SY - Lined Pockets - Why it is horrible and How to fix it?

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rrc

Forum veteran
When we have close to 30 leaders out of 42 which are unplayable, what is the point of creating a thread one one of them? - It is a valid question. While the rest of the leaders are not playable strictly because there are much better alternatives or the archetype they are supposed to support is weak and not having enough support, Lined Pockets is a unique leader in being horrible. I know that this is the very leader which broke SY and created such a toxic meta when it was released, competing with the SK Warriors, Detlaff, Foltest, etc.

What was it before the nerf? Order: Gain 1 coin. 5 Charges. Whenever you play a crime card, gain one Charge. The issue? Anyone who has remote knowledge of the game can see the nightmare this could have brought in. The charges didn't have a cap and you can play crime and get so many charges and then play in R3, Townfolks for big swings and use all the coins.

How it was murdered? Instead of gaining the Charges, the ability was changed to gain a Coin.

Why it is one of the most horrible leader abilities? To get the full use of the leader, you should add a lot of crime cards. And to make the more number of crime cards getting played useful (most of the times crimes only break even), you need to have intimidate engines on the board. Without the intimidate engines, playing more crimes is underwhelming and can't win any rounds. So, you need to add some 10 crimes, and some tutors and close to 10 intimidate engines. Now you are left with no cards that can use the coins you have gained. While there are couple of crime cards which don't gain coins, most crime cards gain coins. So, You need to have more crimes, more intimidate engines, and more fee cards and there is simply not enough slots. You can't have three unique types of cards. Most of the times, the coins go waste. So, overall, this is the most horrible leader, who may look good and playable on the first look, but in deed, you can't build a deck to make full use of this leader.

You need to have at least 5 to 6 spenders, you need to have Townsfolk who is the core cards of this leader, you need to have 8 to 10 crimes, you need to have 8 to 10 intimidate engines, you need to have some power plays, tutors, thinning card etc. Which is simply impossible to build. Why do you think Congregate is so powerful? Congregate doesn't care about spenders. It only concentrates on Crimes (and mostly non-profit crimes) and intimidate engines. That is the only reason Congregate is viable, it completely removes one suite of cards needed by other leaders. (BTW, whoever first thought of the congregate going full crime and intimidate with no-or-almost-no-spenders is a genius).

How to fix it? It should be reverted with some changes. On top of my head:
Order. Gain 1 coin. Whenever you play a crime, gain one charge. At the start of a new round, if coins and charges together is more than 9, reduce the charges to cap it at 9. (So that if you have 8 charges and 9 coins in your bank and the the end of R1 or R2, when going to R2 or R3, you will have only 5 charges and 4 coins in the bank)

This change can help this leader ability to concentrate more on spenders and care less about the intimidate engines. Since you can gain charges and use it instead of the coins. It can help the leader to optimize around Townsfolk, (and Igor may be), TheCardWhichBoostsByCoinsGained and can use crimes like Pickpocket, Eavesdrop without the worry of overflowing the coins and making the leader anti-synergetic with profit-crimes.

[PS: When I say it is one of the most horrible leader abilities, I don't mean it is the worst. That spot is reserved for Invigorate. Any thread or post about most horrible leader is for the second spot.]
 
If they want to fix it - keep the active the same but the passive is - whenever you play a crime, damage a random enemy by 1. It brings more damage to your crimes which thematically fits 'Crimes' and gives you more reach. They can also change the active as getting 1 coin per crime is only good with townsfolk which doesn't fit the theme. They can make it spawn the 4p 4power crime engine. Or if you want to be generous - spawns and plays Safecracker.
 
I'm glad I am not the only one having issues making a successful Lined Pocket Crimes deck. I love the Crime arch type and have been trying to make it work. I like both of you guys ideas. I've ran into the issue of not having enough spenders as well.
 
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rrc

Forum veteran
I'm glad I am not the only one having issues making a successful Lined Pocket Crimes deck. I love the Crime arch type and have been trying to make it work. I like both of you guys ideas. I've ran into the issue of not having enough spenders as well.
I have tried many times and just fail miserably in even creating a cohesive deck which can use the leader ability fully. Every time I try to create a deck, I just face this Crime <-> Intimate <-> Spender issue. I had given up on this leader.
 
