What's Your Opinion of the Syndicate Faction? [Poll]

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What's your opinion of the Syndicate faction?


  • Total voters
    172
Some people seemingly liking everything... or just not looking or understanding. Yeah, the new cards look good, using coins is a very interesting idea and it's fun to play with new stuff, but maybe also be fair and recognize that there are some crazy unbalanced and blatantly OP cards. And then think again, a bit longer-term this time, if this is really as good as you think (or only write about).
 
Didn´t play the new faction yet but of course a lot of games against it. On the first two days I almost won all games against Syndicate decks playing Arachas Queen with the kikimore warrior and the troll and some Dana with cleavers muscle. Those cards are great in the old factions and I love to have them.

Now I only run into King of beggars and get screwed. There has been a lot of discussion if cards like Philippa or the freak show are OP or not. My problem with these cards (also tin boy and tunnel drill) is that they can completly deny certain deck types. I don´t really care if Philippa is OP or not but you cannot play big engines anymore because she can steal anything. She comes at a high cost but most of the time it just doesn´t matter. Tin boy completly breaks ST or decks that try to play a lot of units. It doesn´t even matter if you play on one or two rows. And it also doesn´t matter if he is expansive or not because he can easily deal 24 to 30 damage. Killed my AQ deck twice although I was way ahead.

Haven´t seen tunnel drill yet but most artifacts are simply unplayable because this card exists. The Bosordi brothers and the clown freak show can also wipe your board clean. Then there are all these low provision bronzes that can huge amounts of value. Renegade mage in KoB is 6 for 4 and kills a 3 strenght unit. The apothecary is completly broken. Fence can be an 11 for 7, I mean wtf ..

Engines are dead :cry:
 
completely unbalanced. I understand that sales have to be made but this is just outrageous. Won't play ranked until syndicate receives huge nerfs. Ms Filipa 13+ points every game/ tons of bronze cards some of them consistently reach 8+ value, Borosodi brothers/ Mr freakshow bb any engine. Smb must be blind to allow it to go through ptr. Half of the cards are just broken.
I fully agree. Now that many players have found out the ridiculous OP mechanics and plays, this game is completely broken. Expecting or asking all players not to play SY until it is fixed would be ridiculously naive. I'm very disappointed, because it is so blatantly obvious that I can only conclude that it was done on purpose, thereby seriously insulting the players.
 
Nice modding on the quote. Compared to what it was before? This is not beta anymore.

Nice modding on the quote. Compared to what it was before? This is not beta anymore.

Ridiculous OP mechanics lol
The update is alive for only two days and you are already climbing the wall.
Many players survived months of meta much worse than this (elves with earthquakes).
 
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Ridiculous OP mechanics lol
[...] the update is alive for only two days and you are already climbing the wall.
Many players survived months of meta much worse than this (elves with earthquakes).

I started this game in beta and played for under an hour and called it extra boring, so I guess that whatever elves with earthquakes would instantly drive me off the game. Every meta so far in the last 4 months was ok. Having SK a bit stronger than rest of the factions never bothered me much since you always had a fair chance of winning those matches. With SY you kind of don't, you pray he/she doesn't draw any of his many OP cards and that's about it. To me this expansion is the worst period in gwent since the beginning of march (haven't played HC earlier).
 
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I am almost more annoyed at how boring the other factions are compared to SY than them being overpowered. They synergies are just so much better than what you get elsewhere which is a nice change of pace.

In terms of power its basically what I expected them to do. I've seen meta's that were far worse where literally everyone was playing not only the same faction but also the same deck. SK had a meta like that long ago and then Dwarves had one where they were very dominant.
 
Heres the thing with the new faction:
Its PAY TO PLAY (not pay to win - TO PLAY) and thats a big problem - you really cant play novigrad AT ALL unless you spend a lot of scrap.
It is okay to have all the top tier cards be high quality in a free to play game since you do have to make money BUT.. in this case because of how the profit/tribute/coins work you literally cant play the faction without spending a ton of scrap.

