It's a competitive card game from The Witcher universe, based on Gwent from The Witcher 3 and it's been growing quite rapidly since closed beta release last year, and can potentially become next big esport card game.
Even though card games have never really been my thing I'm really enjoying the game, especially as a big Witcher fan. I think it's mainly the strategy and competitive aspect of it I used to like in SC.
On May 14 2017 11:28 Epishade wrote: I didn't know there was a different Gwent based on the game. Haven't looked into it at all. How similar is it to the one in Witcher 3?
There's still three fields, the turn system is unchanged, and you start off with 10 cards like TW3. On the other side, the cards are drastically changed, in quantity, effects, and stats, the UI got a nice facelift, there's a card economy (though it's not that grindy to get a free booster pack), and added matchmaking between people. Fundamentally it's basically identical, though with alterations to be more friendly for a competitive scene.
On May 15 2017 09:45 Amarok wrote: Is it out of closed beta? I loved the Witcher 3 iteration and signed up but never received an invite.
Open beta is starting on 5/24. Everyone who signed up for beta should be receiving an invite according to this post.
I have been playing this for a while. Compared to HS and Magic, Gwent has very low variance/RNG and extremely high skill cap. To play at the highest level, you need to be able to read your opponent's hand accurately.
The challenger tournament vods are on youtube, I found it quite entertaining to watch. Many of the players in the tournament had extensive HS/Magic background.
The turn timer in this game seems too short for a game of this complex imo.
The game does look interesting but I don't like it anyway. Its major problem is that most of the stuff revolves around +/- power which isn't especially exciting. I'm not a fan of the UI either - everything seems really tiny and you can't really appreciate the artwork and such (artwork is a big thing for me, having played all sorts of card games for the past 25 years), further reducing cards to just squares with numbers on them.
Just compare this:
To this:
Much cleaner.
My another gripe with it is that it's just not dynamic enough.
On May 20 2017 06:44 KillerSOS wrote: What's the other game in the screenshot?
Elder Scrolls: Legends. IMO the best digital card game out there at the moment.
Meh, ESL's art, awkward UI/UX and the intro get in the way for me, especially since it plays about the same as every digital card game outside of the lane system.
What's nice about Gwent is that it wasn't made to be played the same way that Magic, Hearthstone, or even Netrunner or Ascension, it plays like a very strange, interesting TCG and poker or bridge hybrid. Instead of being about flinging spells at stuff and vying for battlefield control to damage your opponent's life pool, it's much more about baiting or forcing things from your opponent and bluffing.
The mechanics alongside Witcher fluff, good UI, solid and homogeneous card art reminiscent of the Romance Cards from the first Witcher game, it all makes for a really unique and refreshing game. Plus, it doesn't force drab story or annoying narration at you or waste time with long animations. It's really well done, the engine and UI and everything are always being worked on, and there's a fairly low barrier to entry with a high skill ceiling and lower than average randomness for a digital card game.
It's just nice. Not for everyone, unlike the majority of recent card games, and I think that's good and also by design.
On May 20 2017 01:02 Manit0u wrote: The game does look interesting but I don't like it anyway. Its major problem is that most of the stuff revolves around +/- power which isn't especially exciting. I'm not a fan of the UI either - everything seems really tiny and you can't really appreciate the artwork and such (artwork is a big thing for me, having played all sorts of card games for the past 25 years), further reducing cards to just squares with numbers on them.
My another gripe with it is that it's just not dynamic enough.
Your screenshot looks out of date by a bit, it hasn't changed much since it was first shown but nonetheless here are a few from the current build for anyone interested.
On May 20 2017 06:44 KillerSOS wrote: What's the other game in the screenshot?
Elder Scrolls: Legends. IMO the best digital card game out there at the moment.
Meh, ESL's art, awkward UI/UX and the intro get in the way for me, especially since it plays about the same as every digital card game outside of the lane system.
What's nice about Gwent is that it wasn't made to be played the same way that Magic, Hearthstone, or even Netrunner or Ascension, it plays like a very strange, interesting TCG and poker or bridge hybrid. Instead of being about flinging spells at stuff and vying for battlefield control to damage your opponent's life pool, it's much more about baiting or forcing things from your opponent and bluffing.
The mechanics alongside Witcher fluff, good UI, solid and homogeneous card art reminiscent of the Romance Cards from the first Witcher game, it all makes for a really unique and refreshing game. Plus, it doesn't force drab story or annoying narration at you or waste time with long animations. It's really well done, the engine and UI and everything are always being worked on, and there's a fairly low barrier to entry with a high skill ceiling and lower than average randomness for a digital card game.
It's just nice. Not for everyone, unlike the majority of recent card games, and I think that's good and also by design.
I have 20+ years of experience with card games (as in, physical card games of all varieties, from poker and bridge to mtg and vtes). TESL is actually the first digital card game that I keep playing (and I've tried a lot of them, believe me). I don't mind slow and thoughtful games (my favorite kind of deck is a control deck and nothing strikes my fancy as much as control vs control match-up - I love to slug it out and think about consequences of every single move). Gwent, in all its apparent complexity and such is really just a very simple game and after years of playing all sorts of card games it just doesn't have anything special that would make it interesting for me. At the same time TESL, while still being fairly generic as far as card games go introduces a fair bit of new and captivating mechanics that make it very desirable for an avid card game player: 1. It's very dynamic. 2. It's fairly well balanced. 3. It favors skill over deck quality. 4. It has some really cool mechanics (lanes and runes) which makes playing even the most straightforward decks a thinking exercise at higher skill levels. 5. It finds a nice balance between deck-building/skill and RNG so that the better player will almost always win but you have a bit of uncertainty which keeps it interesting.* 6. There's tons and tons of different viable decks at top levels of competition. And even then they have different variants and variations, which makes it constantly interesting to play.
* I used to be the proponent of removing all RNG from the games so that you always know who's the better player etc. The problem with that is that it quite soon becomes predictable and boring.
On May 20 2017 01:02 Manit0u wrote: The game does look interesting but I don't like it anyway. Its major problem is that most of the stuff revolves around +/- power which isn't especially exciting. I'm not a fan of the UI either - everything seems really tiny and you can't really appreciate the artwork and such (artwork is a big thing for me, having played all sorts of card games for the past 25 years), further reducing cards to just squares with numbers on them.
My another gripe with it is that it's just not dynamic enough.
Your screenshot looks out of date by a bit, it hasn't changed much since it was first shown but nonetheless here are a few from the current build for anyone interested.
On May 20 2017 06:44 KillerSOS wrote: What's the other game in the screenshot?
Elder Scrolls: Legends. IMO the best digital card game out there at the moment.
Meh, ESL's art, awkward UI/UX and the intro get in the way for me, especially since it plays about the same as every digital card game outside of the lane system.
What's nice about Gwent is that it wasn't made to be played the same way that Magic, Hearthstone, or even Netrunner or Ascension, it plays like a very strange, interesting TCG and poker or bridge hybrid. Instead of being about flinging spells at stuff and vying for battlefield control to damage your opponent's life pool, it's much more about baiting or forcing things from your opponent and bluffing.
The mechanics alongside Witcher fluff, good UI, solid and homogeneous card art reminiscent of the Romance Cards from the first Witcher game, it all makes for a really unique and refreshing game. Plus, it doesn't force drab story or annoying narration at you or waste time with long animations. It's really well done, the engine and UI and everything are always being worked on, and there's a fairly low barrier to entry with a high skill ceiling and lower than average randomness for a digital card game.
It's just nice. Not for everyone, unlike the majority of recent card games, and I think that's good and also by design.
I have 20+ years of experience with card games (as in, physical card games of all varieties, from poker and bridge to mtg and vtes). TESL is actually the first digital card game that I keep playing (and I've tried a lot of them, believe me). I don't mind slow and thoughtful games (my favorite kind of deck is a control deck and nothing strikes my fancy as much as control vs control match-up - I love to slug it out and think about consequences of every single move). Gwent, in all its apparent complexity and such is really just a very simple game and after years of playing all sorts of card games it just doesn't have anything special that would make it interesting for me. At the same time TESL, while still being fairly generic as far as card games go introduces a fair bit of new and captivating mechanics that make it very desirable for an avid card game player: 1. It's very dynamic. 2. It's fairly well balanced. 3. It favors skill over deck quality. 4. It has some really cool mechanics (lanes and runes) which makes playing even the most straightforward decks a thinking exercise at higher skill levels. 5. It finds a nice balance between deck-building/skill and RNG so that the better player will almost always win but you have a bit of uncertainty which keeps it interesting.* 6. There's tons and tons of different viable decks at top levels of competition. And even then they have different variants and variations, which makes it constantly interesting to play.
* I used to be the proponent of removing all RNG from the games so that you always know who's the better player etc. The problem with that is that it quite soon becomes predictable and boring.
On May 20 2017 01:02 Manit0u wrote: The game does look interesting but I don't like it anyway. Its major problem is that most of the stuff revolves around +/- power which isn't especially exciting. I'm not a fan of the UI either - everything seems really tiny and you can't really appreciate the artwork and such (artwork is a big thing for me, having played all sorts of card games for the past 25 years), further reducing cards to just squares with numbers on them.
My another gripe with it is that it's just not dynamic enough.
Your screenshot looks out of date by a bit, it hasn't changed much since it was first shown but nonetheless here are a few from the current build for anyone interested.
It didn't change much. It's still just boxes with numbers and plenty of +/- math to do. Not very exciting.
"It's just boxes with numbers and math, not very exciting" Why are you even here, then? To tell people talking about a game other than ESL how much more of a fanboy you are of ESL and tell them how much more "experience" you have playing games then they do? Just because you don't like it doesn't it's bad and it doesn't mean other people can't like it, no matter how many other games you've played.
It's fun, it's unique, if anyone is somewhat interested in Gwent then they should play it and not be turned away just because a fanboy of another game doesn't like it.
May sound like a silly question for some, but as an avid magic: the gathering player this is important to me: does Gwent allow you to play on your opponent's turn? The fact that you can't in hearthstone is what makes that game incredibly boring to me.
On May 21 2017 17:23 maartendq wrote: May sound like a silly question for some, but as an avid magic: the gathering player this is important to me: does Gwent allow you to play on your opponent's turn? The fact that you can't in hearthstone is what makes that game incredibly boring to me.
It's really not a game you should compare to Magic nor Hearthstone, whether or not you like Gwent isn't going to depend so much on whether or not you like either of those. You can't interrupt your opponent on their turn, there are no "counterspells", there are no hit points (only each players score), you do not draw cards each turn (only after each round). There is, however, a Graveyard, an "Exile zone", and cards can be Loyal (played on your side of the board) or Disployal (played on your opponent's side). Decks also consist of a minimum 25 cards and maximum 40, with a max number of 3 copies for most cards and 1 copy each for "rare" cards.
On May 21 2017 17:23 maartendq wrote: May sound like a silly question for some, but as an avid magic: the gathering player this is important to me: does Gwent allow you to play on your opponent's turn? The fact that you can't in hearthstone is what makes that game incredibly boring to me.
It's really not a game you should compare to Magic nor Hearthstone, whether or not you like Gwent isn't going to depend so much on whether or not you like either of those. You can't interrupt your opponent on their turn, there are no "counterspells", there are no hit points (only each players score), you do not draw cards each turn (only after each round). There is, however, a Graveyard, an "Exile zone", and cards can be Loyal (played on your side of the board) or Disployal (played on your opponent's side). Decks also consist of a minimum 25 cards and maximum 40, with a max number of 3 copies for most cards and 1 copy each for "rare" cards.
It's not about comparing it to either hearthstone or magic: the gathering, but much more about being able to interact with your opponent, which seems to be something a lot of these online-only card games have a hard time with (or don't build into their game because it adds a significant layer of complication. Interaction is important to me, whether it is social interaction or in-game. To put it differently, I don't like not being able to interrupt my opponent's gameplan during his turn. Having a trick up your sleeve or a trap to spring is just incredibly satisfying.
I haven't played the game yet, but am looking forward to open beta. From what I've seen I believe blunderfulguy's comparison to poker or bridge is apt.
This isn't a card game where you reduce your opponent's life to 0 to win; each turn you only play one card or pass; your turn is over once you play a card, there is no attacking. So by not having life points on players nor units, Gwent already departs from your usual magic-style or hearthstone-style card games, like Dire Wolf Digital's Eternal or TESL, or Faeria, all of which have hit points, and units that attack. The only 'card game' that I can think of that is way different like Gwent is Prismata, which isn't really a card game, because players don't even have decks in that game.
