With the new monster spies.. the NR spies have become absurdly useless

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With the new monster spies.. the NR spies have become absurdly useless

Now that the NR spies (Dijkstra,Thaler) became 8 points each and they give you one card if you don't like it you can take another covered card ,, while the monsters have carcass eater spies like the frightner and katakan which give you one card and banish an opponent card ,, there's also the caretaker which can pick a card from opponent's graveyard
 
I wouldn't worry. They most definitely have something we haven't seen yet that will balance this out. However, I'm not at all worried since I like the Monster faction better now. I seldom played it in the built-in minigame so now I really look forward to play it with Eredin, the Caretaker and the Carcass Eater cards etc. :)
 
Now that the NR spies (Dijkstra,Thaler) became 8 points each and they give you one card if you don't like it you can take another covered card ,, while the monsters have carcass eater spies like the frightner and katakan which give you one card and banish an opponent card ,, there's also the caretaker which can pick a card from opponent's graveyard

I don't neccciraly think they are useless. It's more of a case of giving your foe power in a attempt to get that one really good card from your deck into your hand. One card, if used right, can make al the difference, and spies in NR gives you 2 chances to draw that one card.
 
It's too earlier to say if Dijkstra will be useless :)
This is the utility of a closed beta, working on balancing the game, so don't worry, i trust in #teamgwent for that !
 
It's too earlier to say if Dijkstra will be useless :)
This is the utility of a closed beta, working on balancing the game, so don't worry, i trust in #teamgwent for that !
I'd like to give feedback as early as I can because I'm excited for this game even more than I was for the Witcher 3 (it was my start with the Witcher) and apparently Dijkstra is a neutral card so I wouldn't worry about him .. but 'cocksucking' Thaler was the best spy and now he's too much of a risk for NR players
 
From math view
If you have 33 cards ( lets say 10 special cards and 23 units) and one card that is the most useful in a moment( or just most powerful)-lets call it ACE and second one that is spy in it:
-30,3 % chance to get spy in hand
-30,3 % chance to get ACE
-14,06% chance to get spy and ACE at once so the spy will be useless
when it is useful then:
-8,7% to get ACE if you use spy when chosing one from two
at the end you have 39% chance to have ACE

If you have 32 cards(without spy now):
-31,25% chance to have ACE

BUT!
1.Enemy have more points (+8 or +12)
2.You have bigger chance to get ACE by 7,75% BUT the chance for a card worse than even your spy depending on your deck can be from 50% to 75%.
3.We didn't calculate this

If you get 10 starting cards including spy you have 3 switches
-if you switch 3 times card when its not a spy you have 13,24% chance to switch for ACE
-8,7% chance when using spy after
-52,05% chance to have ACE summary
or 43,34% when switching spy
BUT
without spy (32 cards deck)
-3 times switch gives you 13,64% for ace
-44,89% chance summary

So its around 7--8% more chance with a spy. Idk how it goes with more spies, more chances for a card but the deck without spies is getting more and more powerful because of the difference in cards quantity. For me 7-8 % is too less rewarding when enemy got more points AND SO BIG CHANCE TO HAVE WORSE CARD. Its too random. You cannot afford risking 8% more chance for a card having 60% chance to have useless shit at the moment, its just stupid. Maybe you have other opinion

P.S. made this calculations very quick, if you find some mistake just say and im sorry for possible ones
Greetings
 
Some cards will be naturally more powerful than others. It's not as simple as the NR spies being worse than the Monster spies. If you're opponent's deck isn't graveyard focused, than the advantage of eating a card from their graveyard is less useful. Also, the spies appear on different rows - if you have a deck focused on weather effects, let's say on melee rows, playing Dijkstra is suddenly more appealing, because you can easily combine it with a frost effect that makes their 8 point advantage a 1 point advantage. Also, we need to keep in mind that the most common effect of the spy is preparing for a future round, often sacrificing the current round. The filtering aspect of the NR spies allows for better selection for a future round, as opposed to the monster spies which simply draw a random card. The point of these slight variations is to create a more nuanced experiences and craft decks honed in to take advantage of the slight differences in wording.
 
