Introduction
You might have guessed what this post is about from the title but I'm going to make a quick run-down of what I want to get your attention on with this post.
This thread is here to analyze / explain the difference between tech-cards and normal cards to then elaborate the "playing against experience" of the tech-cards.
Further it uses that info to elaborate why some of Nilfgaards mechanics (mainly on-demand disruption and reveal) are an unhealthy way to design the faction.
(Sounds all over the place I know but there is a TLDR at the end if you just want to read the most important stuff)
Tech-cards vs normal cards
First of all, we have to define what a tech-card is.
A tech-card is a card that you put into a deck to counter something specific the opponent wants to do.
Tech-cards rarely have any synergy with the rest of the deck and usually brings the deckpower down.
Good examples of tech-cards are:
Artifact removal: Pretty basic, if the enemy has artifacts these cards have really high value compared to their provision cost. If not you basically don't want them in your hand or if you are lucky you can use them to win a dry-pass R2.
Xavier: A very costly tech-card but a tech-card nonetheless. Again, if your opponent is playing a graveyard based deck, then this card can generate insane value while it's basically useless against anything else (unless you are weird and playing Ciri: Nova for some reason)
Locking cards: While not as clear, locks are also a type of tech-card but since a lock can almost always find something useful to hit it is not the most ideal example of a tech-card. These cards are good against engine based decks but rather "meh" against the likes of Woodland big boyz.
Weather removal: Same concept, powerful when it can remove something, useless anywhere else.
Ok so now we know what Tech-cards are, now let's try to see how exactly they work.
Tech-cards themselfes have absolutely no counterplay to them. They don't have order, they don't have a timer, they don't need setup. They just do stuff when played right away.
The "counterplay" in a sense is that the player using those cards is gimping their deck to include them. Because as explained before, those card have nigh to no synergy with the rest of the deck, nor are they useful in any way shape or form when they can't target anything.
Now what is the difference between a tech-card and let's say Madman Lugos.
For those who don't know the card it reads as follows:
Deal damage for twice the amount of damaged enemies
You might think that this behaves similar to tech-cards, in when there isn't anything damaged he is basically useless or potentially really high value if there are multiple damaged cards.
The difference here is that Lugos has synergy with the rest of the deck (at least I hope you built your deck around it). It just happened that the enemy may have played a boosting deck in which damaging stuff doesn't quite work out.
Adding to that, you can predict that there might be a Lugos coming out after seeing all the damaged units on the board, while a tech-card in unpredictable. Either he has artifact removal or he doesn't.
Lugos (and possibly the entire deck) got simply countered.
And lastly I would like to add that a cost of a tech-card is higher the more the card actually works out.
There are 2 factions that like to work with the graveyard. So the chance of Xavier eventually hitting something good was rather high, that is why his cost got increased by a fuck ton.
Also the cost of a tech-card is lower the less the impact the card has when used successfully.
Artifact removal tech-cards are dirt cheap. You can get one for 5 provisions but the difference here and Xavier is that:
a) Artifacts can be resurrected
b) Banishing the graveyard is removing an entire win-condition whereas destroying an artifact is weakening the win-condition.
"The playing against experience" of Tech-cards
As you might have guessed with my statement of no counterplay, the playing against experience of tech-cards is rather crap.
You can't do anything about it other than squeezing as much value as possible before the cards hits the battlefield. For example instantly playing a Ghoul to consume the Speartip before the enemy has the chance of playing Xavier.
The thing here is though, you can't really change these cards to have counterplay because then the cards would be REALLY bad. You already payed a good chunk of power to include them in your deck but then when the time comes for it to pay out the opponent simply removes it before it even gets the chance to do anything (for example giving Xavier an order ability).
The goal here is to make as few tech-cards as possible, so the gameplay doesn't consist of "whichever player gets more successful tech-cards off wins the game"
Problem of Nilfgaard
Nilfgaard has a lot of tech-cards in their arsenal which though don't share the same downsides of actual tech-cards. Let me elaborate.
I'm not here to complan about the RNG reveal cards like Arbaleste / Recruit / Imperial Golem / Tibor and whatnot. This is a whole other problem.
Instead I would like to bring cards such as Usurper / Letho of Gulet / Viper Witchers into the discussion.
Now what do these aforementioned cards do?
They are an on-demand instant disruption tool to what the enemy is trying to do.
For example Letho is REALLY good when facing leaders with high mulligans, Letho is nigh useless when facing stuff like Bran or Usurper.
Because these decks are designed so they don't need that much mulligans, so removing 1 mulligan doesn't hurt them.
