proposed card addition and reworks.
Card #1: Eredin Bréacc Glas
Before elaborating on the card itself, let me just say that the numbers here (and on the cards you will see later down the line) are changeable. I'm more interested in presenting the concept I thought of.
The clear inspiration behind this card was Unseen Elder. It's a bit weird to bring Elder as an example considering his archetype hasn't been the most successful lately, but I think Elder himself is a great example of how to implement a big scary card. He brings value on his own and can escalate to the point that can be scary enough that if left unchecked he can steal a game. And that's what I would envision Eredin to be doing aswell. His current version feels like a card that's kinda of in the middle of doing that. Particularly the Dominance part feels like a condition that shouldn't be there. He feels like he should be the one enabling Dominance by increase the Frost damage, and not requiring Dominance to empower himself. If you lack the means to gain Dominance nowadays, Eredin plays like a worse Avallac'h. I think my idea solves the “menacing” part of Eredin, because of the Devotion part. Going Devotion or not for current iterations of Wild Hunt are something for deckbuilders to think about, whereas we are currently pretending to be card designers. I think this card perfectly incentivizes sticking to Devotion, and (at least in my head) it makes sense, flavour wise, when Eredin is empowered since the deck only consists of Monsters. And thus, when Eredin is empowered, he keeps bringing his frosty aura. At least that's how I explain it in my head.
Card #2: Imlerith
Before saying anything I really wanna apologize to all my open beta brethren for the ptsd flashbacks the words Imlerith and Duel in the same card have inflicted upon you.
With this card I am trying to address two things that I believe this archetype is lacking. First is the “under Frost” condition, that was more prevalent in beta (in fact Imlerith himself had a very similar effect to this, but instead of dueling he was dealing 8 damage if I recall correctly).
Before moving on to the second point let me comment on the current Imlerith card. I actually don't have any problem with the card effect, it's just that I don't think it really fits Wild Hunt and that's one of the reasons I would suggest reworking current Imlerith and giving his effect to something that would evoke consume flavor.
Onto the second point. Imlerith's Wrath is one of the few removal cards that Monsters have. Now, I know all factions aren't created equally (and that's fair and fine) but Monsters do seem heavily lacking in that department. And the destruction effect of Imlerith's Wrath is tied to a card no deck that would really wanna play removal, would include. By making an Imlerith that is control oriented himself, you improve the chances Wrath will trigger its destroy condition. Having these cards available in Devotion decks help immensely pushing that idea aswell. Does it push it over the top? I couldn't really tell, I'm hoping that it doesn't cause in my opinion the better control cards (primary example being Korathi Heatwave) aren't available to Devotion decks.
P.S. I haven't forgotten the previous Imlerith iteration we used to have and I hope it returns a day in some form or another since it was really interesting.
Card #3: Caranthir
Closing up this segment of custom cards with another well known Wild Hunt character. This time tho I am not recommending a rework of the current card, but a completely new card since I believe current Caranthir may not be specifically working with Wild Hunt but his card is excellent, fits multiple archetypes and generally, it's great, I love it and it doesn't need to be touched.
With this card I think we maintain the flavour of Caranthir being a summoner, all the while taking advantage of the “Frost on the opposite row” mechanic which I find rather interesting.
Let's close by addressing the second elephant in the room. If you make Frost better (and/or weather in general) do you need to implement more weather counters in the game? Right now your only “real” counter to weather is playing your own Scepter of Storms following it up with Vaedermakar on the Ranged Row. Hardly a counter is it? That said, weather simply isn't what it used to be. It can be countered via gameplay means (ie row stacking, armoured units, shielded units). But if there comes a need to implement a counter I think we shouldn't head towards a binary interaction of a total weather clearance, but something more in terms of how Vaedarmakar operates. Basically a bronze unit, 4-5 provisions that reduces the durations of row effects for 1-2 turns.
In conclusion, I am certainly no expert on the matter, I just played some games with the deck, didn't quite enjoy the way it played and thought on sharing my opinions. Now you might say that I'm not helping make a case for myself to which I reply, good I want you to think for yourself whether you agree with my assessments/recommendations, not just blindly accept whatever I say.
Thank you very much for reading this far.