What's the deal with Skellige?

[tortugueta]

What's the deal with Skellige?

So, I've been trying to set up a Skellige deck, which I hadn't done in a long time. The way I do it is pick some starting point for my deck and then based on results keep refining. So in this case I started with a discard deck.

Let me tell you, I haven't played such a bad deck in weeks, if not months. I only managed a few wins against Milfgaard decks with mostly common cards, and by a hair. Utterly pathetic. Furthermore, what's up with the Queensguards? They are so weak for the trouble it takes to get them all on the board (damn, a simple Wild Hunt Rider or Temerian foot soldiers are better), that I worry for the safety of the Queen they are supposed to guard. It makes zero sense to have them in the deck without Cerys. And even with Cerys, I have my doubts they are worthwhile, and Cerys is not worthwhile without her Queensguards, so I have to wonder what's going on here.

Anyway, I keep changing cards here and there to adapt the deck, and after quite a few matches I realize that I am running pretty much the same Axeman + damage that everybody is running. The change was so gradual that I went adiabatically from Discards to Axeman without even noticing.

So my question is, is there any other Skellige deck that works right now? Because I hate to play the same decks everybody and their dogs are playing.

Cheers.

 

[panerola]

I have been playing myself with the Queensguards & Ceris lately, and it takes a big deal to achieve something. The maximum value Ceris have reach is 15 it was only one draw that I was pretty lucky. Typically Ceris does not reach 12 points, which I would expect for a gold card. And in the same time you spend a lot of deal discarding Queensguard while sometimes Ceris does not appear in your hand or the queensguards are sneaked from your graveyard. I agree that maybe I am doing something wrong but the only Skellige deck I am (not always) successful right now is with Axeman+Bear.

 

[Sukin-kot]

Yep, the only viable skellige option is Axemen deck with all sorts of wounding, queensguards\Ceris\Bran deck is a joke, buffing Longships and Skirmishers is not reliable since they can get stolen by multiple ways. Also there is no many counters against meta decks which can roll out skyhigh values with a few turns ( monster consume, dwarfs, nilf buffers, axemen ), my attemps to play queensguards or any other skellige deck besides axemen ended up loosing 2:0 most of the time lol.

 

[devivre]

With a control heavy Harald deck, and several weather immune units I'm getting about the same winning percentage as with my old harald boats deck before the patch. Also Ragh Nar Roog is now pretty awesome. But I'm not playing ranked anymore, so who cares . Then again considering that three weeks ago I found casual significantly more challenging than the ranked matches below rank 10, this deck should work in ranked too up to a certain level.

Armorsmiths are awesome and even Archers are pretty useful now.

 

[tortugueta]

With a control heavy Harald deck, and several weather immune units I'm getting about the same winning percentage as with my old harald boats deck before the patch. Also Ragh Nar Roog is now pretty awesome. But I'm not playing ranked anymore, so who cares . Then again considering that three weeks ago I found casual significantly more challenging than the ranked matches below rank 10, this deck should work in ranked too up to a certain level.

Armorsmiths are awesome and even Archers are pretty useful now.

The thing is, if you are running control, why wouldn't you add some axemen? I went through the phase of "many control units". But then you think, well, since I have so much damage dealing units in the deck, why not make it better and add a couple of axemen so that I can add some points to myself while I remove them from my opponent? And that's how you end up with the apparently only viable Skellige deck right now.

 

[devivre]

The thing is, if you are running control, why wouldn't you add some axemen?

For once because I try to avoid cards that feel too broken to me. I don't even use Yennefer Conjurer in my deck (although she would be strong and I already had crafted her a few weeks ago).

And to be honest I don't consider Axeman a control card. It just got buffed so much, that people use it for all sorts of crap. Besides Axeman would be a vulnerability for the way I play because it gets fucked up by weather and it interferes with Villentretenmerth.

 

[Galzra]

I use this SK deck from time to time: http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/11555-sk-warcry-deck

It's not my favourite but it gives me the same win/lose percentage like any other deck. It not only rely on the axemans so it gives you a few other oppurtinities too and I also plan to add Blueboy Lugos too, because he seems to fit really well wit the axemen. There are of course a lot of drawbacks in it, especially if you play against weather monster for instance, but it isn't that bad as a lot of people think it is

 

[GenLiu]

The Queens guard deck is still viable, I have a pretty decent win rate with it, it's just not a discard deck anymore. Play with King Bran, Draig bon-dhu, Shieldsmith....
The deal with the Queensguard is that, if you discard 2 of them with Bran the third one (which has to be in your hand, that's the condition here) will fetch the others.

Clan Dimun pirates are also very important in the deck because they give you a back up plan.

This deck does have some pretty bad match up though, Monster and NG has some great answers but if you play smart, they can be beaten (for example, vs NG, discard Cerys with Bran instead of a Queensguard since the Vicovaro medic can only steal bronze cards from your deck).

 

[frbfree]

I have three Skellige decks with relatively decent win percentages. In fact, my Skellige Weather Control deck is better than my Monster Weather Control deck.