Whereas decks like Eist rely on having some specific cards in hand, removing his mulligans hurts the deck a lot.
Seen from that angle Letho comes very close to being a tech-card, the only thing he has going for him is that he has the witcher tribe.
Same with Viper Witcher, these guys (apart from the RNG thing) are REALLY good against decks that like to thin their deck. So at the end after all the garbage is thinned the Viper Witchers are banising high value cards.
Again they behave like tech-cards but with the added effect of synergyzing with reveal and witcher decks AND still providing decent value against non-counter decks.
Usurper is good against hero-power sentric decks and nigh useless against the likes of Woodland.
Also the abundance of locking cards.
A lot of the disrupting tools of Nilfgaard come close to being tech-cards. Which leads to the faction being kind of RNG focused (even if you remove reveal completely).
Either Usurper hits something good or he doesn't
Either Letho is good or he isn't
The locks might work out or they just don't do anything
It is basically a gamble to play against the right deck for YOUR deck to actually work out. Neither player has any control over it, you can't outplay locks other than maybe bait them out, same with letho, either you think he has it and use up all mulligans or just try to get lucky and hope he didn't draw it.
Usurper might fuck over your win-condition or he might be a slight annoyance.
Everything is so hit or miss, which coupled with Reveal, makes the whole faction RNG dependant. Repairing it is also hard because as mentioned before, introducing an "order" ability to those will make the cards pretty bad.
IMO this is a really unhealthy way to start a faction because you have to see that the current set of cards we have in Gwent is the base card set, everything else builts upon it and if the foundation is broken everything built ontop of it is not in a good place.
TLDR
Tech-cards are very "hit and miss" cards where if they work out they are really great and if they don't they are basically useless.
Tech-cards themselfes don't have any counterplay and their ability is mostly tied to a deploy mechanic.
Tech-cards rarely have any synergy with the deck you are playing.
Nilfgaards disrupting tools come very close to the design of Tech-cards which makes the faction as a whole very "hit or miss", so in other words, RNG based.
Which IMO is not a good way to design a BASE card set. If we start off unhealthy it is going to stay unhealthy even with future card expansions.
The End
Ayyyy you made it!
Thanks for taking time and reading my post, I'm open for all discussion and/or critisism so don't hesitate to share you opinion!
Anyway, I wish you a good day, yes even to you, you weird Ciri: Nova player!
You might have guessed what this post is about from the title but I'm going to make a quick run-down of what I want to get your attention on with this post.
This thread is here to analyze / explain the difference between tech-cards and normal cards to then elaborate the "playing against experience" of the tech-cards.
Further it uses that info to elaborate why some of Nilfgaards mechanics (mainly on-demand disruption and reveal) are an unhealthy way to design the faction.
(Sounds all over the place I know but there is a TLDR at the end if you just want to read the most important stuff)
Tech-cards vs normal cards
First of all, we have to define what a tech-card is.
A tech-card is a card that you put into a deck to counter something specific the opponent wants to do.
Tech-cards rarely have any synergy with the rest of the deck and usually brings the deckpower down.
Good examples of tech-cards are:
Artifact removal: Pretty basic, if the enemy has artifacts these cards have really high value compared to their provision cost. If not you basically don't want them in your hand or if you are lucky you can use them to win a dry-pass R2.
Xavier: A very costly tech-card but a tech-card nonetheless. Again, if your opponent is playing a graveyard based deck, then this card can generate insane value while it's basically useless against anything else (unless you are weird and playing Ciri: Nova for some reason)
Locking cards: While not as clear, locks are also a type of tech-card but since a lock can almost always find something useful to hit it is not the most ideal example of a tech-card. These cards are good against engine based decks but rather "meh" against the likes of Woodland big boyz.
Weather removal: Same concept, powerful when it can remove something, useless anywhere else.
Ok so now we know what Tech-cards are, now let's try to see how exactly they work.
Tech-cards themselfes have absolutely no counterplay to them. They don't have order, they don't have a timer, they don't need setup. They just do stuff when played right away.
The "counterplay" in a sense is that the player using those cards is gimping their deck to include them. Because as explained before, those card have nigh to no synergy with the rest of the deck, nor are they useful in any way shape or form when they can't target anything.
Now what is the difference between a tech-card and let's say Madman Lugos.
For those who don't know the card it reads as follows:
Deal damage for twice the amount of damaged enemies
You might think that this behaves similar to tech-cards, in when there isn't anything damaged he is basically useless or potentially really high value if there are multiple damaged cards.
The difference here is that Lugos has synergy with the rest of the deck (at least I hope you built your deck around it). It just happened that the enemy may have played a boosting deck in which damaging stuff doesn't quite work out.
