The problem with gold cards that have continous effects.

[Xifortis]

The problem with gold cards that have continous effects.

I love Gwent, I think it's the best online card game that I've played and it nails balance pretty well in most aspects in my opinion. But I genuinely do not understand the logic that went behind gold cards like Yenever and Villentretenmerth where, if you play them after winning the first round somehow. ( and there's plenty of tactics to bruteforce a first round ) you pretty much guarantee yourself the game. The only 2 ways to deal with cards like those that I can see are to :

-Give up the round, hope to win the second one ( Cards like this are usually played in the second round where this is not an option )
-Use 2-3 powerful cards to neutralize a single gold card ( Still a huge net-gain for the person who played the gold card )

Honestly, the solution I feel is to limit persistent continuous effects on cards that are bronze and silver, so that the opposite player can still interact with them. Gold cards should stick to being big strength sticks or do something really cool when they are dropped onto the field or die. Or otherwise some other single effect. Having cards that have powerful effects that hit the opponent round after round but can't be interacted with unless you spend multiple cards on them in a game that's down to it's core all about card management boggles my mind.

That, or you implement powerful removal that nukes even gold cards, but luigi said on a stream that he dislikes powerful removal like that. In any case, I hope members of the forum community can share their thoughts on this, as I am always looking to get better.

 

[karajohn]

Kinda agree. Yenefer is pretty OP in my opinion

 

[Hedlesss]

Indeed, outside of other Golden cards, specifically Legendaries such as Vernon Roche, Triss, Iorveth, there is no way to directly remove them. So you are forced to Dim Bomb/ Shackles, then Lock/ destroy the unit, using 2 cards, to counter the opponents 1

 

[Fimbulthrym]

That, or you implement powerful removal that nukes even gold cards

You already have that for some Goldcards: Roche, Iorweth, Tris. Dijsktra can make any gold vunerable.

I find gold cards with a heavy impact after playing much more annoying then the continous ones, because you can play around them much better.

 

[zantclick]

It's an interesting conundrum. I think Yennefer should probably be looked at or at least receive a health reduction to be more easily removed by other golds since there's no loss in playing her - but most golds even like Villentretenmerth are actually a double-edged sword. I actually like facing down a cocky Radovid who drops the 7-turned-9 str dragon totally prepared to win the round and ensures he plays cheap cards to remain under his strike range. In those cases I take advantage of anything beneficial (such as Swallows, Thunderbolts, Commander's Horn, Spies, e.t.c.) to buff up their board and make them get hit instead of my guys. It's totally unexpected and screws up their game plan completely because it's hard to play a Villen hand without preparing cheap units for it. Besides, it doesn't reactivate after the initial 2-turn explosion. I think for the most part, they're fine, just Yennefer's problematic (although she can also be played around with simple buffs and rearrangement of power on a field)

 

[Xifortis]

I find gold cards with a heavy impact after playing much more annoying then the continous ones, because you can play around them much better.

From the cards you mentioned only Iorveth can be relied on to threaten a good number of gold cards, besides from the cards you mentioned only Triss is neutral and could fit in any deck. A card like Yen is always a net positive. You either get given the round cheaply cause the enemy is forced to cut his losses, he gimps his entire strategy playing around Yen while you keep doing your thing, or he has to dramatically overspend valuable cards to get rid of your 1 card. Yen is always a net positive play almost all of the time, and this problem lies in her being practically immune to conventional removal and applies constant pressure.

I think for the most part, they're fine, just Yennefer's problematic (although she can also be played around with simple buffs and rearrangement of power on a field)

I found your post and arguments pretty interesting and I agree in part. I will concede Villentretenmerth is counterable but only if you play a deck that allows you to do that in a realistic sense. You mentioned Nilfgaard because they have alot of manipulative cards and ways to stretch out time. But a good portion of the decks do not have that luxury, I think some cards should be strong against certain builds but a card that pretty much directly wrecks a deck that revoles around playing strong minions or buffing them, and have no way to stretch out the 2 turns or play low strength minions to counter villentretenmerth pretty much just auto-lose a round Villen gets dropped. Or, have to spend 2-3 ( realistically 3 considering Villen's 7 strength ) to get rid of him, which will definatly make them lose the game.

