And that's where I eventually settled, too. But I considered it, just because of how important Water Hag against consume decks

Need some help again planning my next gold craft ... I crafted Caranthir the last time and he's not been superb. Certainly not bad, but he's not the best gold card in my deck right now. He would be if he moved up to three cards, but by forcing a 3-card move he's basically become a glorified Wild Hunt Hound, a card I try to play early so I don't lose any frost damage.

The deck I'm playing right now:

Eredin

3x Celeano Harpy
2x Earth Elemental
2x Drowner
3x Biting Frost
3x Wild Hunt Hound
1x Archgriffin
1x Thunderbolt Potion

1x White Frost
1x Fiend
1x Water Hag
3x Crones

1x Succubus
1x Imlerith
1x Caranthir
1x Zoltan: Animal Tamer

It's still undefeated. I'm only at ~2k MMR, but this deck has been consistently beating even level 16+ people in casual mode. That's scary since it's threatening to make me overconfident ... anyone want to play and preferably beat me a few times??

I teched the deck against weather since I was winning all my other matchups so easily that I figured I might as well give up some "percentage points" (0? Since I still haven't lost) against them to shore up the one against Dagon Fog, which has been close. I have four cards against weather - Archgriffin, both Drowners and Water Hag - and the one that's performing the worst is clearly Archgriffin since it's the weakest card if not against weather. A single Drowner tends to be great, drawing both of them is not so good though.

For the silvers White Frost is here specifically so I can overpower my opponent's weather clear. Right now I can coat six rows with frost. Even against a Clear Skies, I can usually force them to pass, or even worse play against the frost clock in critical rounds. White Frost is much weaker if drawn after both players have played most of their hand, but it's always a card I want to see in my initial ten.

For the golds Succubus single-handedly crushes every Timmy's dream and turns it into a nightmare, but against decks without high-power minions, she is often quite dead. I've even mulliganed her away before. Imlerith provides invaluable interaction has been quite good especially since he can actually do a virtual 10 damage to a critical unit in frost (if the first hit knocks it to the lowest power in the row). Zoltan: Animal Tamer has basically been a 16-power do-nothing gold card that weakens me somewhat against Igni and Coral. Not terrible, but he's probably the next gold to switch out.

So, which gold should I craft next? Here's what I'm thinking:

Gold weather - they're too all-in in my opinion. It's not that often all three of opponent's rows are occupied.
Geralt: Igni - I don't need more help against high-power minions. Succubus is just SO GOOD against them. It does synergize somewhat with the Drowners though, and perhaps with Igni I can drop Fiend for something else (Frightener or Jotunn?).
Geralt: Aard - cute but I don't need to stack more units on the same row. I really want the frost damage!
Ge'els - this card is quite common in other monsters decks, but I'm skeptical. It seems quite mediocre, basically a slightly improved Royal Decree. On the other hand I would not call Royal Decree a bad card, so even if it's just a solid performer it could be worth crafting.
Caretaker - looks like another solid card, if a bit matchup dependent.
Woodland Spirit - an 8-power Caranthir without the downside, also provides fodder for Thunderbolt Potion. Could still be worth it even without Foglets.
Old Speartip: Asleep - seems a bit unreliable. First opponent must have three units on a row. Drowners can help, but it would have antisynergy with weather since I'd definitely want to weather rows with lots of units on them. They might not stay alive long enough for Old Speartip to wake up. Old Speartip's effective power is quite big though. divinevert is this one of the better-performing golds in your deck?

I can try to beat u if u want XD. Just pm me. About gold cards. Geels should be first priority to craft cause it gives u too much versatility. Woodland spirit amazing too but he works only in Dagon builds

@banedon, If you're seeing any sort of coherent graveyard strategies at your MMR then certainly craft yourself a Caretaker. Other than that, the only real card I'd look at is Igni, but that's a meta-dependent slot as well.

I started my climb the other day from the 1400s and it was a monster fest up until recently. Once I hit about 2.3k I started seeing a lot more variety, things like Reaver Hunter combos, Skellige mirrors, 37-card NR, control Scoia, Calveit spy NG, Letho combo NG etc. It's been quite refreshing. Hit rank 15 last night, overall record of 53-19, gunning for 3k MMR by the end of the day and 4k by the end of the week.

The discard Skellige list I'm playing since I committed to the climb is insane, I think I've only lost 3 times since I figured out how to play it correctly. Lots of fun too, managing the Cerys timer adds a nice layer to decision making and the deck can pull of some sick tempo plays. I think Coral should probably be nerfed.

I'm at like 3981 mmr or something, so just below 4k, 100-46. Decks definitely get harder towards the top.

I don't even think Igni is a meta call: the only match up it can fail is the monster mirror and even then it can at least be a 12 point play against Crones which is bad but not useless. It's really good against Eithne dwarfs and NR muster, which otherwise overwhelm every monster variant and are quite popular in higher ranks, especially NR which can either be the pure swarm 27 card variant or the control Ballista version which is probably the worst match up for monsters. Like I can handle Radovid a lot of time passing round one but Ballista muster is a freaking nightmare.

