Strategic Withdrawal in New Season: Exploit or Legit?

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Hi, I‘m a fairly new player and I tried the new Season mode yesterday, and I was pretty dumbfounded by what I came across.
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Basically this player played Damien de la Tour, gets a copy of it, withdraws one, gains two more. Their next turn then they would use their whole turn to use the card’s order to refresh Withdrawal, withdraw one, play the same card (which gets its orders back) and get ANOTHER refresh. They could spend their entire turn withdrawing and replaying.

so, is this intended? I don’t see anyway to counter it because of how many cards get played in the turn....

Is this an exploit, or legitimate’cheesing’?
 
Whether CDPR intended this or not is unknown (probably not). Seasonal mode usually ends up with some quite OP combos. This month you've found it. People using this combo aren't exploiting a bug though.
 
Pretty much legit, just look at how NR plays out, getting 2 engines for the price of 1, gettin 2 Vysagota, 2 Dandelion etc.
The mode is pretty much an NR and NG Tier 1 format comparable to Foltest DJ.
 
Encountered this with Vilgeforz and Tyborg.

Suffice to say it is broken as shit and fun is the last thing that comes to mind.

Another one of these Seasonal Modes that just makes you want to throw your monitor through the window, unfortunately. Not as bad as some of the later ones but still just UGH.
 

Guest 4368268

Guest
Funny how NG (a faction that lacks favour in regular match-ups) always seems to come out on top in these seasonal modes
Anyways, I don't really care what's broken or not in seasonal other than the fact it might make certain reward book quests a bit of a pain. Only seasonals I played for the fun of it was ofc the mighty Blitz one and the very first one with the bear.
 
Ah ok, thanks for the responses, everyone... Guess I’ll just avoid these Seasonal things from now on...
 
Guess I’ll just avoid these Seasonal things from now on...
I'd say at least the Draconid (super short turns) and the Magic (specials played spawn a second copy to play) ones can be surprisingly fun and worth giving a shot. Some modes, like this season's apparently, do quickly turn into "play deck/faction X if you want to succeed" though.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I had heard about this, and when i actually faced one i was scared and considered forfeiting immediately, but i decided to keep trying. At least he was on blue coin so i wasnt going to lose CA R1, so i decided to save my leader charges (Eithne) for next rounds.

Obviously he went to R2 with leader ready and another Damien in hand. But he pushed R2 trying to go for 2-0, but my deck is filled with SC engines, so after a while my passive points were outdoing his additional 7pt Damien every turn (i was destroying the 1pt Damien with my control engines)

I used my leader ability with Schirru, but managed to win R2 still with 2 cards in hand. Then obliterated him R3 with over 40pts.

TL;DR: this strategy is broken but not unbeatable. I can think of 4 decks that may be able to beat it:

-mine (SC movement+engines)
-NR charges control
-MO deathwish (must be well piloted to counter Damiens)
-SK Dagur/GS (he wants to fill his board with Damiens, let him, then murder him with Haralds ability, Delirium, Hemdall and more)
 
I don’t see anyway to counter it because of how many cards get played in the turn....
My enslave/assimilate/no Damien deck seems to counter withdrawal/Damien decks.
Key to win is probably: win R1, bleed R2, win short R3.
 
@DRK3 I guess you were lucky the bugger didn't draw Vilgeforz with Damien, cause this is what happened to me R1 and on top of everything I was pretty much milled, while he had at least one more Damien and Vilgeforz in his hand.
 
Yep, combination with Tibor (or vilgeforz) mills your deck on top of adding a big body to the board.
If the NG player opens with double defender and plays smart enough to keep a copy of a defender and a copy of Damien, you can't do anything apart scorch/Igni
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If it's not pulled out of your deck
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Yeah, i guess the players who use this cheap tactic will probably go the mill route, i think the key to at least having a chance is to have ping engines that could destroy the 1pt spawned copy every turn, so the duplication doesnt get out of hand (only 1 Damien copy per turn + the played card)

Well, im done with seasonal anyhow, got my Caranthir reward tree complete, now i'll only return to seasonal if i come up with something interesting.
 
So, I got to the coveted cardback. Jesus was this 30 wins tedious...

A word of advice, if you want to be sort of a$$hole$ - if you want to actually punish SW - exit the game before a card's been played. What I've noticed is those wins does not count for OP, so this way you will be making him lose some more time, although giving him a free win, but honestly - why waste your time?
 
Yeah, i guess the players who use this cheap tactic will probably go the mill route, i think the key to at least having a chance is to have ping engines that could destroy the 1pt spawned copy every turn, so the duplication doesnt get out of hand (only 1 Damien copy per turn + the played card)

Well, im done with seasonal anyhow, got my Caranthir reward tree complete, now i'll only return to seasonal if i come up with something interesting.
Mill versions are bad, they will just get 2-0'd by the other variants and honestly it is not just Damian, people forget that (e.g.) Cahir getting a copy means that all boosts are effectively inverted and lose you points.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Mill versions are bad, they will just get 2-0'd by the other variants and honestly it is not just Damian, people forget that (e.g.) Cahir getting a copy means that all boosts are effectively inverted and lose you points.

I know, Cahir is also problematic in this mode. Saw a video, probably staged by friends, of Damien Cahir vs GS+ Morkvarg (new version), probably trying to break the game, and that thing got to +600 pts, on both sides.
 
The way I see it is, if CDPR want to run seasonal modes for a full month, then they can do emergency bans for the format. Otherwise, the mode is only fun to play for the first few hours. Their current strategy of reworking/not repeating less popular seasonals isn't really doing much to stop the problem where seasonal quickly devolves into a totally binary mode where you are limited to one of two decks if you want to get ahead in it.
 
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