Playing against a random deck that just threw Yenever cause she's so strong, you can play around. Considering she's only 200 scraps and cause there's no downside to playing her she is in almost every deck. However, in a tuned deck with Yen in mind simply playing around her is not really an option. That person will just sit back and throw out cards that manipulate the strength of your minions for maximum Yen damage while you scramble your entire strategy just to ladder the strength of your minions in a way Yen doesn't get to zap multiple minions.

In short, while I think Villen is a bit to powerful as he is now ( high strength and not easy to counter for anyone with little to no low strength minions ) I agree the card is not a guaranteed net-positive.

Yen however is absolutely insane. While I think the card is pretty interesting, I think the problem with her is that there is almost no way to effictively deal with her. Unless you play Iorvith or Roche, which are faction spicific. What I love about Gwent is that even the most powerful strategy's and cards can get countered by means readily available to almost everyone. My suggestion to project red is not to make cards with persistant postive effects and make them gold. Cards like Yen should be silver or target both sides of the field. Thought should be put into almost every powerful card you play, and cards like Yen you can play almost everytime without a thought and get a huge net-positive practically everytime.

 

[NatoGreavesy]

Yen-Con can certainly be an intimidating card to encounter, but its far from unbeatable.

And Villentretenmerth is, quite amusingly, vulnerable to itself if you manage to bring it down to silver.

 

[zantclick]

cards like Yen you can play almost everytime without a thought and get a huge net-positive practically everytime.

She's busted, no question about that, but as you said, I think the word "almost" is key. Her insanity starts to taper off when you run into more expensive decks later on due to the fact that playing around multiple zaps just becomes inherent in most decks. Additionally, as more Gold cards become available to you in each deck, there are more and more prioritized inclusions on a by-faction basis than Yen. At a certain point she sort of becomes just a stronger Geralt in that she's a backup Gold stat stick. Only reason I mention this is that once Geralt: Igni is in the mix, you pretty much always run that instead, plus add on whatever faction Golds you may need, and that usually takes up all four slots.

And Villentretenmerth is, quite amusingly, vulnerable to itself if you manage to bring it down to silver.

That's another point I wanted to bring up but forgot to - pretty much every deck runs Dimeritium Bomb or Shackles (one or both) and people tend to not go ham during round one, generally letting you keep it for a Villen turn even if you aren't expecting it. And if it destroys itself on the first tick, the second one doesn't even go off, so it's really not the nightmare it's cracked up to be.

 

[Xifortis]

Yen-Con can certainly be an intimidating card to encounter, but its far from unbeatable.

And Villentretenmerth is, quite amusingly, vulnerable to itself if you manage to bring it down to silver.

My argument isn't that they are unbeatable and if I gave that impression I apologize. My argument is that golden cards like Yen and to a lesser degree Villen put the opponent on such a back foot that they are pretty much going to end up screwed regardless of what they do. I don't think "Just scramble your entire strategy trying to mitigate Yen's damage while the player using Yen still gets to do whatever he wants. Again, I do think the idea of the card is interesting and has a place, but the huge net-gain the card just has by default unless you have have one of the two cards that efficiently deal with it is very off.

She's busted, no question about that, but as you said, I think the word "almost" is key. Her insanity starts to taper off when you run into more expensive decks later on due to the fact that playing around multiple zaps just becomes inherent in most decks. Additionally, as more Gold cards become available to you in each deck, there are more and more prioritized inclusions on a by-faction basis than Yen. At a certain point she sort of becomes just a stronger Geralt in that she's a backup Gold stat stick. Only reason I mention this is that once Geralt: Igni is in the mix, you pretty much always run that instead, plus add on whatever faction Golds you may need, and that usually takes up all four slots.


That's another point I wanted to bring up but forgot to - pretty much every deck runs Dimeritium Bomb or Shackles (one or both) and people tend to not go ham during round one, generally letting you keep it for a Villen turn even if you aren't expecting it. And if it destroys itself on the first tick, the second one doesn't even go off, so it's really not the nightmare it's cracked up to be.

