The Usurper problem (and NG as a whole)

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I believe we can all agree that playing agains NG is simply not fun. There have been multiple treads about Usurper, Control, Ardal etc...
I'm a semi-old time player and I remember the times when Usurper wasn't that ugly to play agains. That was the time when he had 0 mulligans and NG did not thin their deck like there is no tomorrow.
Here is the comparison and the issue I see with NG:
- Before: NG was still focused on locks and control, however Usurper had 0 mulligans which made him not that reliable. The lack of (proper) thinning and mulligans pretty much made him a no-strategy leader which was kind of balanced wich his ability to denie the tactics of the opponent.
- Now: With the existence of Portal, and the incredibly stupid thinning combo that NG has (which pulls out an amazing amount of cards with in 1 turn - the marching orders miracle) Usurper becomes more reliable than almost any other faction leader - able to thin his shit cards out in no time and able to do huge tempo plays and pick and choose whatever remains in his deck for R3. To add injury to insult, the portal/scorpion combo is actually an ENGINE combo that is kind of not what this faction is supposed to be right? So when facing Usurper you have 2 choices - 1 use your removal(kind of limited in most decks that are not NG) to get rid of the scorpions/helga and THEN play your engines (which makes them very weak engines) OR 2 - play your engines 1st as you are supposed to do, but suffer the insane value of the 4proviisons scorpions (4prov? rly? for a removal engine?).

This whole thing applies to a huge extent to Ardal too, as personally I don't find huge differences between ardal and usurper decks (maybe a couple of cards at most, due to the ardal ability reset option). It's always portal with scorpions, Helga, Muzzle, the trio (thx for the provision BUFF CDPR, way to go to balance control by reducing their provision requirement) and the rest of the all too familiar tactics we have all seen.
The only way I see to balance those 2 guys (which currently amount to about 50% of games) is to turn them back to being unreliable (decrease mulligans, not provisions and make thinning more expensive and not a no-brainer).
Thoughts?
 
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I'd say Usurper sucks for the sake he is taking away the possibility of the opponent to USE skills. Bores and annoys the hell out of me. That is beside the annoyment of locking everything. Usurper is no fun to play against and he looks a lot like Mister Potato these days.
 
What game are you playing, again?
A lot of decks run 2-3 removal cards and maybe 1 lock. The NR 1 ping cards are not removals. The monster deathwish stuff is not removal. Skelliger ships are not removal.
So yeah, if you got let's say 4 removal options, you would not use them on a 4pt card anyway, and you won't always have them in your hands.
There are ofcourse exceptions like Eithne, but not that many outisde NG.
 
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I'm torn on my opinions of NG at this point. On the one hand, they suck the fun right out of the game. On the other hand, they have been a necessary evil to balance out the OP factions. I played Ardal all the way to rank 0 last season and then just stopped playing until this latest patch. It was fun to shut down the people playing NR and SY, but the games against any other decks were always so one-sided that they were boring.

I think a lot of issues could be fixed with control by giving it a timed factor:
  • Locks have a duration of X turns based on the card.
  • Some cards that deal direct damage instead changed to Lock X and bleed for X turns. (or a combination of damage/bleed)
  • Adding a control status that prevents boost/healing.

This adds a bit more counterplay, while still allowing control. For example, a card that locks for 5 turns and bleeds for 5 turns would allow more counterplay than Alzur's Thunder because it takes the unit out of consideration for a large number of turns, but you could boost the unit to keep it alive in a longer round.
 
I think a lot of issues could be fixed with control by giving it a timed factor:
  • Locks have a duration of X turns based on the card.
  • Some cards that deal direct damage instead changed to Lock X and bleed for X turns. (or a combination of damage/bleed)
  • Adding a control status that prevents boost/healing.

This adds a bit more counterplay, while still allowing control. For example, a card that locks for 5 turns and bleeds for 5 turns would allow more counterplay than Alzur's Thunder because it takes the unit out of consideration for a large number of turns, but you could boost the unit to keep it alive in a longer round.
Really like that.
Makes locks a lot more interesting and stragetic.
 
Eithne can be a good matchup. Call of the forest into Schirru wrecks their board of 5 value units. I even got a triple scorch on that hyperthin combo the other day.
Usurper seems to be everywhere, I faced 4 in a row at rank 26 this week. If you can bleed in round 2 it can sometimes be helpful.
 