I feel like maartendq is a bit confused, or rather, his question is naive because it makes assumptions about card games in general that don't apply to Gwent. The idea of playing on your opponent's turn doesn't make sense in Gwent, as there is no turn structure. You play your card, and then your turn is over. You can respond to your opponent's card by playing your own card that counters it. I'm sure that in Gwent there are tons of ways to disrupt your' opponent's gameplan; you just don't do it by casting instant-speed spells.
One of the first observations made after learning the rules is that: if on your turn your score is already higher than your opponent's, then the usual move is to pass (because you do not need to play another card to win for now, and it's better to wait for more information before playing). So even though nominally it's only one card played per turn, if both players follow this rule, it's equivalent to both player alternate "play cards until your score is higher". But if two cards played consecutively could combo, then it might make sense to interrupt the combo. Then that leaves open the possibility of playing the first card in a combo without having the second card, to draw out a card from your opponent. On the Gwent website the game is promoted as one in which you can bluff, and this is one of the ways I imagine it could happen.
Yeah that's pretty spot on datscilly. I haven't gotten to play much since the beta first started but I think this still applies: the meta not only shifts in terms of which factions are popular or which decks/cards are popular, but when and how certain combos are disrupted shifts as well. For a brief period a lot of players would play out the majority of their cards in the first round, but it seems that most people are now only playing 1-3 cards in the first round, though I have seen some much higher skilled players than myself play out half their hand so perhaps it's dependent on the matchup at that level.
There are a lot of interactions if you play well, but they aren't the "normal" types of interactions people think of for TCGs. Instead of spending a resource and a card to do something on your opponent's turn, you spend a card or pass your turn/your win for that round, cards and turns being much more valuable than in a game like Magic or Hearthstone. In Gwent it's also perfectly normal for a player to intentionally "throw" a whole round/win in order to save cards for the next round in the Best of 3 because cards are often more valuable than one round; "lose the battle but win the war" and all that.
Ya know, whenever I've explained anything about Gwent to someone I always did it so simply but only after talking about it here do I realize how weird it is to compare it to other TCGs.
On May 20 2017 06:44 KillerSOS wrote: What's the other game in the screenshot?
Elder Scrolls: Legends. IMO the best digital card game out there at the moment.
Meh, ESL's art, awkward UI/UX and the intro get in the way for me, especially since it plays about the same as every digital card game outside of the lane system.
What's nice about Gwent is that it wasn't made to be played the same way that Magic, Hearthstone, or even Netrunner or Ascension, it plays like a very strange, interesting TCG and poker or bridge hybrid. Instead of being about flinging spells at stuff and vying for battlefield control to damage your opponent's life pool, it's much more about baiting or forcing things from your opponent and bluffing.
The mechanics alongside Witcher fluff, good UI, solid and homogeneous card art reminiscent of the Romance Cards from the first Witcher game, it all makes for a really unique and refreshing game. Plus, it doesn't force drab story or annoying narration at you or waste time with long animations. It's really well done, the engine and UI and everything are always being worked on, and there's a fairly low barrier to entry with a high skill ceiling and lower than average randomness for a digital card game.
It's just nice. Not for everyone, unlike the majority of recent card games, and I think that's good and also by design.
I have 20+ years of experience with card games (as in, physical card games of all varieties, from poker and bridge to mtg and vtes). TESL is actually the first digital card game that I keep playing (and I've tried a lot of them, believe me). I don't mind slow and thoughtful games (my favorite kind of deck is a control deck and nothing strikes my fancy as much as control vs control match-up - I love to slug it out and think about consequences of every single move). Gwent, in all its apparent complexity and such is really just a very simple game and after years of playing all sorts of card games it just doesn't have anything special that would make it interesting for me. At the same time TESL, while still being fairly generic as far as card games go introduces a fair bit of new and captivating mechanics that make it very desirable for an avid card game player: 1. It's very dynamic. 2. It's fairly well balanced. 3. It favors skill over deck quality. 4. It has some really cool mechanics (lanes and runes) which makes playing even the most straightforward decks a thinking exercise at higher skill levels. 5. It finds a nice balance between deck-building/skill and RNG so that the better player will almost always win but you have a bit of uncertainty which keeps it interesting.* 6. There's tons and tons of different viable decks at top levels of competition. And even then they have different variants and variations, which makes it constantly interesting to play.
* I used to be the proponent of removing all RNG from the games so that you always know who's the better player etc. The problem with that is that it quite soon becomes predictable and boring.
On May 21 2017 00:19 blunderfulguy wrote:
On May 20 2017 01:02 Manit0u wrote: The game does look interesting but I don't like it anyway. Its major problem is that most of the stuff revolves around +/- power which isn't especially exciting. I'm not a fan of the UI either - everything seems really tiny and you can't really appreciate the artwork and such (artwork is a big thing for me, having played all sorts of card games for the past 25 years), further reducing cards to just squares with numbers on them.
My another gripe with it is that it's just not dynamic enough.
Your screenshot looks out of date by a bit, it hasn't changed much since it was first shown but nonetheless here are a few from the current build for anyone interested.
It didn't change much. It's still just boxes with numbers and plenty of +/- math to do. Not very exciting.
"It's just boxes with numbers and math, not very exciting" Why are you even here, then? To tell people talking about a game other than ESL how much more of a fanboy you are of ESL and tell them how much more "experience" you have playing games then they do? Just because you don't like it doesn't it's bad and it doesn't mean other people can't like it, no matter how many other games you've played.
It's fun, it's unique, if anyone is somewhat interested in Gwent then they should play it and not be turned away just because a fanboy of another game doesn't like it.
I never said that Gwent is bad (I'm sure I even labeled it as "interesting"). I just voiced my complaints about its UI and limited mechanics by comparing it to another title. I don't remember it being the "Praise Gwent" thread so I'm just voicing my opinion on it.
On May 22 2017 06:40 Amarok wrote: How different is it to the Witcher 3 version of the game?
Didn't play the original version in Witcher 3, but open beta (starting Wednesday) will see a large number of changes. Lifecoach has been playing on the PTR up to now, from watching the stream here are the significant changes I saw:
Most gold/silver cards have been reworked.
Leader cards will have power and go onto the battlefields.
Different weathers will have different debuff effects, some look pretty OP atm, probably will warrant some further tuning.
More emphasis on the positioning of units on the board (spells affecting adjacent units, etc), there are new row shuffling mechanics as well. In combination with weather cards, it makes up for the lack of board interaction.
You can mulligan a card at the beginning of round 2 and 3 to further minimize bad RNG draws.
All cards will have animated versions. I know this is not important gameplay wise, but playing a all-premium deck makes your side of the board look incredibly awesome.
Edit: I also have to disagree with whoever finds the UI bad/unappealing. This isn't a combat oriented card game, it appeals more to Poker/Bridge players who enjoy arithmetics and reading your opponent's hand. If you are looking for interactive combat mechanics, Hex/Eternal/Shadowverse would be better suited as alternatives to HS/Magic.
A strong deck in HS / Magic can carry itself even when the player piloting it has mediocre skills. So far I found this isn't true at all for Gwent. I get rolled over whenever I try a deck that I never practiced before, it's pretty insane how deep of a learning curve it has. It's very hard to see the optimal play each turn as I play the game out. Only in retrospect do I realize the misplays I make.
I agree with the other comments here. This isn't really an "interactive" game in the same pace as MTG, or even HS. Don't get me wrong, there is some interaction, but it's secondary to the construction of your own gameplan.
It plays more like traditional old-school games than the TCGs of today, which is just fine.
Deckbuilding plays a huge role since you generally draw/see 80% of your deck in any given game, which makes the change of a single card massive in your winrate and playstyle. It's a great change of pace from MTG and HS.
How f2p is this game? If I read correctly, you can open 3 kegs/day by doing the "challenges" or whatever. How quickly should I expect to have a decent card collection doing this?
Also there are normal-rare-epic-legendary tiers but also bronze-silver-gold? That confuses me.
Definitely downloading this tonight when it's out for the normies though.
On May 24 2017 22:56 Laurens wrote: How f2p is this game? If I read correctly, you can open 3 kegs/day by doing the "challenges" or whatever. How quickly should I expect to have a decent card collection doing this?
Also there are normal-rare-epic-legendary tiers but also bronze-silver-gold? That confuses me.
Definitely downloading this tonight when it's out for the normies though.
I haven't played yet, only watched a bunch of videos - so take what I say with a grain of salt.
But it seems like those 3 kegs a day (and possibly other rewards) can go a long ways.
That's because when you open a keg, you are guaranteed a higher power card - and you have a CHOICE of what the higher power card is. So you can start to fill your deck requirements much faster than if you get completely random cards.
On May 24 2017 22:56 Laurens wrote: How f2p is this game? If I read correctly, you can open 3 kegs/day by doing the "challenges" or whatever. How quickly should I expect to have a decent card collection doing this?
Also there are normal-rare-epic-legendary tiers but also bronze-silver-gold? That confuses me.
Definitely downloading this tonight when it's out for the normies though.
For deck building, you should only consider card borders: Bronze: limit of 3 of each card per deck, you can have as many bronze cards in a deck as you want Silver: limit of 1 of each card per deck, total cap of 6 silver cards per deck Gold: limit of 1 of each card per deck, total cap of 4 gold cards per deck
The square dot on the bottom right of the card represents rarity (this only affects the drop rate from kegs). In most cases, common (white) and rare(blue) will correspond to Bronze, epic(purple) will be silver, and legendary (gold) will correspond to gold borders in open beta. Closed beta had a confusing mix of epic and legendaries among silver and gold bordered cards. They should be consistent in the open beta going forward.
PS: minimum of 25 cards per deck. You can add more but it will just dilute the gold/silver cards and make the deck less consistent.
Having a deck tracker like HS would be incredibly helpful in this game. I often find myself digging through graveyards to remember what's left in each deck.
Looks like I will just f2p in this game because for some reason the price of kegs is insane.
We are talking about digital items here that as far as I can tell aren't even trade-able, I shouldn't have to pay more than the cost of a new computer game to *possibly* get enough cards/dust to make 1 deck.
On May 25 2017 00:54 Glacierz wrote: Having a deck tracker like HS would be incredibly helpful in this game. I often find myself digging through graveyards to remember what's left in each deck.
There is a deck tracker afaik, i don't use one myself though so you'll have to search, but i know there are people using it
@Travis, people say it takes around 2 weeks to get a competitive deck with F2P, not sure if thats good or bad as this is my first card game. But my plan is to do the same.
On May 24 2017 22:56 Laurens wrote: How f2p is this game? If I read correctly, you can open 3 kegs/day by doing the "challenges" or whatever. How quickly should I expect to have a decent card collection doing this?
Also there are normal-rare-epic-legendary tiers but also bronze-silver-gold? That confuses me.
Definitely downloading this tonight when it's out for the normies though.
Most people share the opinion that Gwent has a way better f2p model than HS, if you're familiar with it. The only downside that I see is that you can't save 3 dailies to do them all on one day. So, if you want to clear every daily (which is what you mean with challenges) you'd have to clear them every day. The upside is because of Gwent's BO3-gameplay you don't have to win games to clear dailies, only rounds. The daily rewards have diminishing value: after 6 won rounds you get 100 ore(gold) which equals 1 keg(pack), after 12 more won rounds you get 75 ore, after 24 more 50 ore and after some absurd number of won rounds 25 ore I think (only mad men will get there). Also, after won rounds 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 22, 26 and so on you'll randomly get 25 ore or scraps(dust). Bottom line, to win 18 rounds for around 250 ore or 2 1/2 kegs, you'll have to play like 2-3 hours with a winrate of 50% which I think is way less than in HS. Doing this every day will give you around 200 kegs and lots of scraps after 3 months which is enough for maybe 2 or 3 tier 1 decks from different factions, maybe more.
Furthermore, if your opponent gives you a GG after the game (which is just a simple click and most people give it) you get 5 ore or scraps. All of this only apllies to Multiplayer and can't be earned in practice matches against AI. There also are the challenges that you were mentioning which function like beginner quests and are embedded into Tutorials. These give you around 10 kegs and access to leader cards for the factions and will take like 5 hours, but you don't have to do them in the beginning if you want to directly dive into Multiplayer.
Edit: Also you get rewards for leveling up (by getting xp) in Multiplayer and for ranking up on the ladder. And, of course, there are end of season rewards but nobody knows yet how long a typical season will last.
As Travis said, a keg contains, just like in HS, 5 cards with at least 1 rare. For the guaranteed higher tier card you have 3 options to choose from (which obviously is great but can be a bit frustrating for beginners when you don't know which is the best). The tiers were correctly explained by Glacierz, so you won't meet decks with more than 4 gold (legendary) and 6 silver (epic) cards. The crafting costs are similar to HS if I remember correctly.
All in all, I played the closed beta f2p for around 3 months and at no point did I have the feeling that my progress is too slow, quite the contrary.