Your comment about higher tier decks decreasing Yen's value is interesting and I can see some merit in them, but another problem with cards like Yen and Villen is that they are neutral, and can be put in every deck. This is a problem because it really weakens the argument of "Just play demetrium or play entirely around the card to win." I believe there is a pretty powerful deck floating around which is build entirely around Yen and Villen, and I think that's fine. It becomes a problem when you run, say, a skelliga warhorn deck with Yen in it. ( or any other random combination ) Yen is so friggin powerful because you already, generally, have to play around the enemy's deck to begin with, and use cards like Dimeritium bomb, shackles, etc on their primary strategy. Yen and Villen put you in a situation where, you either counter the enemy's primary tactic, or Yen/Villen. I like the idea of gold cards in general, but making neutral gold cards with persistent powerful effects that, in a card game where you can only play 1 card per turn take 2-3 to remove is way to much.

Generally I think this game is pretty well designed so I don't mean to tell the developers they're doing it wrong, I might be completely wrong and not realise it. But I believe the more powerful a card is the riskier it should be to play. Considering this game doesn't have a resource system like say Magic or Hearthstone you can't simply slap a high resource requirement on powerful cards like Yen, the developers should be careful about making powerful cards to hard to interract with, doubly so by the fact you can only play 1 card per turn and just spending 2-3 turns around one specific card while the oponnent can just keep enacting his or her strategy is not really realistic.

Edit/ps : The more we talk the less I am starting to see Villen as a problem though, but I think his "balanced" hp is a bit off, I think he should have lower hp so he can get more easily removed ( he's still gold so he'd still be relatively tough to remove ) or have more hp so the player needs to be careful he doesn't end up killing itself.

 

[zantclick]

Edit/ps : The more we talk the less I am starting to see Villen as a problem though, but I think his "balanced" hp is a bit off, I think he should have lower hp so he can get more easily removed ( he's still gold so he'd still be relatively tough to remove ) or have more hp so the player needs to be careful he doesn't end up killing itself.

Yeah that's the main thing I was talking about and I believe the easiest fix for these two are just to reduce their strength pools. My primary argument about cards not so much like Villen, but more Yen and even Geralt: Igni for that matter is that they're Neutral and although you can run them in every deck, sometimes you prioritize your gold slots differently. On the other hand, any dead slot and you'll jam them in which like you said, can be problematic. I think a card like Igni for instance has a good amount of strength for the effect that it has, but maybe if it operated more like a directed Scorch and caused rows on both sides to be triggered for the effect it would be a bit more balanced (some might hate me for that haha). And as you said, same thing for Yen. If it zapped the highest power unit on both sides I don't even see a problem with its current strength pool. All in all it's just tough to make them balanced but still playable, and that's a job for the devs, not lil' ol' me xD

 

[4RM3D]

But I believe the more powerful a card is the riskier it should be to play.

That should be at the heart of any CCG. YenCon can be played without any risks. But in return she isn't always threatening.

There is another factor in play which makes it difficult to qualify a card. In RPG's I would call it a critical hit; a situation where one card reaches maximum potential. For YenCon such a situation would arise when the opponent has multiple of the strongest units in play. This is something you can usually easily deal with by buffing a unit or playing a bigger unit. YenCon rarely becomes threatening, unlike Villen which need to be dealt with immediately.

The thing that makes the whole situation difficult to judge (as to when a card becomes too strong) is because of the variety of combos that can be played. YenCon (or Myrgtabrakke) are quite deadly with Igni, for example.

 

[Scrofa]

Triss doesn't counter YenCon, that's why I milled her.

 

[4RM3D]

Triss doesn't counter YenCon, that's why I milled her.

...I "milled" her



(I did choose Triss over Yen in The Witcher III.)

 

[zantclick]

Unrelated, I'm sorry, but whenever someone refers to Yennefer: The Conjurer as YenCon does anyone else picture the Anaheim Convention Center with flashing lights, wall to wall massive monitors all showing Yen's face with Yennefer herself on stage getting jiggy with it? Just me?
:wisegirl:

 

[Evilknievel82]

I think villentrentenmerth is fine same as Yen. Both can be a pain in the ass but most of the time you can play around them.