All the acceptable coin generators are epic or better.. Imke, Sigi, Menge and the borsody brothers. 3 of these are legendary. These 5 cards are pretty much required to play novigrad at a reasonable level. And theres even more good golds that are coin generators but those are the ones which are core imo.

This is also before you get other great golds that novigrad has. (that you probably want as well, like tinboy, moreelse and others.

Not a great mechanic if this is how it is designed. Pretty much unplayable if you dont want to spend a lot of scrap.
 
Pretty much unplayable if you dont want to spend a lot of scrap.
They did state, on a stream quite a while before the expansion was released, that the new faction was not going to be for new players. I'm guessing this is what that meant; that spending ore and/or scraps is required to play with Syndicate.
 
Syndicate doesn't make much sense as a faction lorewise. Novigrad is just one small part of the Northern Realms and the criminal underworld just a subgroup of people living in Novigrad. IMO it would have been better if they introduced it as sth like a subset of NR, which can't be combined with other NR cards. Doing sth. like this also could help avoiding rotations once the card pool gets too large one day(I mean if they keep doing expansions).
 
Syndicate is such a cool faction to play. Not only coins mechanic is fun, but the fact that your bronzes have good value when combined with other cards / coin mechanic is awesome. Definitely agree that some cards are overtuned and should be looked into, but I really hope that CDPR would rather buff other factions to Syndicate and Skellige level and also make them more interesting. Some good ideas may be find in this reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/comments/c6nzpz/cdpr_can_we_make_other_factions_like_sy_and_sk

6-8 for a 4-5p cards that synergize with your faction identity should be a standard imo, so they are just not only mulligan fooder that you never want to draw. It also makes luck of the draw less relevant. Drawing 4 point bronze instead of your 10+ points gold finisher is huge.
 
completely unbalanced. I understand that sales have to be made but this is just outrageous. Won't play ranked until syndicate receives huge nerfs. Ms Filipa 13+ points every game/ tons of bronze cards some of them consistently reach 8+ value, Borosodi brothers/ Mr freakshow bb any engine. Smb must be blind to allow it to go through ptr. Half of the cards are just broken.

Philippa + Whoreson's Freakshow + Moreelse + Ewald Borsodi + Caleb + Blindeye Apothecary + Sea Jackal!!! (this should cost 40 provision) + Bincy Blumerholdt (another UBER OP card). Those are the reasons I HATE Gwent right not and strongly consider never playing it again. It's unplayable, unfair and simply annoying.
 
I'm totally agreeing with reddit one one point - before nerfing SY to hell, maybe that would be a good idea to consider buffing other factions.

Apart that my pov didn't changed compare to the prerelease. SY is cool, fun to play, but I don't really see it fitiing amongst other factions. This is a game about armies and militaries - why a fisstech addicted beggar is supposed to be stronger then a whole regiment?
 
I really like the faction and the coin system but it’s clearly OP. I’ve just been using a Whoreson deck with the usual cards already mentioned; Phillipa, whoreson freakshow and Caleb. I do ok against other SY decks, usually depends on how lucky the draw is to decide who wins but, I’ve won nearly every game against other factions. At the minute it’s pretty pointless trying use another faction because there are so many people using SY right now.
 
So nothing new, they are too strong

I have some idea for balance some cards :

- Philippa when she take an unit it should be locked, and also it use all the coins, thats mean, if you got 9 coins and want to steal a 5 point enemy engine, its locked and also you lose all yours coins.
That would force the player to manage his coin, and play a bit more wise , and she still have the capacity to capture 9 points enemy units.