On May 25 2017 00:54 Glacierz wrote: Having a deck tracker like HS would be incredibly helpful in this game. I often find myself digging through graveyards to remember what's left in each deck.
There was a functioning tracker in closed beta but I guess they will need some time to get it working in the new patch/open beta since almost all cards and some mechanics got reworked.
I just saw on reddit that another tracker (which I didn't like that much because of UI) is already working for open beta.
On May 25 2017 05:13 travis wrote: Looks like I will just f2p in this game because for some reason the price of kegs is insane.
We are talking about digital items here that as far as I can tell aren't even trade-able, I shouldn't have to pay more than the cost of a new computer game to *possibly* get enough cards/dust to make 1 deck.
I just looked at the prices and I guess they are comparable to HS. But I agree, I won't be spending money for digital items. The only reason would be to support CDPR because they are doing a great job with the game. Also, because the f2p model is really good, I get the feeling that if I'd give them money I'd do it voluntarily and not because the game forces me to if I want to play competitive decks.
On May 25 2017 00:54 Glacierz wrote: Having a deck tracker like HS would be incredibly helpful in this game. I often find myself digging through graveyards to remember what's left in each deck.
@Travis, people say it takes around 2 weeks to get a competitive deck with F2P, not sure if thats good or bad as this is my first card game. But my plan is to do the same.
I don't think 2 weeks is enough to build a real tier 1 deck but you'll certainly be able to be competitive. Maybe not reaching rank 20, but like 10-15 depending on your skill. It might be possible to build ONE tier 1 deck after 2 weeks f2ping but you'd have to mill (dust) all cards that you don't need for the deck which you really shouldn't if you intend to play the game for some time longer.
BTW guys, if you didn't notice, I'm super hyped because open beta just started, so my love for the game is at a new max right now. I just hope that CDPR won't change their approach (especially f2p wise) when/if they get more market share.
Edit: Presumably with official release there will come a Singleplayer campaign which will be a novelty for CCGs I'm also pretty hyped about.
I dug in and played ~3 hours. Did the tutorial and won 18 rounds to get that sweet 175 ore. It's a great concept but somehow it still feels quite boring. I'm a HS player and all the RNG there can be frustrating, but it's also what makes the game fun. Gwent is more skill-based, but also less fun? Maybe unlocking more cards will change things.
As pointed out above, choosing between 3 rare cards is pretty hard for a beginner, I had no clue what was good...
I opened 5 kegs now and 4 kegs had a rare, 1 keg had an epic. Is anything more known about droprates? Pity timers?
Only 1 rare+ card per keg is pretty harsh.
Still, will play it some more the next days, I do really like the concept/gameplay.
On May 25 2017 06:05 Laurens wrote: Thanks for all the answers guys.
I dug in and played ~3 hours. Did the tutorial and won 18 rounds to get that sweet 175 ore. It's a great concept but somehow it still feels quite boring. I'm a HS player and all the RNG there can be frustrating, but it's also what makes the game fun. Gwent is more skill-based, but also less fun? Maybe unlocking more cards will change things.
As pointed out above, choosing between 3 rare cards is pretty hard for a beginner, I had no clue what was good...
I opened 5 kegs now and 4 kegs had a rare, 1 keg had an epic. Is anything more known about droprates? Pity timers?
Only 1 rare+ card per keg is pretty harsh.
Still, will play it some more the next days, I do really like the concept/gameplay.
Read up on drop rates here. They are also collecting data on reddit the coming days because there was a wipe before open beta started and all closed beta players are opening the kegs that they bought during closed beta or received for participating.
For the being-fun part: I'd say, in the beginning, every card game isn't that much fun if you don't invest money right away since your deck choices are very limited. But if you stay on it and do the dailies for like 2 weeks you will be able to build your first really competitive budget deck. It takes like I said, 2-3 hours, but after this point it gets much better. Was like that for me at least. You can also take a look at this new players guide. Seems to be up to date and clears some things up.
WOW it feels like so much has changed since I played a few days ago. I wonder how long new features or card designs go from being made and tested to getting put into the beta, it feels so, so quick, especially with new card behaviors and whatnot.
The Challenges are really nice, they give a bit more purpose and direction to having a go against the AI, and are plain neat. Some of the card changes are a bit questionable to me, though others make a lot of sense or do better what they were already trying to do. It looks like the Gwent deckbuilding sites are keeping very up-to-date as well, so good on them.
Really exciting finally having an open beta and getting more stuff to learn with everybody else, I just wish I had more time!
On May 25 2017 05:57 Ncutable wrote: Edit: Presumably with official release there will come a Singleplayer campaign which will be a novelty for CCGs.
I know that people will flame me for this but TES:Legends has 2 single player campaigns with branching storylines (and solo arena to boot) so it's not that much of a novelty any more.
Gonna check out Gwent some more since I love deck building the most.
On May 25 2017 05:57 Ncutable wrote: Edit: Presumably with official release there will come a Singleplayer campaign which will be a novelty for CCGs.
I know that people will flame me for this but TES:Legends has 2 single player campaigns with branching storylines (and solo arena to boot) so it's not that much of a novelty any more.
Gonna check out Gwent some more since I love deck building the most.
I don't see why people would flame you for this. I mean, even the Adventures in HS can be seen as mini-campaigns but I didn't know other CCGs had campaigns with storylines and such. Thx for correcting me, will edit.
On May 25 2017 21:32 r.Evo wrote: Do we know if any progress made during open beta will carry into the release version? Kegs, levels, that kind of stuff.
Not sure but i know the people that bought kegs in closed beta got them all back for open beta, so i assume it'll be the same on release.
On May 25 2017 21:32 r.Evo wrote: Do we know if any progress made during open beta will carry into the release version? Kegs, levels, that kind of stuff.
Not sure but i know the people that bought kegs in closed beta got them all back for open beta, so i assume it'll be the same on release.
Bought kegs with cash, or ores?
Edit: I found this on the Public beta FAQ:
Do you plan on wiping accounts in the future? No further account progress wipes are planned, but — since GWENT is still in the beta stage of development — however unlikely, wipes are technically still possible. If we need to reset your beta progress, we will inform about that in advance.
On May 25 2017 21:32 r.Evo wrote: Do we know if any progress made during open beta will carry into the release version? Kegs, levels, that kind of stuff.
Not sure but i know the people that bought kegs in closed beta got them all back for open beta, so i assume it'll be the same on release.
Bought kegs with cash, or ores?
Edit: I found this on the Public beta FAQ:
Do you plan on wiping accounts in the future? No further account progress wipes are planned, but — since GWENT is still in the beta stage of development — however unlikely, wipes are technically still possible. If we need to reset your beta progress, we will inform about that in advance.
Schweet!
Cash i think, was watching dansgaming stream it and he had 150 kegs to open.
On May 25 2017 07:34 travis wrote: my AI opponent just played a card face down as it's last card the next turn i won the game. never got to see what the face down card was
wtf?
Ambush cards only flip when certain trigger is met under the spring condition. They do not do anything until they are flipped.
Some more remarks: The AI in the challenges makes some pretty stupid decisions. Hitting the 1 HP unit with the 7 dmg spell instead of the bigger one next to it, passing at the most hilarious times, etc. They talk about a big solo player campaign upon launch, improving the AI would be a good first step for that
On a sidenote, I play this on a 3 year old laptop and it's overheating quite badly. When I tab out of the game to type a msg on facebook I have serious input lag. This laptop runs HS without any issues and I even played GTA 5 on it. I googled around and found other laptop users with similar issues, hopefully they optimize this a bit.
On May 25 2017 23:34 Laurens wrote: Some more remarks: The AI in the challenges makes some pretty stupid decisions. Hitting the 1 HP unit with the 7 dmg spell instead of the bigger one next to it, passing at the most hilarious times, etc. They talk about a big solo player campaign upon launch, improving the AI would be a good first step for that
On a sidenote, I play this on a 3 year old laptop and it's overheating quite badly. When I tab out of the game to type a msg on facebook I have serious input lag. This laptop runs HS without any issues and I even played GTA 5 on it. I googled around and found other laptop users with similar issues, hopefully they optimize this a bit.
Do you have a bunch of other stuff open? Haven't noticed if Gwent is a RAM hog, but that might be the case for you?
Passing with an ambush unit when the AI is slightly ahead makes it stop playing cards. I won all of my challenges without dropping a single round with the card Toruviel.
If you are looking to complete the challenges quickly to get all the leaders, I'd recommend this cheese.
Yea, Drought and Ragh Nar Roog seem pretty OP atm, definitely require tuning. Geralt: Igni has also been extremely strong and remained unchanged. I will probably craft these first if they refund crafting costs for nerfed cards.
If an opponent locks my resilient unit, and then I unlock it, it should get it's resilience back no? Because it doesn't. It seems like unlocking things does nothing.
On May 26 2017 06:21 travis wrote: If an opponent locks my resilient unit, and then I unlock it, it should get it's resilience back no? Because it doesn't. It seems like unlocking things does nothing.
Fairly positive unlocking only exists for turn-based cards.
On May 26 2017 06:21 travis wrote: If an opponent locks my resilient unit, and then I unlock it, it should get it's resilience back no? Because it doesn't. It seems like unlocking things does nothing.
Fairly positive unlocking only exists for turn-based cards.
well, then what does locking exist for? wouldn't it be counterintuitive for unlocking to not do the opposite of locking?
anyways after i unlocked it the card said resilient on it - it just wasn't *actually* resilient
When your opponent plays Drought, just play your own gold units who are unaffected. He wasted one of his gold cards for 0 gain.
With weather removal and immune units Drought isn't guaranteed to score you many points tbh. I run the default Monster golds and they swing the points by 10+ each time I play them. Seems better
Had 450 kegs to open on the wipe took FOREVER, wish they made it easier to mass open kegs. I'm using drought in my deck at the moment and it does seem very good but im guessing clear skies will just rotate into the meta and drought will be really bad taking up a gold slot just to be cleared.
Takes a bit too long to get level 10 and unlock ranked imo.
I'm lvl 6, which means I still need to get 4200 exp to unlock ranked. Getting to 6 takes 3000 exp so I'm not even halfway there.
I have a decent Monster deck already, centered around Frost. I'm ready for ranked and I wanna play ranked, instead I have to slog my way through 2-3 more days of Casual, bleh.
Weather is very good against budget decks unfortunately. It's not nearly as overbearing at higher ranks, where you can get silver cards with stats + weather clear effects, better deck thinning to draw clear sky when necessary, and better positional play to avoid excessive damage.
Just opened my first golden legendary but it was one of the first 4 in the pack, so I couldn't choose between 3. Afterwards I got a choice between 3 bronze rares though xD
That sucks. Does anyone know if this also resets my pity timer?
Well the example I am experiencing is queensguard, it is half of my games and without having specific cards in the deck I have almost no chance to beat it - despite knowing exactly what they are going to do.
On May 27 2017 03:49 travis wrote: after playing a bit more, im starting to get a little disappointed with how rock-paper-scissors the game feels (much like most other card games)
I was hoping that the strategical depth of the game transcended that, but it doesn't appear that it does.
still a cool game, but I was hoping for something else I guess
Can you elaborate? Obviously different decks work better or worse against others, like decks using a lot of resurrection, may struggle against decks which can manipulate the graveyard. But I don't think there are really hard counters, in a rock-paper-scissors sense. You may just need to adjust your strategy or play around certain cards vs unfavourable decks.
In the closed beta there were multiple viable decks at the very top of the ladder and the same could be seen in Gwent Challenger. With the changes made in open beta there should be even more variety. And it's still a beta, with the plan being to add more cards and possibly even more factions in the future.
Also, the beta has just launched 3 days ago and most people haven't even reached the ranked play yet, there's hardly any meta at the moment.
Edit: Queensguard is slightly OP at the moment, some good cards against it include Cyprian Wiley, Letho and Vicovaro Medics.
On May 27 2017 09:21 travis wrote: Well the example I am experiencing is queensguard, it is half of my games and without having specific cards in the deck I have almost no chance to beat it - despite knowing exactly what they are going to do.
If you are facing refined queensguard decks when you are F2P, it will be pretty lopsided. You won't enjoy it as much until you have a deck with fairly close power levels.
Kinda bad luck getting them half of your games, my opponents have been all over the place in terms of decks (their skills are improving as I level up, but I haven't been running into OP stuff atm). Maybe you had a high win rate early and the matchmaking is pairing you with players with much better decks now.
On May 27 2017 09:21 travis wrote: Well the example I am experiencing is queensguard, it is half of my games and without having specific cards in the deck I have almost no chance to beat it - despite knowing exactly what they are going to do.
