You're all filthy monster players infesting the ladder. With that said, I just played another game since my last post and played a King Bran mirror match! He was playing QG, though, and I'm playing a more discard-oriented build. Udalryk onto his melee row in round one generally forces a pass in that matchup for an easy steal with Coral, then it's all academic after that. He fell for it and I won the game with two cards still in hand.

There's a patch coming soon, hopefully the friend match system is updated we can all start battling each other in-game instead of in this petty forum. Death to monsters!!

Your trash faction had its time in the sun. This is a monster world now.

I'm surprised Hakeem hasn't br0ken my balls yet for trying Fable Fortune ahead of Gwent

Start a thread about it and see how much traction it gains.

Alright, should I put it here in Duels or in the Other Games General subforum? I guess the latter...

Just here. No one cares about duels anymore

i put it in the other place, but you're right that maybe it should go here. No one is talking about Gwent in that other subforum. You guys are the only ones that talk about it.

We're the only opinions that matter either way.

Was tongue-in-cheek, Barney.



I suspect four golds will have a good chance against six bronze cards. Take your deck. Pick any six bronze cards and go against these four golds: Eredin, Caranthir, Caretaker and Imlerith.

Of course card advantage is extremely important, but there's a limit to how important it is. You say Tibor isn't worth it at 23 power. What if it were 30 power? 40? 50?

Triss Butterfly still hasn't impressed me. I had one recent game where my opponent played Water Hag into Lacerate to draw the first round. He was probably feeling pretty good, since he had Triss Butterfly in hand and we both had like 7+ cards in round two, plenty of time for Triss Butterfly to generate value. I was feeling pretty good too, for the opposite reason: no Water Hag -> Clear Skies to worry about. Round two saw me coat my opponent's board with frost, and the 6 damage a turn totally overpowered Triss Butterfly. In fact even one frosted row would overpower Triss Butterfly. I admit though, this might be a natural advantage of weather decks vs. the card. Against a non-weather deck Triss Butterfly might boost the lowest card until it's tied with the next-lowest card, and then add two power a turn. Still, White Frost is a silver card while Triss Butterfly is gold - heck, Wild Hunt Hound is a bronze card while Triss Butterfly is gold. I'm not convinced.

On a different topic: how come nobody runs King of Beggars? It seems like a perfectly reasonable card to me.



So you go all-in to win game 1. Game 2, you play all your carry over minions (Earth Elemental / Celeano Harpy etc) and preferably apply weather to one of your opponent's rows. Play to bleed opponent. Once they have few cards left, play King of Beggars, gain 30+ power, and with weather you're not just threatening to draw, you're threatening to win, AND you still have all your carryover minions. This seems busted enough that I'm surprised I've never seen the card.

Or am I reading the card wrong -> King of Beggars can only reach 15 max power even if it's not enough to tie the round?

EDIT: Yeah wth, King of Beggars can only reach 15 power. That's pretty weak then, no wonder nobody plays it.

King of beggars is pretty underpowered compared to other silver, yeah.

King of Beggars used to be better when it was 15 and weakened itself when played. You could eat it with Giant Toad and use it with Leo Bonhart etc. back then.

It was even better before they took away its effect and called it Marching Orders. The good ol' days.

So I'm getting ever nearer to my 4K MMR goal, I'm climbing the ladder to earn my rewards (this is something Duels could have learned from. I'm not the biggest of this game but the reward quantity is generous enough to really incentivize playing) and I come across a Dagon mirror. Fine. 3rd round and I'm fairly certain he's holding Crones; but then he plays Ge'els. Oh, I was wrong then. Nope. He draws into a Crone and he does have one in hand already. WTF? How did this player get so high with a muddled deck making counter-intuitive plays? Oh yeah, he's playing monsters. Not that I blame him but it's a pretty poor reflection on the state on the game that bad players can achieve higher ranking just because a single deck is so inherently powerful. Dagon has a 60%+ win rate across all MMR brackets. That's disgusting.

Unless I'm reading wrong, you're also playing Dagon?

Yes, the spike in me is strong. I'd love to play NG all day everyday, and while it is certainly possible to ladder with it even at higher ranks, I still can't help but feel I'm gimping myself. The problem with any ranked environment it that it needs to be maintained constantly. You can't allow decks with 60%+ win rates to exist because there is no reason to run anything else and the meta becomes stagnant. Going against monsters and having to go first is really obnoxious at the minute.

That's a bit harsh Sjokwaave, after all vert has Scorched himself before as well. How do you see MMR? All I'm seeing are ranks.

Can anyone explain why Dagon is so good? I had some games against it which I always won, but they tended to be relatively close. I put that down to the fact that my deck isn't very well teched against Dagon (they don't have high-power minions for Succubus for example, Fiend is not very strong as well). Dagon does have some very strong plays, and Dagon + Woodland Spirit triggering Foglets are both very strong. But you can simply counter with anti-weather cards. Even if you can't have Clear Skies, cards like Blue Stripes Scout aren't embarrassing against non-weather decks. There're also cards like Lacerate available, which can be comboed with cards that move other cards, and then stuff like Geralt: Igni. I'm not saying Dagon isn't OP, but I'd like to understand why it's so good. Or is the entire Monsters faction OP?

On another note: I wish Caranthir said "move up to three units". Many times, I've decreased my frost damage because I've had to stack units onto the same row.

Using Scorch wrong is a misplay. Having Ge'els in a deck with Crones is just a bad idea to begin with.

Anyway, your MMR is the ranking points you have when you look up the leader board on the matchmaking tab.

Dagon thins the deck (which is a bigger deal than it may sound), provides units for Thunderbolt potion etc and starts weather ticking. He also fits lots of strategies. Midrange, Weather Control, Swarm... which means you are never entirely sure what you'll see game one making it harder to plan around. Add in the general power level of monsters with carryover etc and it means you can't really go wrong. Dagon isn't rediculous by himself but he doesn't tie you to an archetype and versatility is nothing to be sniffed at.

It's not really Dagon that's the problem, it's the Foglets.

On another note, real men play Skellige.

Well, Ge'els + crones can work if you plan on dumping the Crones v fast Round 1 or you just bury all of the Crones and use Ge'els to tutor them up. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and just played it bad or something.

With Foglets in the deck in the deck it makes for crappy round one mulligans. The way blacklisting works means you're likely to see the Crones again anyway in another round. It could work if you get lucky, but it isn't helping consistency: it's forcing you into aggressive mulligans for questionable payoff. Better to just keep a Crone in hand and play a different Gold for better value. Maybe if he was using Crones as a round one tempo play I could see the point, being able to better target draw into the likes of Water Hag etc later but that clearly wasn't the plan.

Ge'els helps when you have a specific plan that needs extra help to pull off consistently. Like Grave Hag. Crones work as a stand alone because you're very likely to see them already; they don't require a tutor.