-The brothers Borsodi, do not give them zeal otherwise you have no chance to counter them, its like a Johnny / Sarah with zeal and 5 charges lol (or even more)
If they cant play the first turn they are on the board you have a chance to counter them by silence / kill them

I did a game when I had only Milva and Saenthesis alive coz of the immune statut, he just cleaned my board by playing Ewald at last card with 9 coins and some bounty on my units...
(Btw Id like a purify unit for Scoiatel, for cleanse bleeding / bounty, there only one spell and its not thats good.. )

The Apothecary syndicate is insane for 4 cost, way better than the Havekar healer of scoiatel or the Heymay one in skellige

I dont understand the request to buffs others factions instead to nerf Syndicate, I mean if every factions got as strong units as syndicate, everyone will play the same OP cards in each factions/ leaders, no more variety and second the game will become Ping Pong
-> You play a card, I instant remove it, then I play a card he instant remove it etc ...
I prefere some balances instead of having every cards OP thats just block you to put in place your strategy because you always get countered by cards too strong, thats kill everything


Finaly I voted I dislike it, just because of the lack of balance... CDProject need some beta tester :D otheriwe its always good to have more cards / factions for more variety
But also the coin system become just for SY its a bit useless to play them in Arena or an assimilate deck for Nilfgaard, I mean they need to rework it or give them another utlity (like +1 heal instead of +1 coin ) when its another faction who play them (like Nilfgaard)

Just in case im not english native, so I guess I made alot of errors, sorry :)
 
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I'll try to keep this quick.I've been off the forums a long long time. After being gone from the forumns I was able to dive in and actually put many hours into homecoming. There has been many ups and downs. The game was getting much better and just needed a huge balance patch for unplayed cards and some reworks regarding orders.

I've been playing the expansion in arena and had fun getting feel of how the expansion works. I just started ranked today. I love the feel of playing and calculating my moves/coins , it's good for those of us who like to think. However I'm currently rank 18 after last season of not grinding. I build my own decks and am not a netdecker, it is the single source of the game going stale. I've never gotten so frustrated in a game as current gwent. I have not smashed a controller since the genesis was released but I almost tore my ps4 controller in two. We have a huge huge balancing issue and many many cards just from what saw in a couple matches are beyond broken.
Im facing king of beggars deck that seems to generate unlimited coins and then goes into a machine gun of removal. The freakshow is disgusting for 6 provisions as its non stop removal, renewal of Dijkstra is op, witch hunter card and graveyard brothers just boost away, Phillipa is broken as it seizes a 6pt engine (boosted anna) I play NR and I was sick after the crushing I got even with shielded and boosted units there is no competing as these new decks. Mine used to be really strong. The bronze cards in the update are so amazing strong that there is no comparison.
I don't know what to say other than all the other factions are now unplayable. This really had potential and a chess like feel which was great but removal is not a good look for the game.
Orders need to be removed and changed give fair value, charges need removed so they don't stack , damage needs to be changed to bleeding only so maybe some strategy will come back. I had my whole board cleared both matches I played from 6 provision or less cards.

I also have a suggestion to help fix the game, now that a deck tracker is built in use that legendary match making algorithm and take a snap shot of the netdecks meta, now take netdeckers who are playing card for card and match them with other netdeckers. This way the people who strive to play fun, creative deck they create can actually play, rank up, and see variety. I been playing since the beginning and am still here thousands of hours later but now disguisted I'm taking another break because this update is beyond broken. If no on else will say it I will. I love this game and what it can be. I curious fellow players your thoughts and what suggestions you all have to balance / rework the factions
 
The problem is never net decking. The problem is the game itself.

Balancing needs to be a priority and there is far too much removal in the game. It's hard to make an interesting game when it's just a removal fiesta.
 
IMO The theme is nice, although i'd preffer Redania. The new coin mechanic is great and adds an interesting new aspect to the game.
However, all that being said, some of the cards are way OP (espessially bronzes like WH executioner and Blacksmith)
Decks based on bounty and removal with some planning can literally clear the board in one round (depending on how fast you can click the mouse), it kinda feels like one card includes engine with orders and zeal with no cooldown. Imagine arbalests with zeal and large amount of charges on deploy - sounds ridiculous right ? But thats exactly the way it is.

I'm pretty sure that a big nerf is on its way, that's why i'll vote neutral in this pole, hoping that balancing the game will change my vote to [love it]. After all we all want a new exciting faction in gwent, not 5 unplayable ones.
 
Totally unbalanced. They didn't test it before the release or the testers are just crappy? Some sy cards seem to be joker's jokes. I lost all my interest in playing, waiting for the hotfix.
 
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