For beginners who are f2p I'd recommend working towards a budget dwarf deck first. It's what I did in closed beta and seems to still work just fine. It might take some time for guys who didn't play closed beta and had no kegs given to them with open beta. But it's easy to play and fairly flexible in terms of which cards you can tech in. I'd recommend you take a look at Swim's list (with budget variant) and go from there. I run my own list with Cyprian Wiley who weakens (reduces base strength) a unit by 3 which means in the first round you can banish a Queensguard (because its base strength goes to zero and is therefore banished) or if consume Monster should become relevant, you can banish a Nekker. The deck isn't super fun to play because it's so straight forward but it helps you get wins and climb up the ladder where you can earn those nice Ranked rewards to save up for a other deck. As in HS, the strategical depth gets much better when you can afford control decks. From this point on, you really have to think about what might be in your opponent's hand, when to play certain cards and how to get out your opponent's key cards at opportune times.
I have to admit, when I was starting out I sometimes got frustrated and really bored with playing dwarfs and after their nerf weather monster because I couldn't afford more expensive decks. But when I got to the point where I could build a budget control ST and then card for card go to the full version, I really started enjoying the depth and "lack" of RNG in the game.
Deploy, Clash: Boost self by 15, then your opponent Draws a Revealed Bronze card.
What if there hasn't been a revealed bronze card yet? Just a 25 strength unit on the board?
Only faced him once thankfully. Seems like auto-win in round 3 tbh.
The card text means that the opponent draws a bronze card which is then revealed. He's really strong especially if milling becomes a thing on high level because you can't draw a card if your deck's empty. If not he's a 10-strength-gold like Gerald with extra 15 minus "value of drawn bronze card" which is a bit lower than face value because the card is revealed. If he proves too strong they could balance by tweaking numbers or letting him draw any card for the opponent not just bronze.
Future plans are adding in paid single player campaigns, more game modes, and tournaments. Interesting to note they are prioritizing a Chinese version, throwing in some competition to the Hearthstone market over there. I remember a chart over the Gwent tournament that showed there was interest from China.
It's a fun game, the mechanics are good, there's enough strategy and meta to make it interesting
The biggest issue is if you're F2P or anything close to that (you'd probably need to just straight up drop 120 bucks if you want to actually do something) you're going to be just grinding away at the dwarves for what seems quite a while
Here's to hoping that a draft mode or something similar comes out which i can spam on infinite to build up a collection like hearthstone
On May 28 2017 00:59 Glacierz wrote: Tibor is pretty insane, a really good bronze is only worth about 10 points on average.
It gives them an extra turn in the final round though so they can use that bronze card to stall and play a better card later that you then can't respond to.
On May 28 2017 00:59 Glacierz wrote: Tibor is pretty insane, a really good bronze is only worth about 10 points on average.
It gives them an extra turn in the final round though so they can use that bronze card to stall and play a better card later that you then can't respond to.
Tibor gets played towards the end so the opponent doesn't really have the luxury of optimizing the sequencing with the extra turn. I don't think it would be correct to drop him early in the round.
I think you'd be right about that in the closed beta. This open beta is less about card advantage and more about tempo, a 25 power gold card is pretty impossible to overcome with a single bronze draw.
I'm running into a lot of weather clear silver minions with decoy now, it's getting hard to get RNR / Drought to stick. I think people are catching on. When this happens I'm basically trading a gold for a silver for about 2 net power on average.
Comes on the board with 15 strength, puts a 5 strength Ogroid on your side of the field. If that Ogroid dies, Hjalmar gains an additional 10 strength.
Of course my opponent killed it straight away the next turn lol, removing 5 hp minion from board isn't exactly hard.
So what's the play there, pass as soon as Hjalmar hits the field? (Assuming you aren't already behind and passing makes sense) After seeing this and Tibor, those gold weather cards seem rather tame tbh
On May 28 2017 16:32 SkelA wrote: Opened my first keg and picked drought. Is it good or I flunked on my pick?
You made the correct choice lmao
Even with people running anti weather, that doesn't change the fact that rag and drought are imba as f, worst cast scenario you drop it for a free 6-9 damage that they HAVE to play a card to counter or they lose the round
On May 28 2017 17:25 Laurens wrote: Ran into another 25 power legendary: Hjalmar.
Comes on the board with 15 strength, puts a 5 strength Ogroid on your side of the field. If that Ogroid dies, Hjalmar gains an additional 10 strength.
Of course my opponent killed it straight away the next turn lol, removing 5 hp minion from board isn't exactly hard.
So what's the play there, pass as soon as Hjalmar hits the field? (Assuming you aren't already behind and passing makes sense) After seeing this and Tibor, those gold weather cards seem rather tame tbh
This card requires another step for the additional 10 power. If your opponent spends a card killing the Ogroid, it's not really as OP as Tibor.
On May 28 2017 16:32 SkelA wrote: Opened my first keg and picked drought. Is it good or I flunked on my pick?
You made the correct choice lmao
Even with people running anti weather, that doesn't change the fact that rag and drought are imba as f, worst cast scenario you drop it for a free 6-9 damage that they HAVE to play a card to counter or they lose the round
The counter card is usually bronze/silver, so you are trading a gold for a bronze for 6-9 dmg, or gold for silver for 2-4 dmg assuming the silver card is about 4 str.
On May 28 2017 17:25 Laurens wrote: Ran into another 25 power legendary: Hjalmar.
Comes on the board with 15 strength, puts a 5 strength Ogroid on your side of the field. If that Ogroid dies, Hjalmar gains an additional 10 strength.
Of course my opponent killed it straight away the next turn lol, removing 5 hp minion from board isn't exactly hard.
So what's the play there, pass as soon as Hjalmar hits the field? (Assuming you aren't already behind and passing makes sense) After seeing this and Tibor, those gold weather cards seem rather tame tbh
This card requires another step for the additional 10 power. If your opponent spends a card killing the Ogroid, it's not really as OP as Tibor.
Yeah perhaps. He pulled off a neat little combo though
1) play the 4 strength bear which does 1 dmg to any minions your opponent summons (In hindsight I should've immediately killed this bear, lessons learned) 2) play Hjalmar, Ogroid comes on my side of the field and takes dmg from his bear 3) play a creature that does 2 dmg to an enemy, if the enemy was already wounded, summon another copy of this creature
On May 28 2017 00:59 Glacierz wrote: Tibor is pretty insane, a really good bronze is only worth about 10 points on average.
It gives them an extra turn in the final round though so they can use that bronze card to stall and play a better card later that you then can't respond to.
Tibor gets played towards the end so the opponent doesn't really have the luxury of optimizing the sequencing with the extra turn. I don't think it would be correct to drop him early in the round.
I think you'd be right about that in the closed beta. This open beta is less about card advantage and more about tempo, a 25 power gold card is pretty impossible to overcome with a single bronze draw.
I'm sure something will be figured out the old weather and buffs made it easier to abuse CA but there will be someone else im sure.
Hey I had closed beta, but when open beta arrives all cards were reseted. Not sure about statment saying people are 100 kegs ahead. This is not true, unless they buy card in beta lulz. But pretty much yes, if u dont have cards u cant play this game when u meet a opponent who just use legend after legend while u only have basic geralt hehehe
And its not like you will find balance in card game based on RNG (as every card game).
Will see in the future if game is more balanced that pay to win hearthstone.
On May 30 2017 04:38 Tryneus wrote: Hey I had closed beta, but when open beta arrives all cards were reseted. Not sure about statment saying people are 100 kegs ahead. This is not true, unless they buy card in beta lulz. But pretty much yes, if u dont have cards u cant play this game when u meet a opponent who just use legend after legend while u only have basic geralt hehehe
And its not like you will find balance in card game based on RNG (as every card game).
Will see in the future if game is more balanced that pay to win hearthstone.
You get refunds for kegs (ofc) but they also got kegs for being ranked level in the closed beta
Finally reached lvl 10 and got placed at rank 7. Received another 4 kegs and hundreds of scraps for that, the amount of free stuff you can collect in Gwent is definitely nice. The f2p experience feels solid so far.
On a less positive note, opened an epic and AGAIN it was one of the first 4 cards in the keg, so I didn't get a choice between 3. This happened with my first (and so far only) legendary as well. It's really shitty that it's complete RNG whether you get to choose between 3 epics/legendaries or 3 bronze rares -_-
Finally got enough stuff to build myself a half decent queensgard deck now
I'm really enjoying gwent atm. The game is just about generous enough with packs if you play a few weeks you can build most decks bar the legendaries
It's fine for some of the decks where legendaries are just "insert good card", and for some other decks the legendaries are 100% vital (illithene in dwarfs) (RNR)
The most important aspect of the game is the mechanics are good and it has a good amount of strategy and deck variety and it's not just some RNGfest
On May 30 2017 16:01 Laurens wrote: Finally reached lvl 10 and got placed at rank 7. Received another 4 kegs and hundreds of scraps for that, the amount of free stuff you can collect in Gwent is definitely nice. The f2p experience feels solid so far.
On a less positive note, opened an epic and AGAIN it was one of the first 4 cards in the keg, so I didn't get a choice between 3. This happened with my first (and so far only) legendary as well. It's really shitty that it's complete RNG whether you get to choose between 3 epics/legendaries or 3 bronze rares -_-
I just look at it as a bonus its rare to get an extra rare/epic/legendary so to get 2 in a keg even if you don't get to choose is a nice bonus.
On May 30 2017 16:01 Laurens wrote: Finally reached lvl 10 and got placed at rank 7. Received another 4 kegs and hundreds of scraps for that, the amount of free stuff you can collect in Gwent is definitely nice. The f2p experience feels solid so far.
On a less positive note, opened an epic and AGAIN it was one of the first 4 cards in the keg, so I didn't get a choice between 3. This happened with my first (and so far only) legendary as well. It's really shitty that it's complete RNG whether you get to choose between 3 epics/legendaries or 3 bronze rares -_-
I just look at it as a bonus its rare to get an extra rare/epic/legendary so to get 2 in a keg even if you don't get to choose is a nice bonus.
Hmm, I'd much rather have 4 commons + a choice between 3 legendaries than 3 commons, 1 legendary, and a choice between 3 rares.
It resets the pity timer as well. At my current rate of ~3 kegs/day I pretty much get 1 legendary/week. But there is a big difference between "1 random legendary/week" and "choose one legendary out of 3 each week"
Got my budget dwarf deck almost completed, didn't take aslong as i expected as a F2P player. Probably gonna use it to grind untill i get multiple other competitive decks sorted, it'll probably get a bit tiresome after a while but whatever, so far im having a lot of fun.
On May 30 2017 22:08 ahswtini wrote: the only budget dwarf deck i looked at was swim's, but it's apparently outdated. anyone got a list i can build off?
Swims deck was from closed beta before the big balance patch so yes its way outdated
This is a new one from open beta and seems decent, i kinda made my own though and prefer cleaver over the 2 shackle cards but the strategy is similar, check it out.
Has anyone found a good Nilfgaard Control f2p deck? It's the only thing I haven't played or played against in any phase of the beta, but perhaps they rely too much on other leaders and gold and silver cards to be useful for lower leagues/budgets?
NG is pretty reliant on specific legendaries and silvers, so it's probably the closest to a "pay to win" faction. Kinda like old warrior in hearthstone aka "wallet warrior."
On May 31 2017 03:11 KillerSOS wrote: NG is pretty reliant on specific legendaries and silvers, so it's probably the closest to a "pay to win" faction. Kinda like old warrior in hearthstone aka "wallet warrior."
Yeah, it looks like I'll be waiting a while before I get a deck put together. My luck opening good silver cards has been pretty terrible ever since the beta started, lol.
Anyone else having major connection issues? The game was completely unplayable last night. Internet is fine, no problem with other games/activities. Would get disconnected every 5 or so minutes, even when just browsing collection.
Towards the end of closed beta their wasn't that many but I wasn't their right at the start, they just did a massive change to the game with the open beta so I would expect a fair few tweaks before it settles.
Just heard your ranking on ladder is based on your casual matches? Can anyone confirm, seems weird. I've been doing nothing but experimenting with certain decks in casual as i thought it didn't matter.
On June 01 2017 06:30 Reaps wrote: Just heard your ranking on ladder is based on your casual matches? Can anyone confirm, seems weird. I've been doing nothing but experimenting with certain decks in casual as i thought it didn't matter.
Only the initial ranking, once you entered ranked mode it doesn't matter.
On June 01 2017 05:59 BrTarolg wrote: They already said they will give refunds to nerfed cards so craft away
Not necessarily. I opened Yarpen and I'm playing with Dwarves atm. I wanna craft Ithlinne which is really strong with the deck, but also 800 of my 1000 remaining scraps lol.
If they nerf dwarves - but not Ithlinne - those scraps are gone
I'll craft her anyway, this deck is quite strong.
