The Gwent decks really aren't balanced, are they?

[OnkelCannabia]

The Gwent decks really aren't balanced, are they?

Northern Realms: Nice faction ability (extra card) and a good amount of spies.

Nilfgaard: Faction ability is kinda meh, but spies galore and a lot of revive card. Best deck. Spam spies, revive, decoy, revive -> have your whole deck in your hand. Also nice leader bonus: Pull a card (=spy) from the enemies discard pile

Scoia'tael: All they really have is a little bit of agility. No spies and nothing to make up for it

Monsters: Muster can get you powerful close combat cards. But those are easy to counter with scorch, freeze and the dragon. It's nice to have, but can't make up for the lack of spies.


They way I see it Nilfgaard>NR>Monsters>Scoia'tel
Also, Spies > all


Spies really need to be balanced. With Medic and Decoy I've had matches were the first round was just spamming spies and decoying enemy spies and the second round was all about reviving spies. At the end we finally had almost our entire deck on the hand and could start playing.

 

[Setari]

They're balanced enough IMO.

Also scoiatel have a couple "summon teammate" cards in there too, Dwarven Skirmisher and the Brigand or something like that. I don't even recall getting more than 1 spy for my nilfgaardian deck though... Whereas in my NR deck I have Radovid and Djikstra, so idk. The game's pretty enjoyable as-is.

 

[OnkelCannabia]

They're balanced enough IMO.

Also scoiatel have a couple "summon teammate" cards in there too, Dwarven Skirmisher and the Brigand or something like that. I don't even recall getting more than 1 spy for my nilfgaardian deck though... Whereas in my NR deck I have Radovid and Djikstra, so idk. The game's pretty enjoyable as-is.

Maybe we have different decks. It sounds to me you are still missing some NG and NR cards. The Monster cards with the muster ability are much more powerful than the Scoia'tael version and even those can only compete with a NG or NR deck if they are really lucky. I really don't care if you can summon a bunch of dwarves with 3 damage from your deck when I have my entire deck on the hand in the first place and can spam out level 10 cards like its nothing. Any faction without spies has a huge disadvantage and I don't see Scoia'tael coming even close to having anything to bridge that gap.

 

[Cipher-Six]

Spies should only allow you to draw 1 card, not 2. 2 cards is silly powerful.

 

[Dejma93]

Northern realms deck is the strongest imo. It does not have as many healers as nilfgaard but there are way stronger units, especially cards with tight bond, lots of siege units combined with siegemaster leader card... However beating AI is quite easy with each deck, I think against other players it would be completely different.

 

[Liquidacid]

Northern realms deck is the strongest imo. It does not have as many healers as nilfgaard but there are way stronger units, especially cards with tight bond, lots of siege units combined with siegemaster leader card... However beating AI is quite easy with each deck, I think against other players it would be completely different.

Yeah but with the game currently is it would be completely unbalanced and broken for PVP. As a mini-game where journey around and collecting the cards is just as big of a part as playing against NPCs it works decently well. But if they want it to be a PVP game it would need some major changes to work well

 

[YpSan]

The only thing that makes it unbalanced is that there is too many strong cards that cant be affected by other cards.

Spies to me sometimes proved to be double edged swords, especialy in second or third round of match where i would end up pulling weaker cards than the spy I just gave to opponent. Also, the opponent might have no spies in their deck but if they have a decoy or two they can use yours to even the odds.

 

[Guest 3800752]

Spies should only allow you to draw 1 card, not 2. 2 cards is silly powerful.

That's bullshit. Except for Avallac'h, spies would give too much power to the opponent and most of the time, you'd only used the card drawn to overcome it. With only one card, using the spy wouldn't give a real advantage. Spies are fine actually.

The only thing that could probably balance it would be to limit the number of spies in deck : maybe 2 or 3.

 

[OnkelCannabia]

That's bullshit. Except for Avallac'h, spies would give too much power to the opponent and most of the time, you'd only used the card drawn to overcome it. With only one card, using the spy wouldn't give a real advantage. Spies are fine actually.

The only thing that could probably balance it would be to limit the number of spies in deck : maybe 2 or 3.

When all but one spy grant the enemy 7 or less and your weakest card (without special abilities that is) has 6 than there really isn't much drawback. Unless your deck is littered with weather cards, the drawback is minimal.

Pretty much any card in my Nilfgaard deck gives me a higher advantage than giving 7 to the enemy. The weakest card I have is Vesemir, but that is one card. So save for some serious bad luck, I'm gonna get a huge advantage of my spy. Horn makes up for the 7 or less points, decoy as well (Pull a healer, the dragon or another spy and play it again). The only time a spy would be a bad idea is if I draw to weather cards that I don't need or scorch when I have the strongest card. Even then, the next spies will surely grand me something powerful. I have one weather card each, clear weather, scorch and Vesemir as cards that can be a potential downgrade. I need to get two of these with a spy and then still have them to be useless in that particular situation. The odds of not getting a huge benefit out of my spies are tiny. In fact, I can't remember it happening even once.

I'd even place a spy if he granted the enemy 15 points. I don't care about those peanuts. Once I have my entire deck in my hand I am unstoppable. When the enemy has 10 cards to play and I have 30, there really isn't much competition. A bunch of Dwarven Skirmishers and Elven Medics don't mean a damn thing in that situation.