I started using Bekker's Twisted Mirror yesterday because I was encountering Dwarfs a lot: card is hilarious. You can feel the palpable rage and tilt you are inducing. Why waste a Gold slot on Succubus when this is a thing?

Old Speartips effective power is usually around 20. With some manipulation, you can trigger him multiple times, which can make him outrageous when combo'd with Caranthir

Without Igni, I'd routinely get murdered by that NR combo deck, but since it's reliant on everyone staying the same power, it's fun to blow up

Absolutely. Noob question, how do we play? I don't seem to be able to add friends (I'm playing via GoG).

@Sjokwaave - well Succubus doesn't just beat decks with high-power minions, she annihilates them. Taking a 20-power minion with Succubus for example effectively makes her a 35-power play. They have no chance of catching up, even if they still have something like the Witchers in hand. She is only not worth it if opponent's strongest creature is 8 power (giving her effective power = 11). The constraints on playing her are a real thing though, and she cannot be played when the opponent can pass.

About the NR combo deck: is this the Foltest-into-Kaedweni-Seargeant deck? If so I've played it several times. What tends to happen is I play Crones round one to take a one card lead into round 2 (or outright win round 1 if they go first). With six rows of frost I then attrition them out in both remaining rounds. They can be blown out by Igni I suppose but don't you guys frost the relevant rows once there's something on them?

Also how do you guys deal with cards like Savage Bear or Ekimmara without Fiend?

Savage bear = frost
ekimara = scorch, igni, or just ignore it while I overpower it

Rethaz made a Reddit post recently with leader winrate data and now it seems the Skellige discard list is attracting monster players. I haven't noticed this but I'm watching a lot of streamers play with/against it so I'm a little worried. If the deck gains mainstream popularity then I'm not gonna coast to 4k so easily with it! People will know how to tech/play against it, so hopefully it's only the top players that are switching and my journey through the 3ks will still be smooth sailing.

I love guys that post stuff like leader winrate data. It gives some good direction to spikes like me if I'm doing it right. I need to find more stuff like that for Gems of War. Some guy used to post the best defence decks at one point.

If anything like that had been released for Fable Fortune, I would have stuck with it. They have 6 different leaders and I can't decide which to start with. I tried going with one where I had the most mythic/epic cards, tried building my own deck, and got blown out so badly. I love it when I have those bad early experiences cuz I don't really want to go down that rabbit hole.

Anyone who needs to rely on someone else's analysis to understand a game like Gwent is pretty sad.

Savage Bear takes four turns to die to Frost though, plenty of time for it to generate value against a deck that spams minions.

Ekimmara and similar units is something of a worry as well. They're often not very high power, and they come out late enough in the round to not be "tickable" with weather. On the bright side Monsters decks also carry over minions like crazy.



Come on, people test in teams for Magic pro tours for a reason. I'll ask another question here to draw on others' expertise: what are typically the highest-power plays a faction can make in a single turn on a relatively empty board? Main thing I want to evaluate is whether I have enough of a lead to pass safely. I'm interested in anything greater than 13 power. What I know:

Monsters - crones is 20 power.
Monsters / consume - Vran Warrior eating an egg is 14 power. This is actually 13 power (11 power Warrior, 3 power harpy, -1 egg)
Unseen Elder - if it eats three eggs it's 29 power. Two eggs is still 21 power.
Monsters / Woodland Spirit - 16 power if foglets aren't already on the battlefield, and he has something to hit.
Nilfgaard / Morvran Voorhis - he can summon three Imperial Golems on play (6 power), plus however many Daerlan Foot Soldiers is mulliganed (typically around 2, or 8 power). Total: ~20 power.
Any faction - Witchers, 17 power, but rare. Foltest Witchers are 20 power.

Is there anything else?

Skellige has Ermion with two Raiders for 15/17/19 depending on the round.

Skellige also has Coral for massive swings depending on the board.

NR Witchers can be 29 with Foltest/Dandelion, I've done that many times but it was at the end of a long round 1. If there are any Siege Supports on board that value gets pushed even higher.

NR also has Temerian Infantrymen, I've seen them come out at 21.

Merigold's Hailstorm is a bit of a sleeper card in my opinion, it's a neutral Coral without the body. I don't see it being played though.

Scoia used to have a 34 point swing available with Brouver but they nerfed a few of the pieces to that. Fun while it lasted though.

Savage Bear only hits the first minion that spawns, so even a Harpy or Crones, it's an individual hit. It can be played around fairly easily, especially if you take a turn to Thunderbolt or the like. As to ekimara, it's combining multiple units into a single one, which makes it an easy enough target.

Elves on a favorable board can generate 14 power with the ambush one (6+4x 2 power boost).

And every deck theoretically could have the Witchers, though you'd likely only ever see them in some NR combo decks.
Any deck with a long row could generate 16/20 power with Commander's Horn

I've seen it in Axeman combo decks.

I haven't seen an Axeman deck on my climb up so that's good to know if/when I start bumping into them.

Hailstorm works good at sc control too. Saw it often after 3 k. Sc plays it twice with Eithne

I don't know why they took the best Scoia'tael card and turned it into a leader instead. At least there were those rare times the Scoia player didn't draw his Aglaïs.