On June 01 2017 06:30 Reaps wrote: Just heard your ranking on ladder is based on your casual matches? Can anyone confirm, seems weird. I've been doing nothing but experimenting with certain decks in casual as i thought it didn't matter.
Think of your first casual games as placement matches, same as in Dota 2.
Very much enjoying my Consume/frost hybrid monster deck. Even though my cards are kinda cheap compared to some people you can still stay competitive which is a good thing (ive had ranked games against people 8 levels higher experience wise for example..i lost but it was close).
I would recommend researching the keywords and from there it's very user friendly and easy to get into for new players. Give it a try.
I've been playing with this NG Ciri-Dash deck and it's been beating everything I encounter. The deck thinning is pretty amazing, I usually start round 3 with only 3-4 cards left in the deck.
Between Calveit, Cahir, Royal Decree and mulligans, I haven't had a game where I wasn't able to pull Ciri in all of my rounds yet.
One thing i would say assuming you're not coming from the closed beta and started with a bunch of extra kegs
The first 60 kegs you get are the most valuable because milling SUCKS in this game and as a result crafting is equally terribad.
If you do want to compete, dropping 60 kegs at the beginning or near to the beginning is by far the most value way, but only if you're actually feeling like you'll enjoy the investment in the game
Crafted RnR to go with my Dorfs, feels dirty but for some reason the last 3 opponents I used it against didn't have First Light ready ... I've managed to reach 1500 MMR with this dwarf deck, but sometimes I get completely hammered by Calveit/Eithne decks. Those two deck types seem among the strongest atm? I don't think Dwarves ST can carry me much further though I'm hoping to reach rank 11 for the 4 keg reward.
Ideally you should be able to try force their hand in earlier turns, issue with this is the rest of the faction is so dam strong that you can't realistically do this consistently. Having played NG throughout closed beta it's a bit frustrating see them overtune the faction this hard. Hopefully they hit a nice balance eventually. It is a bit hard with the limited card pool though.
On June 04 2017 03:48 Numy wrote: Ideally you should be able to try force their hand in earlier turns, issue with this is the rest of the faction is so dam strong that you can't realistically do this consistently. Having played NG throughout closed beta it's a bit frustrating see them overtune the faction this hard. Hopefully they hit a nice balance eventually. It is a bit hard with the limited card pool though.
Happens rarely, as they buff several of their cards way too high. And don't forget, their is always the "draw three, choose one" option (twice).
Scorch is a silver card though. Hjalmar has a value of 10, Tibor...it depends but since it's usually always the final round, you will rarely have any worthwhile cards in your back. So the value really is at 18-20. Kayran isn't as useful, 18, sure, but it's better in earlier rounds which often matter less. Consume your own card to suddenly get a big advantage? Welp, easy pass.
Kayran seems better than Tibor in that after you Consume a weaker card in your hand like Ekimmara you get good value for a turn without helping your opponent, and in a later round you can Renew/Resurrect the Kayran for much more value.
On June 04 2017 15:58 Laurens wrote: With my Dwarf deck, the worst bronze I can pull from Tibor is a Mahakam Defender at 5/6 value (depends if I got Dennis out)
The others are 8-11 Never enough to beat Tibor's value sadly
But it's not him they should nerf, having a strong legendary is ok imo. Nerf everything else
But if you think of that, Tibor turns into ~15 value card, which isnt too busted for a gold. Not to mention that you get the last play. But yeah, hes a very good card. He wasn't that much different in Closed Beta (he only had 7 initital value but gained base strength) and noone played him except in some meme mill decks.
I think Coral is a bit op, gives you min. 20 almost every time. she definitly should be capped somehow.
As a nilfgaard player from closed beta I ofc really appreciate the state of NG atm. But I don't think its op, its just that there are basically no trash cards, all of them can be useful in certain decks which is great.
They just should just buff some useless cards of other factions.
Coral is meta though, she sucks vs monsters But yeah she is universally good because she nearly always hits for at least 10 points, and sometimes straight wins games, and can't be played around as easily like igni/scorch
Rag pretty much hits for the same (6-9 points + a card to deal with it)
----
Now that i've played a ton of NG, i can more accurately explain why it's "op"
Firstly, NG bronzes are insane. Golems are broken af - though everybody has their own "version" of this kind of deckthinning (temerian, shieldmaidens etc.) golems are the best because they don't require a card to play and come out with your leader Then on top of that they have the imperia brigade, which single handedly turns all the spies into +2 buffs which is totally bonkers. Brigade is pretty much always worth at least 10+ points minimum, with plenty of the time going up to 12, 14, 16, etc. for a bronze. Considering pretty much all of your bronzes are spies (including the rot tossers), this is the card that really breaks it because of the gigantic value it gives
Tossers are good, but you really play them because they give spy bonus to brigade. You can also combo them with "answer me now" cards like ragnarok to make a double threat where your opponent is forced to lose big value if they ignore the carcass for one turn
Emissaries are just deck thinning and free buffs to your imperia brigade
Cantarella doesn't actually cost 10, she costs 4 6 or 8 because of brigade
Joachim - supposed to be a +5 boost to a bronze (which is the standard pricing for a silver), but actually is used to thin deck and give MORE free value with brigade
Seeing the pattern here?
For the version that tries to double roach, the basic idea is you try to play cantarella+ciri on round 2 after winning round 1 and then r3 is completely free because you're playing second AND up in card advantage. You can also burn off your remaining bad bronzes in r2 and they are forced to respond with their own (and if you can, try to burn out their good golds and save your good ones)
I actually think playing roach twice isn't as broken as it sounds, because you still end up having to play her, but she can be used to "store" points for later in future rounds, and you can also pickup extra goodies from your graveyard (like a bear, or another vanhemar)
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And all being said, NG isn't unbeatable. Millgard totally shits on NG, as does most forms of milling, which is the REAL reason you run Assire, just incase you need some extra cards (incase you're playing a non millgard that still runs avallach)
Tbh, Avallach is REALLY good vs NG in general since most NG decks goto their last cards
Monsters also does pretty decent, since rot tossers do nothing to them, and NG doesn't deal with weather very well (but monsters suck vs other factions imho)
It's true i think NG has a winning mu vs the rest of the factions (spelltael, dwarves, crach, queensgard) Also millgard loses ALOT of it's winning mu's, or a lot of it's "favourability" but has an extremely high winrate in the mirror
What I think is most broken about NG is that they draw their entire deck. Each deck has 6 powerful Silvers and 4 powerful Golds, but only NG manages to play ALL of them.
And as you said, their bronze units are pretty bonkers too.
There's a stream about the new update tomorrow, I expect NR buffs and NG nerfs If it turns out not to be a balance update I'll be a bit disappointed tbh. I know it's really really early to do balance changes but still.
On June 06 2017 02:58 Solmyr wrote: I wonder should i invest time into this game. It seems it is all over again. OP RNG Grind Meta
There is very little RNG, that's what makes the game appealing. Can't think of a game without a meta There is a grind to lvl 10 in order to unlock ranked mode, but that's the only grind I can think of. Some strats feel OP at the moment, that is true, but tbf the game has only been in open beta for 1,5 weeks, so balance requires some tweaks.
If you like card games it's really really solid. I personally never played the Witcher games and I'm enjoying it loads.
On June 06 2017 02:58 Solmyr wrote: I wonder should i invest time into this game. It seems it is all over again. OP RNG Grind Meta
I'd say it depend son your goals
If you're like me and anything short of top of the ladder isn't good enough, then you'll need to drop 60 kegs and about 1 week into the game and you're ready to go as far as competitive goes - this is especially because kegs have diminishing returns (the first bunch of kegs you get are worth a lot more because scrap/milling sucks, and crafting rares/commons and to some extent epics is bad because you'll want to get them from kegs and only craft legendaries)
If you want to go the slower way, F2P for 2-3 months and you're already there
There isn't much RNG i'd say, whilst there is an element skill is the overwhelming factor (as opposed to hearthstone)
OP and Meta don't really fit together - if there was something OP it would be totally dominant (it's not, skill is more than enough to take you to top 20 in the ladder with at least 4-5 different deck archtypes)
There are definitely underpowered strategies though, in this case "good" decks like dwarves and NR, and some "bad" ones like mulligan ST
Playing some dwarf deck but very basic, Is there a way for elf deck? Playing f2p for like 11 h total. Not sure about dwarfs, tbh I have never played dwarfs in any rpgs in past 18 years :D
On June 06 2017 05:04 Solmyr wrote: Playing some dwarf deck but very basic, Is there a way for elf deck? Playing f2p for like 11 h total. Not sure about dwarfs, tbh I have never played dwarfs in any rpgs in past 18 years :D
Not really for elves
Dwarves are the easiest to start off with for sure
The main barrier when you start is actually getting a full suite of bronzes so you can try out all the different decks (60 kegs or playuing for like 3~ weeks will get you over that barrier)
Dwarves you start off with a lot of the useful cards so you don't need to waste your scrap crafting too much extra stuff
So let's say I want to F2P this game and not spend anything. What's the quickest way to grind out the basic cards to get a deck? Singleplayer challenges or pvp?
On June 06 2017 06:48 ZeaL. wrote: So let's say I want to F2P this game and not spend anything. What's the quickest way to grind out the basic cards to get a deck? Singleplayer challenges or pvp?
You'll need to do singleplayer only for leader cards, rest you will have to do multiplayer as thats the only thing you will get experience / daily rewards from.
Yeah basically get it so you get all the ore rewards every day after doing all the single player
As you get those rewards, over a course of two weeks you'll also level up a ton and get more kegs and free cards
This is going to sound really lame, but resist the temptation to craft rares or commons. Your winrate will suck a lot more because of it, but you REALLY want to get your hands on some of the universally good legendaries (like ciri or ragnarok for example). The reason for this is because milling sucks and you'll fill out all your rares and commons from kegs without wasting the scrap. You'll probably get most of your epics this way too, you wanna focus on crafting the legendaries instead After a week you won't regret it (this is the part where you would buy kegs to skip this phase if you were so inclined)
Otherwise you can also craft epics that are universal to all factions and you're likely to use (like roach maybe)
On June 06 2017 10:09 BrTarolg wrote: Yeah basically get it so you get all the ore rewards every day after doing all the single player
As you get those rewards, over a course of two weeks you'll also level up a ton and get more kegs and free cards
This is going to sound really lame, but resist the temptation to craft rares or commons. Your winrate will suck a lot more because of it, but you REALLY want to get your hands on some of the universally good legendaries (like ciri or ragnarok for example). The reason for this is because milling sucks and you'll fill out all your rares and commons from kegs without wasting the scrap. You'll probably get most of your epics this way too, you wanna focus on crafting the legendaries instead After a week you won't regret it (this is the part where you would buy kegs to skip this phase if you were so inclined)
Otherwise you can also craft epics that are universal to all factions and you're likely to use (like roach maybe)
This is sooo true...also really annoying for new players to learn. Basically makes me want to quit at this point. Most of the cards I really need now ( that i didn't even know I needed back then) I won't be able to make for a very very long time.
Actually in the early stages if you are smart you'll get new legendaries every 2-3 days from packs and from scraps
The main issue is most people just waste their scraps on commons/rares without realising in 3 weeks they will have all the commons and rare they will ever need
On June 06 2017 21:58 BrTarolg wrote: Actually in the early stages if you are smart you'll get new legendaries every 2-3 days from packs and from scraps
The main issue is most people just waste their scraps on commons/rares without realising in 3 weeks they will have all the commons and rare they will ever need
I've been playing since OB and had about 60 packs yet still missing a lot of the faction rares and most epics. There's a pretty big disproportion of rares/epics to commons for what you get in packs. I kind of evens out due to how often you get packs but to say it's a waste to craft isn't the complete truth.
Wow, I don't really know what the meta was like in the upper tier of this game but that frost nerf seems pretty extreme.
I'm glad Ragh and Drought got nerfed but I still don't like them design-wise. They're just so, "Here's a really powerful card that any deck could have and you have to keep a crappy card around to deal with it (clear skies) but that crappy card completely counters it so it's technically not imbalanced."
Some from CDPR commented in that Reddit thread that they've changed some of the changes, so we'll see what the final draft looks like I guess.
I don't know how I feel about Frost. I get it's not really a problem at higher tiers of play (and generally support banning for the highest tiers) but I'm sooooo tired of seeing it almost every game while I'm levelling.
In this meta anti-weather is pretty great, and if I don't need it to clear weather I can summon a bronze with it for average 9 strength. Deck thinning + 9 strength is good for a bronze
I think monsters will be one of the strongest factions now. Frost and Fog strats received mostly buffs and Dagon Fog was already really strong.
I have no clue why they buffed Katakan either lol. I pulled that card and it was already a guaranteed 10+ points in round 3, which isn't bad for a silver.