Order. Gain 1 coin. Whenever you play a crime, gain one charge. At the start of a new round, if coins and charges together is more than 9, reduce the charges to cap it at 9.

Why not just say "Maximum 9 charges"? what's the point of writing this convoluted condition?
Anyway, i think Syndicate has too similar leaders, it feels like every time they want to add a leader ability, they feel compelled to add one for every faction, which results in bad ideas.

Also another factor that made the old version of this ability very powerful was Summoning Circle, without that tool i don't think the old version would be very powerful in todays meta.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
Why not just say "Maximum 9 charges"? what's the point of writing this convoluted condition?
"Maximum 9 charges" will allow 13 point carry-over which is just bloody insane (almost like how it was before). The player can have 9 charges and 9 coins and upon passing and entering the next round, they will have 9 charges and 4 coins. That is why I made that convoluted condition whose sole purpose is not having 9 charges plain condition.
 
"Maximum 9 charges" will allow 13 point carry-over which is just bloody insane (almost like how it was before). The player can have 9 charges and 9 coins and upon passing and entering the next round, they will have 9 charges and 4 coins. That is why I made that convoluted condition whose sole purpose is not having 9 charges plain condition.

Ok i didn't know what you were referring to by saying "cap it at 9". So beside being inelegant and convoluted it's also a bit ambiguous.
Anyway, it's not insane at all, since it's not 13 carryover, it's 4, unless you count every leader ability that's not used in round 1 as carryover. Plus the leader starts with a penalty to begin with.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Lined pockets is the only leader ability i have never ever used, and note i got 38/42 leaders mastery, so im not exactly one of those players that just plays a handful of leaders.

I developed an unbreakable grudge against it obviously because of the Dj Townsfolk meta, i happened to be on vacation when he was released and when i came back to Gwent, that atrocity was already fully optimized and everywhere...

However, nowadays, i dont find it particularly unbalanced - not OP like it was on release, nor so weak, like rrc claims. It obviously synergizes best with townsfolk/Igor and Bincy, which limits the ways it can be played at optimum level, but then again almost all leaders have this condition - if you want to play Whoreson senior, its best played at Congregate crimes, and that deck is only so good compared to Lined Pockets because its focused on removal - you cant play anything 4/5 that is insta removed, just like Nature's Gift or NG Tactics.

Also, lets not forget Gord, which is a must on any SY/ST special heavy deck and is criminally (pun intended) undercosted.
 
To my mind lined pocket is a medium-tier deck. As already mentioned a powerful deck should include three types of cards: Spenders, Intimidaters and of course crimes. The main goal is to double benefit from those coins via cards like Bincy and villager.
Additionally cards like the new reworked Halfling Safecracker are an auto include since they benefit from crimes twice.
The spenders I use are Jacque, Igor, Sir Skewertooth, Whoreson's Freak Show, Bloody Good Friends, Bloody Good Fun

Reasoable alternatives I had in this deck are whoreson senior (but often not so good transformable units and first senior removed) and The Sausage Maker (Intimidate + Spender. But 5 coins for taking 5 points maybe to next round has a questionable value).

As meta shows that this deck is underperforming I have the following ideas:
- One additional coin charge
- Small provision buff (maybe to 17)
- Resilence of sausage maker should cost only 4
 

rrc

Forum veteran
However, nowadays, i dont find it particularly unbalanced - not OP like it was on release, nor so weak, like rrc claims. It obviously synergizes best with townsfolk/Igor and Bincy, which limits the ways it can be played at optimum level, but then again almost all leaders have this condition - if you want to play Whoreson senior, its best played at Congregate crimes, and that deck is only so good compared to Lined Pockets because its focused on removal - you cant play anything 4/5 that is insta removed, just like Nature's Gift or NG Tactics.
I am not claiming it is weak. It is awkward to build a good deck with since most of the crimes give coins and the +1 coin will require you to have spender on board all the times (and it is near impossible with control heavy meta we have) and if you only play crimes without intimidate engines, it is super underwhelming. So, the requirement of having more crimes, more intimate engines and then more spenders (and passive engines like Bincy and Townfolks) is near impossible to build a good deck with.