Well I'm at rank 2 and literaly every second game is vs Usurper/Ardal. My deck is kinda versatile, but against them it's just mindless pointslamming card after card because I know 90% of them will be shut down.
I firmly believe that this hyperthin meta in NG is ridiculously OP, like why the hell would you allow such thinning for such small cost? There are currently 0 decks that don't utilize the 'marching orders' thinning.
Just think about how strong were the witcher trio+roach (when they were all 4 points) back in the days and how nerfed they are at the moment, NG thinning seems twice as bad right now. I can bet my salary that at ranks < 5 99% of the NG decks use 'marching orders' and portal.
Even if it's not a tier 1 deck, which is debatable, how is this killing of diversity in a whole faction healthy for the game?
NO deck should be allowed to play every single card so easily.
 
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4RM3D

Ex-moderator
Personally, I have seen almost no NG while climbing the ranks (rank 5 now, at the moment).
 
Usurper was decent in 3.1 now in 3.2 is extremely weak, I agree that cards and combos that spawn or draw lots of cards are a problem.
Portal is toxic and anything that spawns many units is toxic but that's what it is for now.

I will not play usurper this season as he is far inferior to Ardal, still, Francesca is no 1 this season by far.

The only viable strategy for NG to have the best outcome is thining like hell it doesn't matter what leader/ability you have.

But let's be honest that removing as many cards as possible requires luck, so that's what NG is now, 70% like dice and that's all because of cards that spawn other cards from the deck.
 
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... The only viable strategy for NG to have the best outcome is thining like hell it doesn't matter what leader/ability you have...
And this is the core of the "problem". After all the faction must be competitive and their other cards are lacking, thinning weak ones to find your stronger ones is the solution.

I actually really enjoyed and am still enjoying this part of the game, when I have Strategy A for R1 and endgame for R3, that I can almost always pull. Unfortunately the rest of the gaming experience I find really... I don't know, lacking in the enjoyment/fun department. I don't have variety of choices (in NG specifically) in what to play so my deck can be actually competitive. That is the biggest problem with NG for months now. Assimilate on paper looks awesome, but it needs long rounds to flourish, than the Mill archetype is on the edge of being OK, but it still lack points, perhaps in the part of viable engines (and STRONGLY relies to get sorta the right cards early game, but this was always the case with it). NG must just rely on Portal: every time I play a singe engine - OP does have the solution to shut it down INSTANTLY. Despite what OP said in an other topic, that all decks are running just X number of control cards, it is easily enough to shut NG engines down instantly.
 
But let's be honest that removing as many cards as possible requires luck, so that's what NG is now, 70% like dice and that's all because of cards that spawn other cards from the deck.
I don't see how this is luck based. If you can't pull it R1, you will definitely pull it R2 or 3 with all those mulligans for the same value and it will yet again enable the tibor buffing/dmg-ing shenanigans.
 
I don't see how this is luck based. If you can't pull it R1, you will definitely pull it R2 or 3 with all those mulligans for the same value and it will yet again enable the tibor buffing/dmg-ing shenanigans.
It's based on luck because you can't guarantee 100% you'll remain only with Tibor in deck sometimes you get the same card you redraw three times.

Is obvious that much luck is involved as you mathematically don't have a P1 chance to have what you need in R1, R2, R3.
 
It's based on luck because you can't guarantee 100% you'll remain only with Tibor in deck sometimes you get the same card you redraw three times.

Is obvious that much luck is involved as you mathematically don't have a P1 chance to have what you need in R1, R2, R3.
My point was that the thinning requres no luck, the tibor part is not guaranteed but pretty close to being so, again - too many mulligans overall. Playing tibor from hand late R3 is also not end of the world.
 
My point was that the thinning requres no luck, the tibor part is not guaranteed but pretty close to being so, again - too many mulligans overall. Playing tibor from hand late R3 is also not end of the world.
If you don't have a perfect hand with only Tibor in a deck with Usurper, for example, you have almost no chance against Francesca, she can make even without doubling a spell easily 60-70 points which will overwhelm Usurper.

Today I played several matches at rank 3 and it's no sign of NG. Never had one NG opponent there are only Francesca and anti Francesca decks( igni, scorch, Regis, etc)

I agree that portal is toxic even summoning circle is toxic and deck thinning is again toxic but these strategies even though are toxic are not top tier this meta.
 
My point was that the thinning requres no luck, the tibor part is not guaranteed but pretty close to being so, again - too many mulligans overall. Playing tibor from hand late R3 is also not end of the world.
IDK, I've had a fair share of games where I will draw all of my bronze thinning targets in my r1 and r2 mulls. Easier to just forfeit if you have too many in your opening hand. Not like there's much on the line.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
It's amazing how volatile the meta is... previous meta all i saw was NR, Dijkstras and some NGs. After patch 3.2, which didnt have that many changes, and now all i seem to face are the same NG decks, SC (Francescas and Eithnes) and the odd SK or NR.