 

[panerola]

The Queens guard deck is still viable, I have a pretty decent win rate with it, it's just not a discard deck anymore. Play with King Bran, Draig bon-dhu, Shieldsmith.... The deal with the Queensguard is that, if you discard 2 of them with Bran the third one (which has to be in your hand, that's the condition here) will fetch the others.

My main problem is that if I play against monsters or NG they are usually taken from the graveyard, loosing all its charm and strength. They give you quite a work (you use the leader) to use them for at the end being taken from the graveyard.

And you have some chance that at the end you may not get Ceris in the hand. The tactics has its flaws, as all the tactics, but for me the queensguard are very weak. Nevertheless I still give it a try, and they are quite fun, although not so strong.

 

[nestalim]

Skellige is in fact in a bad place, I hope they will get some love.

 

[Revillok]

I've been playing Cerys and the Queensguard for two days solid while being at quite a low level(Cerys was my first legendary card). Unfortunately the deck has a lower winrate than a simple hurt myself and use the War Cry to buff everything deck, which consists mostly out of starter cards.
Nevertheless I really love the idea of the Cerys deck and if only the Queensguard would be easier to play and not such a pain in the ass to set up(sometimes you're stuck with 1 because of bad draws) it would have been viable. Discarding a bucketload of cards sure helps, but I'm still lacking The Last Wish and some other options... Also when you've played Cerys during round 1 or 2 and you restore her from your graveyard, she's mostly Scorch bait due to her high stats and your deck having such low strength in general. I would love to see this decktype getting some love and buffs here and there, but I haven't got a clue how that would work. If you would pull Queensguard from your deck if you play one, it would be grossly overpowered because you would be able to streamline your deck to infinity and back with the other discard options. Maybe a change to Cerys is necessary? Sometimes she doesn't even reach the strength of a simple Geralt card, because of a lack of Queensguard. The biggest I've gotten her is about 16 power. Mostly because of my Queensguard being removed several times during a round and ressurecting them. It feels underwhelming. Queensguard could give 2 power or maybe the Queensguard itself could be buffed, with the potential problem of being included in every deck.

The decktype just needs that little bit of love though. It's already in a state where it's difficult to deviate in deckbuilding due to your wincondition, which itself is a bit mediocre.

 

[panerola]

I have been playing with this deck for some days also. I must admit that they only work with King Bran. The results are not outstanding but the deck is pretty fun (I included Kambi to mess things up). Nevertheless, yesterday I got a 18 level Ceris, which is not bad.

 

[GenLiu]

My main problem is that if I play against monsters or NG they are usually taken from the graveyard, loosing all its charm and strength. They give you quite a work (you use the leader) to use them for at the end being taken from the graveyard.

And you have some chance that at the end you may not get Ceris in the hand. The tactics has its flaws, as all the tactics, but for me the queensguard are very weak. Nevertheless I still give it a try, and they are quite fun, although not so strong.

It's true, this deck has some really tough match up but I think it's still better to get a queensguard stolen rather than a skirmisher (which became one of the worse SK unit since NG came out).
The last patch should give the Queensguard strategy a significant boost I think I have to try it (I just love this deck, one of my favorite in Gwent to be honest with you).

 

[IAxiiYourMother]

I saw a lot of discard SK decks in ranked today running Morkvarg, and Olgierd. They would dump these in the grave with the leader card, and buff their base STR with other cards. Because they were able to draw their entire deck they would also dump Ciri: Dash off the bat, and draw her as a 16 point gold card in the second round, and again as 20 in the last round.

 

[Archpriest]

I saw a lot of discard SK decks in ranked today running Morkvarg, and Olgierd. They would dump these in the grave with the leader card, and buff their base STR with other cards. Because they were able to draw their entire deck they would also dump Ciri: Dash off the bat, and draw her as a 16 point gold card in the second round, and again as 20 in the last round.

Saw that too, NG Cahir abuse deck easily takes them down.

 

[IAxiiYourMother]

Saw that too, NG Cahir abuse deck easily takes them down.

Sounds like you learned this from experience? Were you using an NG control variant?

I think it is a really cool idea, and SK can make it pretty consistent. I may try my own version in the next few days; I think it could work well in conjunction with Queen's Guards. I can see how Mork. and Olgi. not requiring medics would be nice though.

 

[Archpriest]

Sounds like you learned this from experience? Were you using an NG control variant?

I think it is a really cool idea, and SK can make it pretty consistent. I may try my own version in the next few days; I think it could work well in conjunction with Queen's Guards. I can see how Mork. and Olgi. not requiring medics would be nice though.

Yup, was checking how many games I can win with NG Cahir semi-control
After the Nilfgaard patch, I tweaked my Morkvarg deck and it still does well. Not as good as it did before though. However, including Olgierd there helps very little if at all. I mean, I'd rather had 16 Morkvard at the end than 8 and 8 for example. You know what I'm talking about...

 

[IAxiiYourMother]

owever, including Olgierd there helps very little if at all. I mean, I'd rather had 16 Morkvard at the end than 8 and 8 for example. You know what I'm talking about...

Yeah, they are on the same row and Morkvarg is better because he re-spawns immediately. I didn't really think about it when playing against them, but you are right that Olgierd seems redundant.