If you take Off The Books, you have control over the coins you get and you just just put more profit+fee cards along with tribute cards to take advantage of that leader (even then it is weak), but not awkward to build a deck with.
If you take Blood Money, you can just pack bounty+removal and few profit+fee cards.
Jackpot, the same profit+fee cards with Bincy and something else.
HC, Hoard with few profit+spender
Cobgregation, Crime+intimidate
PiratesClove: Profit+Spender with Bincy
Linked Pockets: Crime+Intimidate+Spender+Townsfolk/Bincy
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I am not claiming it is weak. It is awkward to build a good deck with since most of the crimes give coins and the +1 coin will require you to have spender on board all the times (and it is near impossible with control heavy meta we have) and if you only play crimes without intimidate engines, it is super underwhelming. So, the requirement of having more crimes, more intimate engines and then more spenders (and passive engines like Bincy and Townfolks) is near impossible to build a good deck with.

If you take Off The Books, you have control over the coins you get and you just just put more profit+fee cards along with tribute cards to take advantage of that leader (even then it is weak), but not awkward to build a deck with.
If you take Blood Money, you can just pack bounty+removal and few profit+fee cards.
Jackpot, the same profit+fee cards with Bincy and something else.
HC, Hoard with few profit+spender
Cobgregation, Crime+intimidate
PiratesClove: Profit+Spender with Bincy
Linked Pockets: Crime+Intimidate+Spender+Townsfolk/Bincy

Im sorry, im still not convinced. Obviously i cant say i know for sure, as i havent even tried Lined Pockets, but getting +1 coin for each crime doesnt feel that awkward without a spender all the times. Why?

You say a lot of crimes already give coins, but if you look at the crimes typically used on Crime congregate decks - they dont. You can use those same 4/5p damage, and get an extra coin with each, then you just need a spender at the end, or on earlier rounds you can leave them as carryover.

On the other hand, i've tried some control SY decks, with and without blood money, and i think managing coins and not wasting them because of the 9 cap is way harder than it is with any lined pockets deck.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
Im sorry, im still not convinced. Obviously i cant say i know for sure, as i havent even tried Lined Pockets, but getting +1 coin for each crime doesnt feel that awkward without a spender all the times. Why?
If you only want to use the crimes used by congregation, that is control or spawn, then Congregation is much better since it doesn't care about spender. And with all the support with Firesworm, it is much better choice.

Crimes like Pickpocket, Eavesdrop, Slader, Swindle, Gain3CoinsAndDoSomethingCrimes when they give +1 each, unless you have a living spender, it is not possible to manage it. And playing a lot of crimes without intimidate is also quite weak. I really wish you give this leader a try to understand what I am telling here.

You say a lot of crimes already give coins, but if you look at the crimes typically used on Crime congregate decks - they dont. You can use those same 4/5p damage, and get an extra coin with each, then you just need a spender at the end, or on earlier rounds you can leave them as carryover.
Again, if we are only going to play Assault, BloodyGoodFun, Poison, Brawl etc, there is not any point you put on the board to win the round. All those crimes our worth only when there are intimidate engines on board. Also, you can't use the Spawn crimes here as you are not guaranteed to have a firesworm token. You can't use WholesomeSenior as you can't guarantee bodies to transform. etc. So, simply replacing the leader will not work.

I know you love creating homemade decks. Take this as a challenge and try to build a deck with this leader. I believe you will understand better when you build the deck and play it.
 
Instead we SY players got the worst new leader ability (Pirate's Cove).
Passiflora is also dead now, the nerf was tremendously impacting.
 
Honest question. I see a lot of talk about having to have crime <> intimidate <> spender. Why not try crime <> intimidate <> hoard or even a mixture of hoard and spender?