Edit: I really can't think of any reason why people would think that spies aren't OP other than that they don't have a powerful deck yet. Even granting 9 points to the enemy is a zero brainer for me. Especially when you can lose one round intentionally and just spam the enemy with spies. Hell, I'd play a 20 points spy if there was one.

 

[carlos1879]

Its the spies that make them unbalanced the monster deck has great potential for high numbers in close combat and the elven agility plus their many healers is useful but the sheer number of spies NR and NG get make them the easiest add in the NG's 3 medics and some decoys and pretty much every game devolves into who can spy the most. I try using scoia'tael or monsters for the challenge but 9/10 you get the other side calling spy after spy and even with a strong deck all you can do is pass and wait till the deluge of spies ends and it starts spamming scorch at you instead.

 

[Dibre]

NR is a stronger deck, specially if you pick Foltest with 2x Sieges attack. I never lost to Nilfgaardian deck, casualty i lost to Monster deck when i coudn't pick Frost Biting.

 

[KingKnee]

Card draw is definitely OP but so is hero cards, imho. 15s that can't be affected by anything? 10s that have heal? 0 with card draw= free 2 cards in one.

Still it was a fun game not meant to have perfect balance and it would need a major overhaul for PvP.

 

[mp84]

Fun game indeed... I pretty much found myself using the Temaria deck all the way through my first playthrough. Combine that with the Hero cards you'll eventually and the Siege Bonus leader ability it can become a really powerful deck for sure.

Doing my 2nd playthrough now and thinking of solely going with a Nilfgardian deck now see how that goes. It was rather a bit annoying though since you always start with the Temaria cards and have to slowly collect the other decks. Kind of wish the tutorial in the beginning of the game kind of gave ya a option of what starter deck would you like to start with and simply go from there.

 

[VelcroSnake]

Gwent is balanced to be a mini-game inside another single-player game, it is not balanced to be a competitive multiplayer game on its own.

 

[Dibre]

Gwent is balanced to be a mini-game inside another single-player game, it is not balanced to be a competitive multiplayer game on its own.

Yes, of course, GWENT is well balanced for a mini-game inside a single game. A masterpiece.

 

[Peanuckle]

I prefer the Monster deck. Pulling all those reinforcements in is just so much fun, plus the faction ability helps if you have to throw a round to make the AI lose his cards.

What I do is drop single cards as long as I can to trick the AI into dumping his good stuff, then I throw the round. Then I make up for my low card volume with the reinforcement cards. The 2X melee strength leader card is very good for this part. Once I got the vampires and arachas (nekkers and ghouls aren't worth it) I started winning almost every game.

Frost Bite can be rough, but the AI hardly ever plays that card in my experience, and I have a couple Clear cards in the deck just in case.

 

[riotamus]

Its the spies that make them unbalanced the monster deck has great potential for high numbers in close combat and the elven agility plus their many healers is useful but the sheer number of spies NR and NG get make them the easiest add in the NG's 3 medics and some decoys and pretty much every game devolves into who can spy the most. I try using scoia'tael or monsters for the challenge but 9/10 you get the other side calling spy after spy and even with a strong deck all you can do is pass and wait till the deluge of spies ends and it starts spamming scorch at you instead.

I think muster was supposed to counter spies. Spies have a weakness that the opponent can res them with medics and decoys (if he does - so can you, of course). With a guaranteed horn on melee and some clear weather (plus a really nice passive ability) monsters sound like they could be a solid deck in theory (can't properly test it myself yet since my monster deck is only half-full currently).

 

[ironhorse384]

Each deck has its own strengths and weaknesses, even the Scoia'tael deck with its medics can be pretty devestating particularly if you wait to pick up the spies the ai plays against you for the 2nd or 3rd round.


PS-the remake of the neutral cards is pretty cool.

 

[mp84]

Gwent is balanced to be a mini-game inside another single-player game, it is not balanced to be a competitive multiplayer game on its own.

Defiantly true I can only imagine the nerd raging that would happen if Gwent ever went as a stand alone multiplayer game, lol.

 

[OnkelCannabia]

Gwent is balanced to be a mini-game inside another single-player game, it is not balanced to be a competitive multiplayer game on its own.

Even in single player it isn't balance. My chance to win is much higher when I'm playing NR or NG. I don't think I have ever lost with my NG deck once it had reached a certain strength.

I think muster was supposed to counter spies. Spies have a weakness that the opponent can res them with medics and decoys (if he does - so can you, of course). With a guaranteed horn on melee and some clear weather (plus a really nice passive ability) monsters sound like they could be a solid deck in theory (can't properly test it myself yet since my monster deck is only half-full currently).

Muster is easy to counter though. Dragon, Scorch and Frost can hurt it immensely. You basically have 3 good sets with muster. An opponent can just wait till you play one of them and then start the spy spam. Then he has all kinds of ways to counter it. Or he forfeits the round after you have used two sets and wins the other matches.

In SP your monster deck might have a chance, but even then it is a bit of a gamble. When you play NG or NR and get to draw 85%-100% of your entire deck there is no gamble involved anymore. You have all the options you could dream of and just chose whatever fits the situation.

In a theoretical MP scenario you could counter monster so easily. Replace all your weather cards with frost and you are done. With a massive deck size thanks to spies NG/NR can play frost to their hearts content without making much of a sacrifice, while having a lot of clear weather cards in your deck means you lose out on everything else. Then there is still scorch and a resurrectable dragon. No chance!