It's Geralt. Wearing the best armour, too. Deserves a powerful effect.
(Time will tell how strong he is.)
(Time will tell how strong he is.)
I love it how SK thinks that 8 for 5 is normal and added synergies on top of that is fine when other factions barely have any 8 for 5. My assumption is the people who develop SK cards don't belong to the general design team and they have their own set of rules for provisions. They have a strict rules that SK should get at least +1 value than other factions in every provision slot.
Every single SK card revealed so far is a class apart from other faction cards. Just like MM expansion. May be Slama or some other people on the top is hardcore SK fan and the designers want to please him subconsciously.
Nice card. First witcher tutor.
A little bit asking myself which witchers benefits most from the shield and would name the following:
- Kolgrim: Both units need low adrenaline and then lower removal risk of Kolgrim
- Bear Witcher Adept: All damage goes to shield
- Bear Witcher Mentor: Both units need low adrenaline and then lower removal risk
- Ciri: When you plan to lose that round
The other witchers (especially the old ones) you want to play early to benefit from their advantage or they have a powerful deploy and low body and do not need shield protection.
The witcher tutoring may also be nice to play Vesemir Mentor early to get full advantage of him and to complete the Letho/Auckes/Serrit trio.
My concern with this and the Bear Witcher Mentor cards is the way they incentivize keeping your bronzes as sort of finisher cards for a round. This is not necessarily a bad thing, certainly provides an alternative gameplay.
I'd still rather use this as a 2nd round bleed card after a R1 win. In that scenario it plays for a steady 8 for 5, while not disrupting R3 finisher plays.
Taking into account the latest cards, cards like cat witcher saboteur (SC), Failed Experiment (SY), Spontaneous Evolution (MO) are also 8 for 5. Cat witcher saboteur is a little bit more risky but has more upside potential.
I was a little bit disappointed from NG and NR 5 provision units at this expansion.
I think tutoring a Geralt with Quen will be hilarious. Geralt tutoring himself. Just prooobably not Igni.
I'd look at it from a different perspective - these cards offer alternative outcomes based on alternative plays. As long as the RNG results are kept in check and don't start to dominate the meta (like in case of Hearthstone in 2020), they won't cause harm. Quite the opposite, they can offer a fresh air in a form of some random and potentially funny board result.
Of course, it is important to keep these RNG bombs under at least some sort of check in form of conditional setups - so far I'm satisfied both with Alzur and "DROP DAT" Cosimo Malaspina
Funny that Tailbot revealed this card.Finaly the last Witcher 3 sign. Now we are missing only Heliotrop and Soma
He can tutor gold witchers? Isn't it little bit too much?
Definitely one of my favourite cards of the expansion and my favourite form of Geralt.
As for the card itself:
(i) 2 for 10 tutor (in this regard worse than the Special Tutors)
(ii) Has Shield to buffer an instance of damage
(iii) Is an additional body for Vesemir
(iv) Can apply a Shield as the 7th - 10th card
(v) Adds 2 more points to a Griffin Witcher Adept
(vi) Is a good target for Trial of the Grasses (10 for 8)
As for the targets themselves:
(i) Vesemir Mentor: Playing for an immediate 7 points + the Vesemir ability, definitely solid for consistency and board buffing
(ii) Griffin Witcher Adept: Plays GWA for 6 tempo with Shields (somewhat forcing proactivity) + target for GWA
(iii) Ciri (
(iv) Berengar: 11 points and a Shield on an unit that anchors Berengar
(v) Witcher Trio: 8 points for 34 provisions AMAZING (sarcasm end)
(v) As mentioned the Letho/Serrit/Auckes Package becomes a lot more reliable
(vi) Ivo of Belhaven: If played late it can still be an engine for a couple of turns (can be varied depending on the matchup)
Against removal heavy decks it can be played later to ensure a couple of hits (or to make it expensive to remove it) and against decks with little targeted removal (e.g. MO) it can be pulled early (it also blocks Manticore) and with Vesemir: Mentor Ivo can be pulled at 6 power.
(vii) The removal Geralts (usually without Igni)
(viii) Kolgrim can get a Shield, making him more awkward to answer (and otherwise allowing him 2 turns of boosting, putting him out of range of usual removal)
(ix) Assire: Allowing Quen to immediately pull a recycled high provision Witcher (like Vesemir: Mentor)
(x) Bear Witchers: (as mentioned above) the Bear Witchers can be pulled later in the round, blocking their self damage, Bear Witcher Adept would then be a 9 point play and Bear Witcher a 13 point play
(xi) Cat School Witcher: Can in theory also be pulled to reliably get him early on for a long round 1
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Agreed.
Also as Pacifixer stated we still miss the Heliotrope sign (appearing both in the games and the books), ignoring the forgetable niche sign from the books.
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Well in the current Meta it's not exactly that hard to get a row above the 35 Points which allows you to break initiative especially with Scoia'taels movement tools
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Which is why I wrote "usually".Well it's not exactly that hard to get a row above the 35 Points in the current Meta which allows you to break initiative especially with Scoia'taels movement tools
And why I used "probably".
No one said it's impossible to get Igni value without Initiative.