So the way I understand it you get your scraps back for cards which are getting nerfed? I bought 60 Kegs today and got myself a Tibor, can I mill it for 800 as soon as the patch hits?
On June 08 2017 07:36 TerransHill wrote: So the way I understand it you get your scraps back for cards which are getting nerfed? I bought 60 Kegs today and got myself a Tibor, can I mill it for 800 as soon as the patch hits?
Yes. You'll also get double milling value for commons/rares after patch, so don't mill anything yet.
On June 06 2017 05:04 Solmyr wrote: Playing some dwarf deck but very basic, Is there a way for elf deck? Playing f2p for like 11 h total. Not sure about dwarfs, tbh I have never played dwarfs in any rpgs in past 18 years :D
Not really for elves
Mulligan decks use almost only elves. Don't look for specific bonuses to elves, just get everything with mulligan on it
On June 08 2017 07:36 TerransHill wrote: So the way I understand it you get your scraps back for cards which are getting nerfed? I bought 60 Kegs today and got myself a Tibor, can I mill it for 800 as soon as the patch hits?
Yes. You'll also get double milling value for commons/rares after patch, so don't mill anything yet.
Thats kinda busted, so Tibor, RNR and Drought give you any other Legendary you want. Also will you be compensated for the commons/rares you already milled?
On June 08 2017 07:36 TerransHill wrote: So the way I understand it you get your scraps back for cards which are getting nerfed? I bought 60 Kegs today and got myself a Tibor, can I mill it for 800 as soon as the patch hits?
Yes. You'll also get double milling value for commons/rares after patch, so don't mill anything yet.
Thats kinda busted, so Tibor, RNR and Drought give you any other Legendary you want. Also will you be compensated for the commons/rares you already milled?
Well you have to mill them. You can trade 1 of your nerfed golds for another if you wish. Doesn't seem overly busted. There is only a 5-day window to do this as well.
If I understood it correctly, people who bought kegs with cash (aka you) will be compensated a fixed amount of scraps per keg bought, to account for the fact that they may have milled at lower milling values. Something like that.
So you can effectively trade in 400 meteorite powder for 800 scraps by making a nerfed legendary premium and milling it.
I have 715 powder atm, but some premium commons/rares I could mill. I should be able to reach 800 and get 2 free legendaries. Neat.
If they allow you to disenchant premium nerfed cards at full value into scraps, the math works out to approximately $4 per legendary of your choice, given current prices on powder. You'd be able to craft a full set of legendaries for around $300 worth of powder. Seems to be a pretty huge exploit.
I wouldn't be surprised if they temporarily suspended premium crafting during the full refund period.
Will it work with leader cards? Say I turn John Calveit into premium. Patch lowers his strength by one. Can I then scrap him at full value? Just started 3 nights ago so don't have any golds that are gonna be nerfed other than the leader =[. Would be nice if it will work because I could use it to get some cards I need :o.
I am pretty happy with it thus far. I think I am just on hold until I can get enough scrap to make the necessary Golds ( I was lucky to pull woodland spirit from a keg). What should I aim for first? I think Caranthir followed by Ge'els are what would give the deck the biggest power boost of 2 cards. (what starter golds would I kick in order? Imlerith -> triss -> geralt?).
Or should I spend the 400 scraps I have atm on a water hag + frightener (kicking out Commander's horn and Myrgtabrakke).
Any input is appreciated. I sort of have a plan on where to go from here but I've only been playing for 3 1/2 days now so some input from people who have been playing awhile would be nice!
On June 09 2017 19:37 Kickstart wrote: Will it work with leader cards?
You can just highlight the premium version in your collection after the patch goes live to see if it will be full refund. I wouldn't craft any golds right now given the meta will probably change a lot after the patch.
On June 10 2017 20:53 Solmyr wrote: If my opponent goes afk I need to watch how he discards card by card evry round till he goes out of cards ? Roping next level
Just tab and do something else. The timer is already reduced at that point.
I made my Tibor premium now to scrap him for 1600. He wont be viable after the patch. I will however hold on to my remaining 900 dust. Premiums are awesome
On June 11 2017 01:05 TerransHill wrote: I made my Tibor premium now to scrap him for 1600. He wont be viable after the patch. I will however hold on to my remaining 900 dust. Premiums are awesome
I hope the patch comes out soon. Im nearly level 19 and I would really rather wait till the patch before I get the level 20 card so I don't get some leader garbage. That and I want to mill all this crap and open the packs im saving to finally complete my first deck :@
Great. The plan is to make Ithlinne and RnR premium, disenchant them for 3200 scraps, and then just to craft them again because I think they are still great cards.
I imagine every serious player will have the scraps for 4 legendaries of choice after this patch, the ladder will be a lot harder.
Just got this game and did the single player challenges, currently level 2. Is there anywhere I can go to learn strategies and the meta and see some budget deck lists? Also I'm sti not sure of how to tell card rarity, I thought the bronze/silver/gold was the rarity but that seems to not be the case. Thanks.
My enjoyment of this game has severely dropped since the patch. At ~2500 MMR I face 50% SK opponents with their crazy oppressive decks. Triple bears, 4 resurrects, guaranteed opportunity to get full value from Shieldmaidens, Kambi/Hjalmar combo round 3. There's the occasional SK player who replaces some stuff with axemen and a weather package but it's mostly this. Hate it.
I thought I'd be safe in Casual but it's just more of the same. I'm 99% sure that Ranked and Casual share the same MMR, rather than having a separate value for Ranked.
I suppose the only way forward is to craft my own SK deck.
On June 16 2017 21:56 Laurens wrote: My enjoyment of this game has severely dropped since the patch. At ~2500 MMR I face 50% SK opponents with their crazy oppressive decks. Triple bears, 4 resurrects, guaranteed opportunity to get full value from Shieldmaidens, Kambi/Hjalmar combo round 3. There's the occasional SK player who replaces some stuff with axemen and a weather package but it's mostly this. Hate it.
I thought I'd be safe in Casual but it's just more of the same. I'm 99% sure that Ranked and Casual share the same MMR, rather than having a separate value for Ranked.
I suppose the only way forward is to craft my own SK deck.
You probably ran into me lol! Weather/axemen/bear/kambi combo deck is beyond oppressive right now, but I'm enjoying playing it.
Hopefully someone finds a solid counter to bears, because they are generating so much value no one is able to run the more situational tech cards like shackles (you just lose on pure points as a result)
Yea just a shitton of SK decks running weather/bears/axemen. Some Kambi some not. It's really frustrating. I can beat it sometimes but shit I just loathe seeing that bear every single fucking game as the first place.
Kambi deck is *really* hard to play properly, and also to play against. It's close to top tier, though it's not as good as the other SK decks
SK is definitely dominant right now though, i do agree that this patch is less diverse than previous.
We'll still have to see how meta changes though, people are really bad at predicting the future
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a few tips for current meta - run alzure thunder in nearly every deck, mardome is also good for tech. I sometimes run 2x thunder. Locks are much better this patch than they used to be too
I recommend Emhyr Millfgaard control deck if you're facing a lot of SK. Steal their bears with medics, banish their priestesses with Sweers, lock their axemen with Auckles, kill the rest with rot tossers.
I loved the Bears decks for months when they weren't very popular and wanted them to be a tad more powerful/popular, but, uh, seems like things went a little haywire! I like the NG Control suggestion to deal with them but it seems like a surprisingly large amount of people dumped all of their scraps into SK right away and don't have anything left. Kind of amusing to me, but very awkward or even a little frustrating for a lot of people.
Yea, not enjoying the current meta. My axemen deck helped me to climb to Rank 17, but I don't really want to play it. But I feel like a have no other choice since almost everyone plays it and it can't be countered (except maybe cancer spellatel).
The patch was released prematurely. The meta had already adjusted and most people had decks which could beat Nilfgaard. Monsters and SK were already at the same level or had an edge over NG even. Now they gutted NG but buffed everything else, just because people still cried about NG. The adjusted changes which they announced one or two days before the patch seem especially close minded to me and just a reaction to all the babyrage about SK getting overnerfed and NG not getting nerfed enough.
On June 17 2017 11:44 habermas wrote: I recommend Emhyr Millfgaard control deck if you're facing a lot of SK. Steal their bears with medics, banish their priestesses with Sweers, lock their axemen with Auckles, kill the rest with rot tossers.
You want to share it? The problem is that I feel like bears arent that op against SK themself and they also disable your tossers.
On the lower end of Gwent's spectrum, a new keg = another torrential rain + inpentrable fog, got like 6 of those cards and I am level 7 with 14h played. I play ST. I don't even get ST bronzes. Feels like good old RNG. What do you think will be the best gold cool card for simple dwarfs.
Maybe it is me or the weather is way to good in this game. I almost never win against heavy weather decks. Should 3 of my 25 cards be clear skies? That is very unpleasent way of dealing with the problem.
On June 19 2017 06:22 Solmyr wrote: Maybe it is me or the weather is way to good in this game. I almost never win against heavy weather decks. Should 3 of my 25 cards be clear skies? That is very unpleasent way of dealing with the problem.
Some combination of clear skies, trying to stack rows instead of spreading power ,using faction specific single row clear card and using faction mages. If you only really facing up against heavy weather you can use all of them if you want. Hedging with clear skies/mage or mage/single row clear may be fine if it's more sporadic.
On June 19 2017 06:22 Solmyr wrote: Maybe it is me or the weather is way to good in this game. I almost never win against heavy weather decks. Should 3 of my 25 cards be clear skies? That is very unpleasent way of dealing with the problem.
Yes weather is pretty strong right now, especially Frost. You can run clear skies, but 3 of them is usually too much.
Try to play around weather by not playing into weathered rows, try not to have multiple highest/lowest units on the same row vs fog/rain. If you have a clear skies or a mage don't waste it on just 1 row because you know theres more to come, unless you are sure that he is out of weather. Use your row shift or clear row units. Don't miss the opportunity to pass if you are in a comfortable spot card wise before the weather hurts you too much.
I've only seen a few people talk about this patch feeling a bit too quick or a little more drastic than necessary (many patches since the start of the game have been a little "funky"), and personally I'm definitely one to advocate for letting the waters settle before changing things, but I'd like to know how everyone feels about this one especially since I haven't been able to play a ton of games lately.
I haven't heard a lot from the team so I can only wonder what they think about patches and how they're doing things internally; do they think that since it's a digital game they can "rewind" if they mess up a patch, or maybe they aren't used to waiting for a meta to really stabilize, or maybe they just want to stir things up themselves to see what happens since it's still in its beta phase? Not sure, but that's sort of how it feels to me right now. Not that I'm really worried yet, mostly because it's their first 1v1 game and indeed beta, but I hope they find their own system that works for them, the game, as well as their players and is something that doesn't feel quite so... so off like this patch did for me.
P.S. I think their plan was to have "seasons" last two months, though I don't exactly know what their seasons entailed. Either two months for each patching cycle or two months for each ladder season, both, or that the ladder season lasts two months and there will be patches throughout each season, something like that. However it is, it's extremely short imo.
On June 19 2017 09:00 blunderfulguy wrote: I've only seen a few people talk about this patch feeling a bit too quick or a little more drastic than necessary (many patches since the start of the game have been a little "funky"), and personally I'm definitely one to advocate for letting the waters settle before changing things, but I'd like to know how everyone feels about this one especially since I haven't been able to play a ton of games lately.
I haven't heard a lot from the team so I can only wonder what they think about patches and how they're doing things internally; do they think that since it's a digital game they can "rewind" if they mess up a patch, or maybe they aren't used to waiting for a meta to really stabilize, or maybe they just want to stir things up themselves to see what happens since it's still in its beta phase? Not sure, but that's sort of how it feels to me right now. Not that I'm really worried yet, mostly because it's their first 1v1 game and indeed beta, but I hope they find their own system that works for them, the game, as well as their players and is something that doesn't feel quite so... so off like this patch did for me.
P.S. I think their plan was to have "seasons" last two months, though I don't exactly know what their seasons entailed. Either two months for each patching cycle or two months for each ladder season, both, or that the ladder season lasts two months and there will be patches throughout each season, something like that. However it is, it's extremely short imo.
They acted too quickly and too drastically. Open beta was only 1,5 weeks underway when they announced NG nerfs, by the time the patch came I honestly think the Calveit fad was already over and Dagon Fog was the #1 deck, yet they still proceeded to nerf Calveit into the ground.
The SK buffs were obviously too much as well.
I think this screenshot is quite telling: https://i.redd.it/qg82yq61w04z.png Lifecoach and JJ just reached rank 1 worldwide with an SK bear deck, look at the opponents registered by the tracker: 22 SK 11 Monster 5 ST 3 NR 0 NG
That's at the very top of the ladder. Obviously the balance is completely out of whack.