You mix hoard and spender and you can utilize two thinning bronzes, one is hoard 4 to summon its copy, the other is spend one coin to summon its copy.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
If you only want to use the crimes used by congregation, that is control or spawn, then Congregation is much better since it doesn't care about spender. And with all the support with Firesworm, it is much better choice.

Crimes like Pickpocket, Eavesdrop, Slader, Swindle, Gain3CoinsAndDoSomethingCrimes when they give +1 each, unless you have a living spender, it is not possible to manage it. And playing a lot of crimes without intimidate is also quite weak. I really wish you give this leader a try to understand what I am telling here.


Again, if we are only going to play Assault, BloodyGoodFun, Poison, Brawl etc, there is not any point you put on the board to win the round. All those crimes our worth only when there are intimidate engines on board. Also, you can't use the Spawn crimes here as you are not guaranteed to have a firesworm token. You can't use WholesomeSenior as you can't guarantee bodies to transform. etc. So, simply replacing the leader will not work.

I know you love creating homemade decks. Take this as a challenge and try to build a deck with this leader. I believe you will understand better when you build the deck and play it.

What i dont get is why you're implying Congregate Crimes is better at putting Intimidate engines on the board than Lined Pockets, with the exception of whoreson sr. and his transformed goons, usually on R2/3, you can use the same intimidate engine plays on a Lined Pockets crime deck: on R1, the portal with those 2 intimidate mutants, the novigrad justice+ an intimidate dwarf.

Im sorry if i dont take your challenge, its for 2 reasons: currently not playing Gwent; and i dont want to break the 0/100 on the Lined Pockets ability, its a weird source of pride, maybe if i ever finish mastery of all other abilities i will try this last one, until then...
 
I am not claiming it is weak. It is awkward to build a good deck with since most of the crimes give coins and the +1 coin will require you to have spender on board all the times (and it is near impossible with control heavy meta we have) and if you only play crimes without intimidate engines, it is super underwhelming. So, the requirement of having more crimes, more intimate engines and then more spenders (and passive engines like Bincy and Townfolks) is near impossible to build a good deck with.

If you take Off The Books, you have control over the coins you get and you just just put more profit+fee cards along with tribute cards to take advantage of that leader (even then it is weak), but not awkward to build a deck with.
If you take Blood Money, you can just pack bounty+removal and few profit+fee cards.
Jackpot, the same profit+fee cards with Bincy and something else.
HC, Hoard with few profit+spender
Cobgregation, Crime+intimidate
PiratesClove: Profit+Spender with Bincy
Linked Pockets: Crime+Intimidate+Spender+Townsfolk/Bincy

To my mind the best idea to build a competitive lined pocket deck is not to exaggerate with Intimdate units.
In my current deck I only use Sir Skewertooth, the two Halfling Safecrackers, Payroll Specialist and 1 other Crownsplitter (5 provisions). The main value creation machine of this deck is obviously Bincy and the villagers. Having double use of crimes via intimidate is kind of nice but definitely not the main value creator.
It´s much more important that you can spend your coins efficiently than to double benefit from crimes.
 
When we have close to 30 leaders out of 42 which are unplayable, what is the point of creating a thread one one of them? - It is a valid question. While the rest of the leaders are not playable strictly because there are much better alternatives or the archetype they are supposed to support is weak and not having enough support, Lined Pockets is a unique leader in being horrible. I know that this is the very leader which broke SY and created such a toxic meta when it was released, competing with the SK Warriors, Detlaff, Foltest, etc.

What was it before the nerf? Order: Gain 1 coin. 5 Charges. Whenever you play a crime card, gain one Charge. The issue? Anyone who has remote knowledge of the game can see the nightmare this could have brought in. The charges didn't have a cap and you can play crime and get so many charges and then play in R3, Townfolks for big swings and use all the coins.

How it was murdered? Instead of gaining the Charges, the ability was changed to gain a Coin.