Yeah I did read the usually and probably, but I thought it's just worth mentioning, judging by the opponent's reaction whenever I pull off a "classic" Gigni a lot of players seem to be unaware that you can line up Gigni if the row is above 35 Points and tudoring out Gigni with Quen will be even more hilarious.
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1) No one is going to play Cat Witcher Saboteur after 2 days into the expansion because that card sucks. For this to play for 8, the row should have at least 6 units and the unit to be moved which is on the right most should be at least 5 power. Most of the times (in his first two glorious days) he is going to play for an average of 6 or max 7 until people abandon him. Unless he is made a 4P card or gets +1 strength, he will be totally useless. And there is no synergy which is going to give more points on top of his deploy ability (if you think people will play Dol Blathana Senty on Melee, you are wrong, as, with Cat Witcher, there is more incentive to play on Ranged.. Unless the dev team does the right thing and remove his row lock, at least with "bonded" or "devotion")
2) Failed Experiment has a huge down side. It is a one shot kill by poison cards (if it is going to be poisoned) or it is going to be the first negative engine in the entire game where it eats up your resource.. a truly "Failed" experiment.
3) Spontaneous Evolution is 7 for 5 with insectoids, 8 for 5 for beasts, and 4 for 4 with Ogroids (which I don't think anyone will use - unless a new Ogroid comes).
We have AR, a neutral which does 8 for 5, but under a condition with some downsides. But these SK cards get 8 for 5 without any condition and without any setup needed and with added synergies. If there are not other synergy, 8 for 5 may be fine, but with so many added synergies, it is scary and OP and puts SK over all other factions.
I overlooked the order. You're correct. Now it's a little underwhelming
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Tough to make that argument when the same thing happened with NG for some time before that and there was another faction prior to that. I've said it before, I don't think any of these designs are coincidental or just an individual with a preference. I think the devs feel that, by design, there needs to be an oppressive faction each expansion.
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2. That is not a huge downside at the current meta as poison useage is relatively low - NG is less apparent on the ladder while SY tends to move away from Passiflora play and more into Congregate (and it doesn't seem likely that poison as an archetype gets buffed for any other faction than SY coming next expansion). Of course, if NG gets the buffs that were hinted across various platforms lately, this might as well change. Even when poison units/abilities are less rare, one can simply wait till the final round to play this as an 8 for 5. Quite fair if you ask me.
The SK card in question is by no means without a condition. I'd agree with you that in general, most SK cards tend to have easy conditions, but Adrenaline 4 limits the use of this card greatly in R3 (as discussed before, 4-5 prov cards are not necessarily the ones you plan to keep in your hand at the endgame). In R1 this might look as a solid option if you go all in, but again, R1 for SK usually serves as the time to pool "resources" into your graveyard for later use. You definitely do not prioritze playing a witcher card with relatively zero synergy for the later game (although it has relatively OK Hjalmar synergies).
I stick to my opinion here that this card is best use for a R2 bleed, going all in on your opponent. In other rounds it's use is a lot less optimal.
Would be nice if they gave the rest of the game as much attention as these "funny" cards as you put it. By themselves they are harmless yes but it's becoming more and more with quite a few of them are now finding their way into competitive play so the game starts to feel less strategic and more hit or miss. As the game is now (and this is not a real suggestion of course but it'd certainly be interesting) I wish it was possible for both players to see the others hand after the match starts. You could probably save the time you'd spend on the match by looking at each others hand and deciding who would win. The game is that binary now that you can most likely determine a winner just from their draw in R1.I'd look at it from a different perspective - these cards offer alternative outcomes based on alternative plays. As long as the RNG results are kept in check and don't start to dominate the meta (like in case of Hearthstone in 2020), they won't cause harm. Quite the opposite, they can offer a fresh air in a form of some random and potentially funny board result.
Of course, it is important to keep these RNG bombs under at least some sort of check in form of conditional setups - so far I'm satisfied both with Alzur and "DROP DAT" Cosimo Malaspina
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I agree with you on the part that this can pose a serious threat to strategic playstyle if cards like these ever become less than 5-10% of the actively used cardpool. The question here is balance, and so far in my opinion their total amount (and use) is way below threatening.
As a further note however, in the lifespan of most CCGs comes a time eventually where they'll have to revisit the concept of limiting the use of older cards or expansions in order to limit the number of nonsense-level combos. These will arise again and again as the card pool grows, we cannot avoid it by keeping the same structure forvever.
I feel like it's normally the opposite, the older...more established CCG's didn't spam expansion out the gate, that came later when they needed to keep things fresh. Gwent is relatively new by comparison and so far the foundation is shaky, nothing is constant and there's no sense of direction. I came back this month in the hopes that this expansion would have some balance or change to the binary playstyle but so far it's not looking great.
Ha.....he would never betray them, AT ALLWell, in any case I think Berengar is a cool card. He's a social witcher,
FInally, Geralt Quen (we already had Quen back in beta, but it was a bronze card, not a Geralt version like this)
And we get a Witcher tutor, so i guess tutoring and consistency CAN get more ridiculous than it is now
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Im pretty sure Slama has said more than once that his favourite faction was Monsters, although the last time might've been long ago, he might have switched. But there's rumours of a dev favouring SK leading to overtuned SK cards since way back in mid 2019 when SK was dominating with Selfdamage, before SY was added.