NR is absurdly overpowered in the Witcher 3 anyway now.
If they did not balance that out properly it would become a META to play NR.
So as much as i love playing NR.. i am actuallyhappy that those spies can be countered.

ZE CHEEZE IS OVUR.

They will porbably balance that out eventually if not before the CBT anyway. It is way to early to discuss imbalances in decks right now.
 
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I believe that between good deck building and careful mulligans that you can easily fix your hand in this type of Gwent

Consider this
I have built a deck for consistent hands centered around a small amount of powerful minions. In my deck I have 4 Disloyal spies with an average power of 8. by default, I must have 22 unit cards, only 18 of them are effectively cards, as the spies are the Dijkstra version (See one face up, one face down, pick 1) which cycle through your deck, looking for cards that are useful. As i know my deck is only good with a small number of cards, I only choose three cards for specials, 1 Commanders horn, 1 Scorch, and 1 Epidemic, as these cards are always going to do something.

This makes my deck 25 cards total, but only 19 of them are cards that actually use resources, as the spies cycle themselves.
In the even I drew 10 cards, I can mulligan 3 of them. I have a 1/15 chance of drawing the exact card I want from my deck (As ten are are unable to be drawn though the mulligan) and I have three Mulligans. (I assume that cards that are passed in mulligans are not added to the cards that you can receive from a different mulligan) This means I have a 1/15, a 1/14 and a 1/13 chance to get a single card that I need for my hand. All of my cards are at least Mediocre and can be played even in the event I don't achieve my deck's goal.

I only drew into 3 of my spies, but this is ok. My opponent goes first, playing a Mushrooms card. I assume they are playing to win R1. This is when I will yeild my spies to their board. I play a non spy card, to bluff that I am committing to the board for a fight. They play a powerful card, to which I answer with my spys.
This tactic should be standard.
my first spy I have 2 1/15(6.67%) chances to draw two cards that will be the best against this deck (Say epidemic/Scorch). the card I see face up is a minion card that has an OK effect. I choose a 1/14(7.1%) chance to find the card I want on the face down.
This continues 2 more times, as the opponent commits resources to the board so I do not snipe the game from their passing.
The chances go as following:
Face up has a 1/14 (7.1%)chance of being the card I want, the face down is a 1/13(7.6%)
Face up has a 1/13(7.6) chance of being the card I want, the face down is a 1/12(8.3%)
If I were to draw into my final spy, 1/12(8.3%) and 1/11 (9.01%)
My final draw alone Gives me nearly a 10% chance to draw the exact card I need.

Considering the mulligan system and a good deck build you will almost always have the cards you need (Not to mention the 13/25 chance of having them outright which is above 50%)
These combined effects lead to (52% [Mulligan]+6.67%[S1 face up]+7.1%[S1Face Down]+7.1%[S2Face up]+7.6%[S2Face Down]+7.6%[S3Face up]+8.3%[S3Face Down]+8.3%[S4Face Up]+9.01%[S4Face Down]= 113.68% Chance To Draw The Card In theory.

If you are running a deck with a very specific win condition, you MUST choose less cards for this particular tactic. Anything over 30 or so cards will make the chance smaller exponentially.

Otherwise, it is important to consider using other spies effects as it will be more effective to the deck you are playing.

Most likely you lose R1 in this situation, but your opponent MUST commit resources each turn you cycle a spy in order to win the round. This loss of resources will result in your ability to win Either the next two rounds (As you have far more power in your hand) or Win R1 if they yield early by committing efficient removal to the board and overpowering, allowing you to win either one of the next two rounds with superior card efficiency.

This is a very round about way of saying that the Dijstra power cards are still very powerful, even though they are nowhere near what they used to be (OP)
 
I believe that between good deck building and careful mulligans that you can easily fix your hand in this type of Gwent

Consider this
I have built a deck for consistent hands centered around a small amount of powerful minions. In my deck I have 4 Disloyal spies with an average power of 8. by default, I must have 22 unit cards, only 18 of them are effectively cards, as the spies are the Dijkstra version (See one face up, one face down, pick 1) which cycle through your deck, looking for cards that are useful. As i know my deck is only good with a small number of cards, I only choose three cards for specials, 1 Commanders horn, 1 Scorch, and 1 Epidemic, as these cards are always going to do something.