I would've preferred if they had done some minor changes, e.g. the RnR/Drought changes were pretty "safe changes" imo. A couple of NR buffs were most likely needed as well, but the other 4 factions seemed fairly balanced at the time. Now not so much.
Sadly they haven't come out and acknowledged SK's strength, they've just been completely silent about the whole thing as far as I can tell. I'm a bit disappointed in this balancing process so far but it's early days.
On a positive note I opened Madman Lugos yesterday so I can also jump on the SK train now.
Even on lvl 8 I see only Skellige or monster decks, it is like casuals on lvl 5 already know the meta? Hell I am not sure I know all the mechanics of the game, probably not. I know if you are new to the game you jump to the stream of the "best player in the world" to learn and copy what's working but we always end in the meta very fast. Maybe games like that are doomed with OP. Or maybe it is done on purpose. You can say it is only beta things are not done for good. I am not so sure after other games it will be better.
Good thing is out of nowhere I got like 2400 dust from nerfed cards i had for some reason.
I don't get why people say we can "solve the meta" super fast. There was tons of netdecking last patch, and the supposed top deck changed multiple times (NG > SK > Dagon Fog)
I do wish they didn't go quite so overboard on changes, but such is life.
On June 19 2017 06:22 Solmyr wrote: Maybe it is me or the weather is way to good in this game. I almost never win against heavy weather decks. Should 3 of my 25 cards be clear skies? That is very unpleasent way of dealing with the problem.
The problem with clear skies is that it is an extremely low tempo play. In most circumstances it is better to ignore the weather and play around it than to use clear skies.
On June 17 2017 17:58 TerransHill wrote: You want to share it? The problem is that I feel like bears arent that op against SK themself and they also disable your tossers.
It may not be tier 1, but it sure is fun to play. The general idea is to mill them out and play buffed Ciri + Tibor in the last round. It's still a work in progress and not too easy to navigate, but I'm doing OK in the current meta at 2.5k mmr. Regis can be replaced with Cahir, which is also good and makes the deck a bit cheaper. Cahir gives you more consistency, but I found it lacks power, which you need to win round 1 or 2. Regis has a good synergy with Sweers, as you can see which bronze cards are still in their deck. It's also pretty strong against decks which buff cards in deck, like spells ST, Monsters consume and SK discard.
I played a bunch of games with Kambi/Hjalmar/Shackles combo. The plan is to win one round with axeman + weather/tremors, and win the second round with Kambi+shackes+Hjalmar. Results are decent vs other SK decks, but I almost never win vs weather decks that tries to go for 2-0. You can draw pretty much your entire deck by round 3, but if the opponent tries to go for two round win you are kinda screwed.
If my axeman gets killed/locked in the first two rounds, its pretty impossible to win the match.
Reading the book once again I find Yarpen Zigrinn against ST motivations calling it:"stupid crime", "bunch of kids hearing the Nilfgaard emissaries lies". Yet he is a star in my ST deck .
On June 20 2017 04:00 Solmyr wrote: Reading the book once again I find Yarpen Zigrinn against ST motivations calling it:"stupid crime", "bunch of kids hearing the Nilfgaard emissaries lies". Yet he is a star in my ST deck .
It's not that important, but yes that kinda bugs me aswell. None of the dwarfen main characters are scoiatael, most of them actually fight against them if I remember correctly.
On June 20 2017 04:00 Solmyr wrote: Reading the book once again I find Yarpen Zigrinn against ST motivations calling it:"stupid crime", "bunch of kids hearing the Nilfgaard emissaries lies". Yet he is a star in my ST deck .
It's not that important, but yes that kinda bugs me aswell. None of the dwarfen main characters are scoiatael, most of them actually fight against them if I remember correctly.
Most of them oppose Nilfgaard and Nilfgaard is using Scoia'tael extensively as their allies.
One can only hope. But there's so much work to do.
By the way, what do you guys think about the new MMR system? Alot of people complain because they don't gain MMR anymore. I am around 3,5k and I gained 47 points for a win yesterday, today I got (and lost) like ~20-25 points per match which I am actually fine with because this way the MMR isn't that swingy. Don't really know how it exactly works now though.
On June 21 2017 22:16 Laurens wrote: For my ranked games yesterday I earned +20 for all my wins, which is less than before, but I imagine I will also lose less points when I lose a game
But you aren't abusing Skellige, are you?
I climbed quite a bit with Axemen, now I play an Eredin weather deck which I enjoy quite a bit. The hounds are really good but I hope they'll make the other wild hunt units viable with the next patch.
Ok, so I was wrong about Millfgaard working well against Skellige. Now that 90% of my games are against them my win rate dropped to around 30%. It feels like there's no other factions but SK on the ladder, and with a whole variety of decks, bears and Hjalmar being a common theme.
Do you guys have any good decks that work well against SK? It just seems so versatile without any real weaknesses at the moment.
On June 22 2017 20:07 habermas wrote: Ok, so I was wrong about Millfgaard working well against Skellige. Now that 90% of my games are against them my win rate dropped to around 30%. It feels like there's no other factions but SK on the ladder, and with a whole variety of decks, bears and Hjalmar being a common theme.
Do you guys have any good decks that work well against SK? It just seems so versatile without any real weaknesses at the moment.
I heard NG decks with letho (and occasionally dbomb) are pretty good vs Sk (but shit against everything else). Havent tried it myself though. Watch megamogwai or adamnadrac on twitch, they play it sometimes.
I personally feel that weather can be quite potent because they dont have a row clear.
Northern Realms is also said to be good vs certain SK variants. (cause of armor)
But in general the best way to deal with SK ist to play SK yourself I guess^^
With Dwarves I do decent vs King Bran Axemen weather decks, but I think I only go 50/50 vs An Craite Mork decks.
I don't think there is a deck that does well vs ALL SK archtypes.
Basically my deck runs 3 x First Light which is great vs that Axemen Frost deck, but An Craite runs 0 weather effects so I have some semi-useless cards in my deck vs them.
Dwarfs are actually a great suggestion, even though perhaps not an obvious one. I've added a few tech cards to my dwarfs deck and have been doing surprisingly well:
I run revive instead of Igni, because being able to play Ithlinne or Zoltan twice is really strong, especially if you use zoltan on Olgierd as he increases base strength. Also Igni sometimes ends up being a dead draw. I also run Ida Emaen in place of Cleaver as she gives an additional clear skies and fog, which is really good against both SK and Monsters. I also have shackles in place of 1 elven mercenary. I found 2 to sometimes mess up your last round draws and shackles are really good in this meta against bears, axemen and cards like Succubus, Hjalmar and occasional Kambi.
After playing this deck for a while I don't think it has any major weaknesses. I have positive winrate against all factions except NG (50%), because of multiple locks + Letho and ST spell control (40%), but I rarely see them.
At 3k+ MMR, 50% of the players use Crach an Craite or King Bran Only 5 leaders have above 50% winrate at 3K+ MMR, unsurprisingly they are all from the Monsters/Skellige faction.
Time to roll that patch out boys. Hoping for a Monday Dev stream that announces the changes but they haven't mentioned it yet..
Haven't been playing long but so far they seem to make hasty decisions with balancing. Like last patch they say something is weak and needs a buff, but then this patch they say its way too strong and then nerf it to be even worse than before (like ciri going from 6- >7 but then smacking it down to 5 this patch cause its too strong). Needs to be slower and more incremental changes imo, not huge mechanic changes and 2+ point swings in the same go. Hopefully they figure it out as they go along.
I don't know if I wanna play this or any other game. Since I've started to play multi player games it is all the same. If balance is impossible why than we play? To get cheap wins from playing OP? People are always serious when it comes to PVP and since Gwent is only that we end in the situation known from other pvp games. Meta or bust... . Congratz you know what OP deck is. Do you even win by yourself or is OP giving you wins. And if complex system with a lot of cards turns into one deck to rule them all ? Maybe it is better to play chess. I should be collecting kegs with improved ST deck but why I need cards anyway. Maybe just craft few OP and be good? Like how many legendaries in GVG era in HS we need ? Dr. Boom and ?
I've been playing some Reveal Nilfgaard after I got bored of my Dwarf deck and it's a nice change. At first I dropped ~200 MMR while getting better with the deck but now I've passed my original rating. The deck does really well vs King Bran axemen/frost, 50/50 vs Crach Mork decks.
And NG will probably/hopefully get buffed next patch so that's something to look forward to.
The good part of this game is that after like 15h played I already got dust to assemble deck I wanted. In HS it took me few months of dailies and good number of arenas. You really get lots of golden cards you can DE if you wish to do it which is nice compared to Bli$$ard generosity.
I think the meta is shifting. I've been seeing much less Skellige recently and more other factions, especially NR. So it may be not so bad after all for CDPR to wait with the patch for the meta to settle.
Yeah SK could still use a small nerf, but other factions shouldn't be buffed TOO hard. Reveal NG is already good. There have been various NR decks that are good too. Maybe a slight nerf to SK/Monsters whilst reworking/slightly buffing ST could do the trick.
I think the problem is that a lot of players invested the 1000s of scraps they got from last patch into SK decks, so even if they take a nerf there will still be a lot of SK on the ladder.
This full refund business is honestly bad for the game.
Elves seem to be all over the place, with ambush, mulligan and other abilities that need more cards to be playable. On the other hand i tear apart my opposition at lvl 8 with dwarf deck Nice thing about pvp games, when you win it feels good man.
st is kind of a one card wonder, its mostly about ilthinne either winning you the game or not
the funny thing is, i started out with a mull theme and the deck slowly turned into mostly dwarves anyway, just with wardancers and vanguards, because the cards that support any non-dorf theme are so far below par i'd be embarrased playing them
I feel kinda strange. I was part of HS beta but very late almost at the very end of it. Right now on lower levels where I play with Tier2?? deck versus players that try everything,playing with what they got, learning the game and its basics. It's like you put together a basic common deck in 2014 and hit ranked going to rank 14 and oppose first guys with Ragnaros and felt hopeless. But now I am the one with Ragnaros I almost feel i can win most of the games only with Geralt:Igni, just watching how they buff all those rows just to be punished.
I was part of HS beta since around the same phase as I was with Gwent, right in the first non-family wave. With HS I got pretty far without buying more than three packs, but there was a hard wall made of Epic and Legendary cards I (and many others) hit all the time. With Gwent that wall feels a lot blurrier and arrives much sooner too, which I think is sort of a good thing? Or, at least, it makes sense to me with how the game is designed.
I need to set aside some Gwent time one of these evenings, barely been playing games in general the last couple months. Dx
So dev stream about balance changes later today from what I recall, and then actual balance changes sometime in thr near future? Hopefully they make it interesting.
So many changes, buff to Olgierd round one, buff to dwarf merceneries, Ithlinne nerfed again but I will still like her( even made her premium for my only 400 powder),weather seems nerfed but Nithral to 3? This will hurt sometimes. My aproach to this game is:do a keg quest a day and wait till game leave Beta. That way i secure some cards and avoid playing OP. On the other hand my ST dwarf deck loses only if i rope for a turn becouse i think this is not my turn :D
She's mainly just used to combo with witchers to try win round 3 again. Maybe with rest of NR being buffed the witchers weren't as needed so Shani is inadvertently worse thus buffing her? It's a small change so we'll see.
Glad Kambi/Bork got nerfed. They cards that people like to think of as "skill intensive" but generally are just a wall of "did you tech right" instead of actually any player skill being involved. Would love a complete rework of Bork into something involving RNR though. Maybe single line RNR?
On lvl 10 casual I meet mostly consume decks or strange things especially ST elf dekcs. TBH I hardly see any weather. Maybe it is time to change 3 anti weather tech cards. But I like Ida. She is lovly and have fantastic flavor text. But with incoming Fog nerf... So sad.
Well, I'm actually on lvl 11 and with my frost wild hunt i have about 75% win rate... and my deck will be worth nothing after this patch, i'm pretty sure.
Yeah I been running dagon fog but dont think I will now. Though I've not been playing since last patch cause bears every game were just too annoying (though I think my winrate was still pretty good, just sucked cause bear wrecks monster summons).
CDPR has, IMO, done a terrible job with balance patches. These extreme changes are not the way to keep card game players happy... it's a different animal from MOBAs or FPS's where it doesn't cost money to switch to another class/character.
It doesn't cost money here either as you just mill the nerfed cards. It's also in beta which is why they doing these changes now and even said they going to be more liberal now then calm it down when they get closer to release. Even Blizzard Hearthstone team which is notorious for taking forever to make changes used to make plenty back in beta.
This community confuses me to no end. They just endlessly bitch about stuff that they mostly proved wrong soon afterwards anyway. If it bothers you so much wait for the game to be released.