Adding to that, you can predict that there might be a Lugos coming out after seeing all the damaged units on the board, while a tech-card in unpredictable. Either he has artifact removal or he doesn't.
Lugos (and possibly the entire deck) got simply countered.
And lastly I would like to add that a cost of a tech-card is higher the more the card actually works out.
There are 2 factions that like to work with the graveyard. So the chance of Xavier eventually hitting something good was rather high, that is why his cost got increased by a fuck ton.
Also the cost of a tech-card is lower the less the impact the card has when used successfully.
Artifact removal tech-cards are dirt cheap. You can get one for 5 provisions but the difference here and Xavier is that:
a) Artifacts can be resurrected
b) Banishing the graveyard is removing an entire win-condition whereas destroying an artifact is weakening the win-condition.
"The playing against experience" of Tech-cards
As you might have guessed with my statement of no counterplay, the playing against experience of tech-cards is rather crap.
You can't do anything about it other than squeezing as much value as possible before the cards hits the battlefield. For example instantly playing a Ghoul to consume the Speartip before the enemy has the chance of playing Xavier.
The thing here is though, you can't really change these cards to have counterplay because then the cards would be REALLY bad. You already payed a good chunk of power to include them in your deck but then when the time comes for it to pay out the opponent simply removes it before it even gets the chance to do anything (for example giving Xavier an order ability).
The goal here is to make as few tech-cards as possible, so the gameplay doesn't consist of "whichever player gets more successful tech-cards off wins the game"
Problem of Nilfgaard
Nilfgaard has a lot of tech-cards in their arsenal which though don't share the same downsides of actual tech-cards. Let me elaborate.
I'm not here to complan about the RNG reveal cards like Arbaleste / Recruit / Imperial Golem / Tibor and whatnot. This is a whole other problem.
Instead I would like to bring cards such as Usurper / Letho of Gulet / Viper Witchers into the discussion.
Now what do these aforementioned cards do?
They are an on-demand instant disruption tool to what the enemy is trying to do.
For example Letho is REALLY good when facing leaders with high mulligans, Letho is nigh useless when facing stuff like Bran or Usurper.
Because these decks are designed so they don't need that much mulligans, so removing 1 mulligan doesn't hurt them.
Whereas decks like Eist rely on having some specific cards in hand, removing his mulligans hurts the deck a lot.
Seen from that angle Letho comes very close to being a tech-card, the only thing he has going for him is that he has the witcher tribe.
Same with Viper Witcher, these guys (apart from the RNG thing) are REALLY good against decks that like to thin their deck. So at the end after all the garbage is thinned the Viper Witchers are banising high value cards.
Again they behave like tech-cards but with the added effect of synergyzing with reveal and witcher decks AND still providing decent value against non-counter decks.
Usurper is good against hero-power sentric decks and nigh useless against the likes of Woodland.
Also the abundance of locking cards.
A lot of the disrupting tools of Nilfgaard come close to being tech-cards. Which leads to the faction being kind of RNG focused (even if you remove reveal completely).
Either Usurper hits something good or he doesn't
Either Letho is good or he isn't
The locks might work out or they just don't do anything
It is basically a gamble to play against the right deck for YOUR deck to actually work out. Neither player has any control over it, you can't outplay locks other than maybe bait them out, same with letho, either you think he has it and use up all mulligans or just try to get lucky and hope he didn't draw it.
Usurper might fuck over your win-condition or he might be a slight annoyance.
Everything is so hit or miss, which coupled with Reveal, makes the whole faction RNG dependant. Repairing it is also hard because as mentioned before, introducing an "order" ability to those will make the cards pretty bad.
IMO this is a really unhealthy way to start a faction because you have to see that the current set of cards we have in Gwent is the base card set, everything else builts upon it and if the foundation is broken everything built ontop of it is not in a good place.
TLDR
Tech-cards are very "hit and miss" cards where if they work out they are really great and if they don't they are basically useless.
Tech-cards themselfes don't have any counterplay and their ability is mostly tied to a deploy mechanic.
Tech-cards rarely have any synergy with the deck you are playing.
Nilfgaards disrupting tools come very close to the design of Tech-cards which makes the faction as a whole very "hit or miss", so in other words, RNG based.
Which IMO is not a good way to design a BASE card set. If we start off unhealthy it is going to stay unhealthy even with future card expansions.
The End
Ayyyy you made it!
Thanks for taking time and reading my post, I'm open for all discussion and/or critisism so don't hesitate to share you opinion!
Anyway, I wish you a good day, yes even to you, you weird Ciri: Nova player!
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