Holy snap, this thread went a bit wild their... Lets try and pump the brakes a bit and remember 4RM3D and the rest of the mod team are good people doing there best and getting mad at them isn't helpful. Everyone is very passionate about the game and that's wonderful, but that doesn't mean we can't be civil.
Now on the subject of Usurper it seems like everyone's core issue is that you really can't do anything about him, right? Weather or not you think he is OP or just annoying to play against, the real problem is that from the word go, if you cue into Usurper his ability cannot be interacted with, right? Well, maybe rather then trying to argue about him being removed from the game or fundamentally changed to be a whole new leader we should instead be thinking about HOW he could be made more intractable, right? That way he still can serve his role in the meta of stopping over tuned leaders running wild, while still being fun to play against for allot of people who currently find him... Not.
Let me throw two ideas at you all and see if either of these might be something that could serve as the basic idea for getting around the problem with Usurper.
1. Make Damien de la Tour's ability a neutral one.
As a reminder Damien's ability is "Order: Refresh your Leader's ability. If it's disabled, enable it instead."
Right now he is an NG card and I don't want to just give away one of their unique abilities all willy nilly, but lets be honest, its not really that uniquely NG, is it? Given he is a servant of Anna Henrietta, reworking him to help Assimilate would allow you to move his ability to be a new neutral card without robbing NG of a playable gold and would let any faction have a card that unlocks a Usurper lock, but while also requiring a turn of set up that would keep it from just being a, "Include to make Usurper terrible" card.
Obviously their are some risks to just letting ANY leader power be refreshed, but if priced highly and given a weak body that order ability could be a tactical choice for decks willing to lose out on some provisions to insure they have a leader ability/get a chance to double down on it. Still, I get why people might be nervous about that, obviously its a pretty big ability to be made neutral and could lead to limited design space later down the line, so let me throw a second direction we could take this at you!
2. Make Usurpers leader ability: Order lock the opponents leader ability for the rest of the round. (Charge 1)
This would CERTAINLY require Usurper getting a provision boost, but think about it, Usurpers leader power, but limited to a single round, requiring the Usurper player to decide on weather they want to deny round 3 finishers OR bleed a hard round 2 while denying the opponent the use of their strongest ability! We still get the option to hard counter DJ or Foltest round 3 or to keep AQ down if she ever gets to powerful... But while making it more tactical and giving the other player a chance to maybe use their leader power in an inopportune moment just to insure they do still get it off.
Plus my boy Damien suddenly gets a use IN Usurper decks since right now he's an NG card who's least useful leader is in his own faction which is... Weird. Like if nothing else Usurper should get like a targeted lock or something if you use Damien since otherwise its just weird that he's in the only faction with a leader he cannot refresh... Sorry off topic.
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Now to be clear, I am NOT saying these two options are the best solutions to the problem of Usurper being an unpopular leader, obviously the first option would likely require figuring out a new ability for Damien so as not to just punish NG as well as figuring out a good new card to serve as a neutral 'refresh/unlock leader' without braking the game and/or making Usurper unplayable. And the second option would require rebalancing Usurper since locking another leader for 1 round is not worthy of having the lowest provision cap in the game. HOWEVER I do hope you can see my point that trying to argue about weather or not Usurper SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be in the game is not going to get us anywhere since he is here and he's not likely to go anywhere since their are allot of players, believe it or not, who do enjoy playing him and/or think he's important to keep around, but that doesn't mean we can't find a way of making him more intractable!
So rather then endlessly debating if Usurper is good or not... Why don't we all put our heads together and try and figure out something that might make him a bit more engaging? Weather it be by adding a card that can restore your leader ability or making a change to Usurper that will make him less binary WITHOUT just changing what he does all together.
I believe in you Gwent community! Too long have we tolerated weak, sniveling leaders, so now lets show them how we can make Nilfgaard great again! Let his dynasty reign for one thousand years and longer!