With Yen i usually ignore her and just try to keep her at a single target. that way she will rarely be worth the 12 point baseline. As many opponents do the same or the deck does it for them (monster consume) i actually stopped using her.

Villentrentenmerth is fine IMO. If the opponent thinks he can play a deck without shackes or DBomb, okay thats his problem Moreover, if I encounter him I just try to limit the damage (which does not always work).

 

[roundert]

Yeah that's the main thing I was talking about and I believe the easiest fix for these two are just to reduce their strength pools. My primary argument about cards not so much like Villen, but more Yen and even Geralt: Igni for that matter is that they're Neutral and although you can run them in every deck, sometimes you prioritize your gold slots differently. On the other hand, any dead slot and you'll jam them in which like you said, can be problematic. I think a card like Igni for instance has a good amount of strength for the effect that it has, but maybe if it operated more like a directed Scorch and caused rows on both sides to be triggered for the effect it would be a bit more balanced (some might hate me for that haha). And as you said, same thing for Yen. If it zapped the highest power unit on both sides I don't even see a problem with its current strength pool. All in all it's just tough to make them balanced but still playable, and that's a job for the devs, not lil' ol' me xD

I think yen is fine, just like igni. Igni is only good when the row is more than twenty, and as long as you are looking at the row totals you can avoid or mitigate losses by not stacking same str units on one row. Which means that igni becomes only a four str gold card. I like it when they play yen, I just wait till she puts a unit to the same str as another and easily play a one or two str higher unit. Its not great to get taken down one point per turn, but I many more axes to grind about the slew of super op golds out there, I just don't see why everyone is ignoring those to harp on yen. I have been using her again lately, but only because I found ciri dash and the queen to be less useful in my discard deck the way I set it up now. sometimes she can lose me a round, but generally shes just a minor nuisance that makes me double check her targets before passing a round thinking I'm going to win it, same concept with the st deck that ambush boosts the front row when you pass.

 

[zantclick]

The thing to remember with all these cards is that you build your decks around these certain conditions and opposing players will either adapt or fall. It's similar to chess in the respect that if you play a certain way and play around certain eventualities, you're rewarded. There are a few decks in between that just have far too much power for their drawback, but generally it's alright. Even SK decks that build around Kambi don't see much bashing even though you just get dunked on the last round regardless unless you saved your golds for it. Whatever the case may be there's almost always a counter, and it's only the "almost" cards that need looking at. These aren't really the worst of the offenders, as Roundert stated above.

 

[RickMelethron]

Yenever and Villentretenmerth

yen conjurer has 5 strength and deals 1 damage per turn. it takes her seven turns to match the standard value of golden cards (12)
if you're able to properly play around her by keeping 1 unit with a higher strength, she shouldn't be a problem.

as for villen, you can deal with him by using shackle+thunder/lock, a pretty standard tactic.
the biggest issue with villen is that most people don't build decks prepared to deal with him... so they end up getting wrecked.

 

[Northernjester]

Let's face it. No other card can deal up to 40 points of damage across 40 units.

 

[Northernjester]

No Title

... besides YenCon.
(sorry for the double post. Accidentally pressed 'post reply'. How do you edit posts? No visible button on mobile site as far as i can tell.)
40... or however many non gold units monster/nilfgard can crap out onto the battlefield, having their power levels plataued. Laddering your units against yencon has been mentioned, and I really couldnt care less about that argument. If the card becomes an autoinclude in the community, then maybe the devs should rework the card. Period.
Fact of the matter is that cdpr is privy to the smallest details on meta play. They have all the numbers rolling in. They would know of it is a social fad to auto include her, or if she really is present in over 80% of ranked and casual decks (which is what it feels like. Feels=/=fact.)
Yencon should be nerfed to (X) turns active only (increasing her play strategy requirements, rather than being a mindless nuke that is dropped first turn, second round, or any other turn or round.)
This game is about strategy. Not "who has meta-bee".