This makes my deck 25 cards total, but only 19 of them are cards that actually use resources, as the spies cycle themselves.
In the even I drew 10 cards, I can mulligan 3 of them. I have a 1/15 chance of drawing the exact card I want from my deck (As ten are are unable to be drawn though the mulligan) and I have three Mulligans. (I assume that cards that are passed in mulligans are not added to the cards that you can receive from a different mulligan) This means I have a 1/15, a 1/14 and a 1/13 chance to get a single card that I need for my hand. All of my cards are at least Mediocre and can be played even in the event I don't achieve my deck's goal.

I only drew into 3 of my spies, but this is ok. My opponent goes first, playing a Mushrooms card. I assume they are playing to win R1. This is when I will yeild my spies to their board. I play a non spy card, to bluff that I am committing to the board for a fight. They play a powerful card, to which I answer with my spys.
This tactic should be standard.
my first spy I have 2 1/15(6.67%) chances to draw two cards that will be the best against this deck (Say epidemic/Scorch). the card I see face up is a minion card that has an OK effect. I choose a 1/14(7.1%) chance to find the card I want on the face down.
This continues 2 more times, as the opponent commits resources to the board so I do not snipe the game from their passing.
The chances go as following:
Face up has a 1/14 (7.1%)chance of being the card I want, the face down is a 1/13(7.6%)
Face up has a 1/13(7.6) chance of being the card I want, the face down is a 1/12(8.3%)
If I were to draw into my final spy, 1/12(8.3%) and 1/11 (9.01%)
My final draw alone Gives me nearly a 10% chance to draw the exact card I need.

Considering the mulligan system and a good deck build you will almost always have the cards you need (Not to mention the 13/25 chance of having them outright which is above 50%)
These combined effects lead to (52% [Mulligan]+6.67%[S1 face up]+7.1%[S1Face Down]+7.1%[S2Face up]+7.6%[S2Face Down]+7.6%[S3Face up]+8.3%[S3Face Down]+8.3%[S4Face Up]+9.01%[S4Face Down]= 113.68% Chance To Draw The Card In theory.

If you are running a deck with a very specific win condition, you MUST choose less cards for this particular tactic. Anything over 30 or so cards will make the chance smaller exponentially.

Otherwise, it is important to consider using other spies effects as it will be more effective to the deck you are playing.

Most likely you lose R1 in this situation, but your opponent MUST commit resources each turn you cycle a spy in order to win the round. This loss of resources will result in your ability to win Either the next two rounds (As you have far more power in your hand) or Win R1 if they yield early by committing efficient removal to the board and overpowering, allowing you to win either one of the next two rounds with superior card efficiency.

This is a very round about way of saying that the Dijstra power cards are still very powerful, even though they are nowhere near what they used to be (OP)
That was a very informative post but you kinda missed the point ,, the thing is I'm comparing them to other spy tactics used in other decks ,, monsters with carcass eaters(draw a card and banish one from opponent's graveyard) ,, scoeatel with commandos (draw one card and decrease the row that this card lands in your opponent's board) ,, Skellige with diplomats (draw 1 card to your hand and one to your graveyard and when said card happens to be for example Clan An Craite Warrior it comes out with +6 strength)

so yeah they're not as good as they should be
 
That was a very informative post but you kinda missed the point ,, the thing is I'm comparing them to other spy tactics used in other decks ,, monsters with carcass eaters(draw a card and banish one from opponent's graveyard) ,, scoeatel with commandos (draw one card and decrease the row that this card lands in your opponent's board) ,, Skellige with diplomats (draw 1 card to your hand and one to your graveyard and when said card happens to be for example Clan An Craite Warrior it comes out with +6 strength)

so yeah they're not as good as they should be

The point that was being made is that the cards were useless, not that they weren't as good as they previously were, or rather that was the main idea of the posts from the first page. The reason that the NR spies are less powerful may be for three reasons. One as flavor (Which I think is a bit unlikely) and one as a kind of balancing. The final one is that they aren't weaker than the other classes.