Like, Syndicate has been everywhere for the past 2 months and now all of a sudden its completely gone? Just because of a small nerf to bounties and DJ/Townsfolk?

Anyway, this NG meta is horrendous... NG is supposed to be the INDIRECT control faction - through locks, stealing and copying cards, messing with the opponent's deck - but no, now nobody uses that, its Usurper/Ardal/ Calveit with EXACTLY the same deck, full of removal and same Tibor BS at the end.

It's more counterable than Foltest and DJ's last month, but that's not the point, NG isnt supposed to be this thing.
 
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It's amazing how volatile the meta is... previous meta all i saw was NR, Dijkstras and some NGs. After patch 3.2, which didnt have that many changes, and now all i seem to face are the same NG decks, SC (Francescas and Eithnes) and the odd SK or NR.

Like, Syndicate has been everywhere for the past 2 months and now all of a sudden its completely gone? Just because of a small nerf to bounties and DJ/Townsfolk?

Anyway, this NG meta is horrendous... NG is supposed to be the INDIRECT control faction - through locks, stealing and copying cards, messing with the opponent's deck - but no, now nobody uses that, its Usurper/Ardal/ Calveit with EXACTLY the same deck, full of removal and same Tibor BS at the end.

It's more counterable than Foltest and DJ's last month, but that's not the point, NG isnt supposed to be this thing.

I'm not an expert on Syndicate but those nerfs did not seem small to me. SY as a whole got a pretty heavy nerf.
 
It's amazing how volatile the meta is... previous meta all i saw was NR, Dijkstras and some NGs. After patch 3.2, which didnt have that many changes, and now all i seem to face are the same NG decks, SC (Francescas and Eithnes) and the odd SK or NR.

Like, Syndicate has been everywhere for the past 2 months and now all of a sudden its completely gone? Just because of a small nerf to bounties and DJ/Townsfolk?

Anyway, this NG meta is horrendous... NG is supposed to be the INDIRECT control faction - through locks, stealing and copying cards, messing with the opponent's deck - but no, now nobody uses that, its Usurper/Ardal/ Calveit with EXACTLY the same deck, full of removal and same Tibor BS at the end.

It's more counterable than Foltest and DJ's last month, but that's not the point, NG isnt supposed to be this thing.

Don't underestimate how strong a finisher bounties were. Dropping a few bronzes and bounties on the entire enemy board both denies them good removal targets and allows for huge swing plays. Now, in the "REMOVE EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME NOW" meta that NR has brought about with its insane engines, having to set up one bounty at a time means that your 2 Executioners and Ewalt don't actually last. And the Igor nerf removed their other big finisher.

So SY is basically in the same place as SK has been: a combination of engines/point efficiency that isn't as good as NR with less control than NG.
 
Don't underestimate how strong a finisher bounties were. Dropping a few bronzes and bounties on the entire enemy board both denies them good removal targets and allows for huge swing plays. Now, in the "REMOVE EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME NOW" meta that NR has brought about with its insane engines, having to set up one bounty at a time means that your 2 Executioners and Ewalt don't actually last. And the Igor nerf removed their other big finisher.

So SY is basically in the same place as SK has been: a combination of engines/point efficiency that isn't as good as NR with less control than NG.
Totally agree with this. I believe NR is still the king, we see too many Francescas because it's still fresh, and because ppl want to just have some variaty for a time, but when the dust settles NR will still be number one. Fran is counterable by so many neutral cards, you can always build around while NG is just annoying.

On the thinning topic:
Thinning overall is toxic especially after the change of mulligans where all leaders have plenty. I believe thinning should be a max of 2 cards per turn, everything that allows more should be reworked. Otherwise you simply play your whole deck (or almost) every single game. Even back at the SK thinning meta, a lot of times your Skalds bricked, or you had to thin a useful cards (not a skirmisher/morg), so it had a huge price and was risky. Thinning nowadays is so much easier...25 cards, 16 draws and 6-7 mulli+epic thinning options? Com on...
What if they enforce a rule - for every 2 (thinning tag) cards you must add one extra card to your deck (so 25+1, +2 etc...) This way at least you won't play your whole deck every single game. Cards that thin more than one add directly +1 to the required minimum - for example portal and so on.
 
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