Why it is one of the most horrible leader abilities? To get the full use of the leader, you should add a lot of crime cards. And to make the more number of crime cards getting played useful (most of the times crimes only break even), you need to have intimidate engines on the board. Without the intimidate engines, playing more crimes is underwhelming and can't win any rounds. So, you need to add some 10 crimes, and some tutors and close to 10 intimidate engines. Now you are left with no cards that can use the coins you have gained. While there are couple of crime cards which don't gain coins, most crime cards gain coins. So, You need to have more crimes, more intimidate engines, and more fee cards and there is simply not enough slots. You can't have three unique types of cards. Most of the times, the coins go waste. So, overall, this is the most horrible leader, who may look good and playable on the first look, but in deed, you can't build a deck to make full use of this leader.

You need to have at least 5 to 6 spenders, you need to have Townsfolk who is the core cards of this leader, you need to have 8 to 10 crimes, you need to have 8 to 10 intimidate engines, you need to have some power plays, tutors, thinning card etc. Which is simply impossible to build. Why do you think Congregate is so powerful? Congregate doesn't care about spenders. It only concentrates on Crimes (and mostly non-profit crimes) and intimidate engines. That is the only reason Congregate is viable, it completely removes one suite of cards needed by other leaders. (BTW, whoever first thought of the congregate going full crime and intimidate with no-or-almost-no-spenders is a genius).

How to fix it? It should be reverted with some changes. On top of my head:
Order. Gain 1 coin. Whenever you play a crime, gain one charge. At the start of a new round, if coins and charges together is more than 9, reduce the charges to cap it at 9. (So that if you have 8 charges and 9 coins in your bank and the the end of R1 or R2, when going to R2 or R3, you will have only 5 charges and 4 coins in the bank)

This change can help this leader ability to concentrate more on spenders and care less about the intimidate engines. Since you can gain charges and use it instead of the coins. It can help the leader to optimize around Townsfolk, (and Igor may be), TheCardWhichBoostsByCoinsGained and can use crimes like Pickpocket, Eavesdrop without the worry of overflowing the coins and making the leader anti-synergetic with profit-crimes.

[PS: When I say it is one of the most horrible leader abilities, I don't mean it is the worst. That spot is reserved for Invigorate. Any thread or post about most horrible leader is for the second spot.]
this is better:
Every round start gain 2 coin
Order,fee 1:boost an allied unit by 1
Whenever you play a crime card gain 1 coin.
 
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"Maximum 9 charges" will allow 13 point carry-over which is just bloody insane (almost like how it was before). The player can have 9 charges and 9 coins and upon passing and entering the next round, they will have 9 charges and 4 coins. That is why I made that convoluted condition whose sole purpose is not having 9 charges plain condition.
To be fair with your thought process you start counting (almost) the entire leader ability as carryover and with SY's usual up to 4 coin carry over you would cap it at a 5 point leader ability during Round 3, which is abysmal.
To be fair Leaders these days play for roughly 9-10 points, give and take some for synergies and consistencies.
The issue would be that you could spend several charges early and then still carry over a "regular" leader, to combat that I would suggest just instead putting a cap to the total number of charges that can be generated in a game.

My suggestion:
Order: Gain 1 Coin.
Charges: 5
Whenever you play a Crime, gain 1 charge.
You cannot add more than (4) 5 charges with this ability.

This way you incentivize playing Crimes in early rounds to stack charges as the original Djikstra did and do not allow limitless stacking in the leader ability for later rounds.
Given how finisher heavy the game is your suggestion would severely cripple the ability, given that you would force the player to immediately spend most of the coins to get at the very least more value from your leader than 5 coins in Round 3.
 
Since it's the final Leader ability contract I need to finish I recently tried a lot of Decks and Archetypes with this Leader and I agree with OP that everything apart from Townsfolk (which is currently totally off Meta especially considering that everyone bleeds the living hell out of you round 2 if you couldn't win the first one) works a hell of a lot better with the other SY Leader Skills.

It really took me a while to figure out a Deck that ends up having a somewhat decent win rate, I did end up going for a Ciri Nova Tamara Bounty Deck and after playing it for a while I think Bounty is probably the best way to play that Leader in the moment especially with Nova and the strategy to heavily bleed round 2.
 
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