If you played TW3 Gwent just to win games, you played as Niflgard and played an insane amount of spies, sweeping the game. To avoid the spies being so powerful they were nerfed. NR must have some kind of cards that are compactly powerful or require a combo (Like bond or a strong moral) in development that would need to be less consistent to work properly, but this is working under the assumption that these spy cards are not good.

My argument is that the spies from the NR are actually superior in certain decks, much like all of the spies are in a certain deck, than the other spies. My math may not be exact, but you can see that the option for the second card gives a Massive benefit. If the spies were only draw 1 card, they would lose almost 33% more often. This means that the NR spies give extra consistency to decks, which is a large part of all card games, making these crucial cards and insanely powerful still.

The only question that needs answered would be "are they strong enough to build a deck around?" and I'm leaning towards yes, but very specific decks.
 
Why do people talk about balance, when the beta isn't even out yet ?! You have to test the game and play alot of games, to want to rebalance cards.... If you play other cardgames, you should know that a card looks weak/strong in the first moment, but when you play 20/50/100 games with your deck, it turns that these cards work well with your deck and you win most games, because of that-.-

When the beta starts and people will never use spy Dijkstra and co., because these cards are too weak, there is a need for such a discussion, not now.
 
Spies do not have any counter whatsoever in the witcher, they had to be changed.

You also have to realize that Gwent is a game of stalling and while getting only one card for playing a spy might not be as powerful, it can still be very strong simply because you delay one turn in a way and thus can play a weather effect without getting countered.

As an example, your enemy has huge advantage this round because of extremely powerful melee minions. You have frost weather effect card in your hand but your opponent has clear weather effect. If you have only one card more (that is all it takes) you can play the frost card without getting countered. There is literally nothing your opponent can do and all because of that one extra round which you gained by playing a spy card.

Also, calculations, balance discussions and whatnot are in reality pointless, first we have to play the actual game and know all the possible combos etc. Then we can talk about balance.
 
@Pawel1995

Discussing the play ability of a card is one idea behind pre-beta discussion. While we can sit around and fan boy about the game and make comments of footage we have seen, we can also begin to discuss what we have seen mechanically . The developers have already been doing testing of actual play of the game, this means that there is some kind of balance already present. Due to this, we can assume that cards can be analysed from what we have seen from design and gameplay thus far.

we can assume that cards like Djisktra are playable, or they would have been changed already due to developer testing.

If I'm not mistaken, the premise of this thread is actually debating the power level of the new spies, saying that some are superior to other on first glance. The idea that the decks that need to be built are more complex than they were initially (Due to new mechanics and such) leads to the idea that factions may not play like they used to. I feel this is a fine premise for conversation and analysis.
 
I stand to my opinion: Disussing how weak/strong 1 or 2 cards are, without playing the game with a deck including these cards [/b[, is a waste of time.
 
I stand to my opinion: Disussing how weak/strong 1 or 2 cards are, without playing the game with a deck including these cards [/b[, is a waste of time.


Until we get our hands on the game we will have to do with what we see .. whether it's a waste of time or not that's up to you but for me it's not
 
Almost all cards are completely different.

I don't believe we will be any productive trying to compare the two versions of Gwent. We'll just have to wait the beta.
 
I think the NR spies are still the strongest in a vacuum.

The Skellige ones are only better, if you have graveyard interraction. (This is something you can choose thats fine, but still only in certain decks)
The Monster ones are only better, if the enemy has graveyard interaction. This makes them more of a hatecard for a certain meta, than a card on its own!
The Scoiatael ones are only better, if you have a chance to win the round you are playing spies. And if the enemy has (several) stuff in this line making them also kind of a hatecard.

The NR spies gets you the highest value for the next round! Even if you see only 1 card the probability to draw a great card increases quite a lot.

Lets say you have a 50% chance to draw a card you want.

With NR spies the chance that you get a card you want is > 75% ! (50% the card you see is one you want and 50%*(<)50% that the card you see is not one youi want and the card you do not see is one you want).

With all the other spies it is only 50%.

So I cannot see how this spies become useless at all, when they are powerwise the best for the purpose of a spy.
(Playing on a round you want to lose to get a card for the round you want to win) without having to pass the round.

They become especially better, if you can play several spies (all 8 power) and have Scorches in the deck. The chances to get a scorche (and not get to many non creature cards with it) are the best!
 
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