Saying the patching has been bad seems a pretty fair criticism tbh. There are several instances of consecutive patches where in patch A they buff something because they think it is too weak and then in patch B they nerf it to being weaker than it was before patch A. They are making some changes that are just too extreme instead of making slight tweaks and seeing what happens.
Granted I'm a NG reveal player so last patch was a nightmare and this patch my deck is much stronger.
Still, everything seems fine atm. NR looked to be buffed too much but apparently there's a ton of nerfs they just didn't discuss during the dev stream. Can't tell which is the dominant faction yet.
Monsters will prob still be strong. It's kind of crazy how they are always competitive yet people never bitch like they do with others. Can't recall a patch where Monsters was bad, maybe one of the earlier closed beta ones?
I hardly see how any monster deck despite consume is bound to be effective now. All this Dagon-based weather and Wild Hound will do let's say 2-3 times less dmg. And tbh I don"t think consume is very strong, so this might the patch Numy.
I beat them quite handily with reveal NG every game.
Their last round win condition is grave hag, just have a lock or a reset ready and you win.
They tweaked the MMR again, getting +50 for wins again above 2500 MMR, and only -15 for losses lol. I guess they made it easy mode so people would stop complaining, up until a certain treshold (3.5K perhaps?)
Are you running regular dwarves or the spell / resilience variant? I tried dwarves in the new patch but I find them struggling against both monsters tempo and NG control cards.
i play mostly swims list with a few changes (decree instead of saskia)
You have to be really careful about how you use your eithne and illithne, there's a lot of "secondary" win conditions you can enable (such as losing the first round early on purpose with decent resil so that they force pass the second round but you double adrenaline rush after they pass for a free win in the third etc.)
The key to the deck is managing your resilience properly and learning when to deliberately lose and ensure you get good carry over into your next rounds - don't continue playing if you know your carryover will be dead if you do so, or make them pay a lot to kill your resilience so that you can maybe build something in second round etc.
On July 08 2017 09:57 BrTarolg wrote: i'm not really sure how i feel about the meta atm, but weather, consume, dwarves, reveal, baron are all making some appearances atm
The meta feels much more varied than the previous two patches at least, which were all Morkvarg and then Axemen/weather. Like literally 9/10 games were against SK.
On July 08 2017 16:34 hunts wrote: Been playing for sbout 3 weeks now and just hit 3k as weather monsters. Not sure if it's purely because of the mmr change or if I'm getting better.
I also gained loads since patch. The new MMR changes are definitely one of the reasons.
A thread on reddit shows that up until 4K MMR, you will gain more than you lose in games, so a 50% winrate can take you to 4K as long as you play enough games.
After 4K it's the other way around, you lose more than you gain, so you actually need something like a 60% winrate to get that rank 21.
Not sure what I think about this. Rethaz has hinted that there will be some form of carry-over between seasons, so surely everyone will be 4K eventually xD Kinda ruins the achievement.
I'm not even really playing atm, just waiting for an announcement about when the season will end to push for top 1k.
Game is fun, but MTGO leagues and real risk/reward makes for a much better experience. I honestly feel like ladder systems for card games will always be second class.
Haven't played much since the latest round of changes, is monster consume still the top ladder deck? I see a lot of weather decks popping up again, are they really viable at the higher SRs?
Played a bunch of consume without crones, 90% win rate so far around 2500. I guess there's some serious rating inflation going on, ppl being matched against me are so much worse than the ones in casual mode.
They made it so pre 3K you basically don't lose points so eventually you'll grind up. Consume doesn't use crones anymore. Monsters just has insane cards in every slot so don't even need tempo of crones to win.
At level 12 rank 10 I am 18-2 with dwarfs, I wonder is it a deck, is it me, or my opposition is less skilled than me... . I see many consume players, I don't remember losing to one.
BTW someone knows when season ends? Those rewards look juicy and maybe I need to climb a bit more?
Just hit 4k on both my main and a smurf, main was as dagon swarm, smurf was as dwarves and budget dagon swarm. Kind of crazy how 4k has become basically top 4k people, when before the patch I remember seeing people in top 500 at 3500 or even lower.
So the real game starts around 2800 when I met people with top decks all the time. I struggle with dwarfs there. I am starting to see rng all over again. I guess you can't really escape it with card games.
On July 25 2017 22:22 Solmyr wrote: So the real game starts around 2800 when I met people with top decks all the time. I struggle with dwarfs there. I am starting to see rng all over again. I guess you can't really escape it with card games.
I just reached 3500 with 58-14 record, definitely not that much RNG compared to the other CCGs. I think playing a more refined deck you can probably maintain a 90% win rate all the way to 3700ish.
It's very rng, ofc it is proly not that important if you play OP a.k.a refined
The more I play this game the more I start to not understand some mechanics... Cards that ressurect many cards from graveyard, cards that summon many cards from your own deck, cards that reset many cards at once, weather was special thing, cards that buff themselves if you do theme of your deck. If you don't play things like that than I am afraid you are kinda screwed. And at my rating I feel screwed. You need G: Igni becouse your opponent play NG deck and buff a unit to 60 not playing around anything, nope. You don't need G:Igni becouse you have no targets, it is here!
For the rest of the beta I abandon playing anything more than a daily quest.
Not sure I understand what you are getting at. In the total 3 rounds, you get 5 mulligans and 13 draws out of a total of 25 cards, plus any cards that draws from the deck. This is a game where you can draw 90% of your deck by round 3. If you complain about not able to draw specific cards at any time in this game then you really should stay away from any kind of card game in general.
If your opponent makes a combo that you can't answer, just give up the round and try to win the next. I am pretty sure over 60% of my wins are won by opponent making a mistake on when to pass.
From what I see on stream, every matchup at the top level plays out very similarly because there's so little variance, and small mistakes are punished harshly.
There's also nothing wrong with combo decks with synergy, it's the whole point of playing any card game to be frank.
Just made masters playing only for the daily quest, with 79 total games played.
Going from 18-20 is probably like going from rank 5 to legend in HS. I'm guessing it will probably take a couple hundred games at least. They really shouldn't separate the ranks by such huge gaps in SR once the inflation stops at 4000. The difference between rank 18 and 21 is a whopping 800 points...
Well after the rant I suddenly started to play better and get to rank 16 after 36h played total in game with 62-29 ranked. In HS that kind of win rate would be very good. So rank 18 is like rank 5? I need to get to that at some point. Or maybe pvp games are not that great for casuals. Or it is hard to be casual after you were a nolife
From 4K to 4.25K you win 22 and lose 23 points. Playing 100 games means that 100(22(w) - 23(1-w)) = 250. So you'd need a 56.66(recurring)% winrate to reach 4.25K from 4K in 100 games.
From 4.25K to 4.5K you win 15 and lose 16. Playing 100 games means that 100(15(w) - 16(1-w)) = 250. You'd need a 59.677% winrate.
Need to have 60% winrate to go from 4.25k to 4.5k in 100 games.
I managed a 77% winrate from 3750 - 4250. Just metagame and it's really not that hard. 70% of my matches were against Monsters, so I played NR Bloody Baron Control the whole way up, and kept an 84% winrate against monsters.
I started out with Reveal NG this patch, tried almost all variations of it, fire scorpions vs mangonels, 1-3 foot soldiers vs NG knights, letho/DBomb package etc. Didn't get much higher than 3700 with it.
Switched to Dagon and hit 4160 in 1 day, getting a 14 game win streak along the way.
Dagon is way too strong for how easy it is to play. Onwards to rank 20.
Yeah midrange dagon with Crones as a finisher and Horn/Potions/...
CaptainTsech or whatever his name is got #1 with it for days and made a reddit post, I copied it completely and just started winning xD
Vs unseen elder consume it's a rather easy matchup unless the mulligan screws my crones. Round 3 they can play Grave hag if they like, I still have more value. Lacerate kills their Arachas in the earlier rounds. Caranthir or Frightener moves a Vran warrior, lots of answers.
On July 29 2017 03:20 Glacierz wrote: Is the top Dagon deck the one running potion/commander's horn now? I've been running a hybrid consume version and it seems a bit worse against this.
There are multiple Dagon lists. He's strong enough that you can run basically any mixture and be good with it. The pure consume lists are pretty bad against bloody baron but bloody baron is hot garbage against mostly anything non-monster so it's a meta call what to run.
Got to 4000 with under 100 games played (79-18), still running into a pretty diverse number of factions. The games are becoming much closer now, usually winning round 3 with less than 10 points.
Yeah the meta actually starts to expand again around 4.2k. SK is the new flavor of the month, plus plenty of monsters, with the odd metadeck NR or ST trying to poach specific matchups.
On August 02 2017 05:58 Glacierz wrote: SK is the deck running Cerys discard right? I don't recall having much trouble dealing with them. Maybe the players I faced are just bad.
There's two variants. The ones running queensguard and the ones without queenguard but Cerys. The latter is far more consistent and less susceptible to hate. It's just a stronger deck. I don't think it's the best deck currently but it offers a lot that good players want due to it's ability to go through the whole deck and resilience to poor mulls.
not impressed by the queenguardless disco personally, though that could just be dagon being a god against them given that they only run one weather clear usually in greboi.
That said the versions with QG aren't faring much better so /shrug
The version without QG is definitely better, it's the only one I encounter at 4.2K. It's a strong deck. Amazing finishers in round 3, and lots of tools to win round 1/2 with. With Dagon I think I'm 60/40 against it. In round 3 my Crones finisher + some carry-over from round 2 is usually just enough to win. Though if they've played it right they'll get Cerys + 1/3 strength from Priestess/Sig (or both if they discarded priestess) + ~17 strength from Skirmisher + whatever carryover was left from Mork and Olgierd...
Climbed to 4248 but lost the game that would make me rank 20, try again tonight xD.
On August 02 2017 06:51 Dandel Ion wrote: not impressed by the queenguardless disco personally, though that could just be dagon being a god against them given that they only run one weather clear usually in greboi.
That said the versions with QG aren't faring much better so /shrug
It's definitely a deck that's better against the decks dagon suffers against imo. Dagon is just a powerhouse of a leader and faction though. QG disco gets even more rekt by dagon since you can tech so much GY hate. I struggle to recall a time that Dagon/Monsters weren't towards the top.
Dagon is by far the safest choice if you just want to climb. No really terrible match ups (outside possibly Radovid control) and it has a large number of interactive and skillful elements.
Indeed. And with Bran being the most popular, it's even better, since Bran counters Radovid so there's less of that to counter Dagon.
Huge winstreak yesterday so I got my rank 20. Now I'm top 1000 on the leaderboards and ladder fear is suddenly very real lol. Wish the season would end today.
On August 04 2017 01:34 Glacierz wrote: There are no special rewards for being top 1000 right? I can't believe to earn the last 2 portraits you have to be 4500+.
I just wish they buff Nilfgaard slightly as it's by far my favourite faction. I made it to rank 20, but now slipped back to 4.1k and it's really difficult to climb back. All I'm facing are Dagon and Bran decks.
So there's a new ladder next season if you hit rank 20(or above) or you end season 4200 (or above). This is in addition to the current ladder and will be locked out if you don't get it until the following season. Season ends 27th August.
Also a Nilfgaard main that's been struggling around 4100. Don't know if I should just bite the bullet to make the push to rank 20
Well I stuck with NG and made 4222! The game tilted me a little since post game shows I'm at 4254 but when I check leaderboard it's lower even after I restarted. It's pretty dagon heavy out there so just teching in 2 row weather clears + weather mage is pretty good. Sitting 17-5 against Monster with the deck at 4k+.
Think I'm done with ranked lol, not worth the risk to hit rank 20.
CDPR pouring a lot of money into this! Amazing to see. I'm genuinely pumped by this announcement. Forcing people to play different factions on the pro ladder is a great move as well.
OK, I've given this game another chance and it has changed quite a lot from the beta. It is a bit less boring but still favors pretty solitaire decks.
I mean, all you need to do in this game to win consistently (at least around rank 10, will need to play further to validate) is a deck that can mill its cards properly. Sure, it does take some skill to know what and when to mill but it can all be boiled down to "get rid of shitty cards as soon as possible and have all of your finishers in the deciding round". Sounds simpler than it is but that's pretty much it. 90% of it is pretty much deck-building, so you have a deck capable of doing just that.
I especially like the Scorch'tael deck as it tends to catch people by surprise (somehow the spy deck is more obvious than this - go figure). Still missing 1 gold card for it (substituting with decree) but it's working great.
EPT![[image loading]](https://www.playgwent.com/img/screenshots/A_world_begging_to_be_explored.27.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://pwner.net/assets/images/resources/127/elder-scrolls-legends-how-to-play.jpg)
Thought I'll give a better comparison.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bdLhp4M.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Irnm9qI.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XNFbMJu.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/F8gz8Qq.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/v3MrIQC.png)
