I thought I lost one game after I had to play Succubus as my last card while my opponent still had a card. But then after my opponent passed, Succubus still triggered. Weird.

I don't think of Succubus as needing a single huge unit - multiple huge units are also good. Anything above 8 power makes her worth it. I do have to try BTM though. It's possible the card is inconsistent (requires Celeano's Harpy to combo) but then one can hardly call Succubus a consistent card either.

If both me and my opponent have a 1-power minion in play, BTM is a die roll, correct? Also, if my opponent has two 8/8s on a fogged row, and I have Yenn Con, does fog trigger first (opponent ends up with 6/7) or Yenn Con (opponent ends up with 5/7)?

BTM is a die roll if you both possess a unit with the lowest power.

Yen triggers first so 5/7. As a general rule gold effects have priority and weather is the last trigger to resolve if multiple effects happen at the same time.

What if it's two gold effects together? Say I have Triss Butt and my opponent has Yenn Con, and I have a 4/5 at start of the turn. Do they become 5/5 (Yenn Con first) or 4/4 (Triss Butt first)?

Also wow Skellige Storm can be tanked by gold units - as in, place your gold units on the left of the storm and suddenly it doesn't do damage anymore. That's pretty silly imo, not to mention unfair. These weather cards are already pretty all-in, they don't need to have this weakness also.

On another note: if I want to make a deck that forces a win game 1, what's the best way to go about it? I imagine gold weather, and Triss Butt / Yen Con?

I believe the person whose turn it is gets effect priority, but don't quote me on that.

There used to be a post on the Gwent reddit that had the resolution sequences and card priorities, but damned if I can find it. You'll have to take my answers with a pinch of salt because I'm doing this from memory, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

I don't get Gwent anymore. Opponent goes first, plays something. I play Frightener - literally inviting him to pass or go two cards down - and my opponent keeps playing?? Not just an isolated case either, most of my opponents do it.

Also my most recent attempt at remaking monsters (involving 2x silver weather, Giant Toad, Frightener) failed pretty badly. Just too many situational cards and the weather cards aren't pulling their weight. Storm being blocked by gold cards is especially depressing. Now I'm out of scraps again ... oh well, but at least I do have enough cards to just netdeck a proven Monsters deck and play that.

When Succubus is bad, she's really bad. But when Caretaker is bad, he's really, really, bad. Eww.

Round 1 is just too important to pass on, you get to dictate the entire pace of the game if you win it. The winner controls the length of Round 2 and goes second in Round 3. Passing for card advantage isn't as powerful as it was in the days of yore.

Yeah, there are decks that can literally go 3 cards behind and still win if they take round one. God I hate Ithlinne.

That's exactly why I want to win round 1 Hakeem Maybe I'll craft Yenn Con next just to force the round 1 win.

How do other monsters players play their Crones? T1 and expose them to attack, or T3 and choke down the mulligan issues? I notice my playstyle is leaning towards the latter, but mulligans are painful, and Ge'els is a bit weaker as a result.

I try to keep Crones for round 3, with Woodland and a potion. Lots of tempo, makes Igni/Borkh suboptimal, hard to overcome. But its not set in stone: I will often commit Crones round 1 against Dorfs to gain tempo and end the round with Igni/Fiend.

It can lead to awkward mulligans, but once you've played Dagon it usually works out fine; I'm also not running Ge'els so its less of an issue. Dagon, Harpy, Potion is 31 points from 3 cards with deck thinning, weather and carryover and how I usually start most games allowing me to save Crones. Again, match up dependent. Earth Ele being a priority over Harpy for the Radovid match up for example.

Yen Con is definitely worth the craft. Works well with BTM too, being able to ensure you have the only 1 power unit.

You're thinking of regular Yennefer, Sjok. Yen Con pings the highest unit(s) each turn. Both cards are good.

My bad. Naturally as we're talking monsters my mind just jumped straight to vanilla Yen. Don't see Con much outside of Xmen.

I usually lead with a hound to get weather started and then slammed Crones right after round 1.

Vs NR, they are basically built to combo off twice, so I try to use stuff like Scorch or Igni to steal round 1. If you do that, you can drag out round 2 and force them to need to use some of their Reaver Hunters.

Vs Skellige, usually you can just power through the discard damage with eggs to win round 1 and then go for the 2-0 to take all the value out of their reanimation strategy.

Elves and Nilfgaard, I just go to max card advantage to prevent them from having the last several plays with their special effects effects

All right, I hit rank 18 and got that sweet golden castle border. From looking at the rewards table for climbing higher, I'm really not feeling it - I'd need to hit 4500 MMR just for a diamond border that I wouldn't even use. The end-of-season rewards aren't any more enticing, since I never plan to be in the top 1k. The amount of games I'd need to put in for minor upward swings in ore/scraps/powder doesn't feel worth it.

Back to memeing in casual for my dailies, glad I could reach my ranked goals with only 96 games played in the mode!

How much is rank 18? 3900?

At 3700 MMR now, thoughts:

1) On forcing the round 1 win - I ran into this Skellige deck that played gold weather R1T1. I played a gold card + a spy, and then he unloaded with even more high-tempo plays including the Witchers. so I passed. He straight passes round 2, and then goes into ANOTHER gold weather round 3. This is very similar to what I was thinking of doing myself actually. Unfortunately for him I had Water Hag and he had no more weather effects. gg wp.

2) On card advantage after round 1 - when I first started playing I wouldn't be unhappy to lose a round if I'm up a card, and I'd be very happy to lose a round if I'm up two cards. After all, I can use an extra card to win rounds 2 and 3! I wonder if things have changed, or if simply too many decks are making use of the first round to set up for future power plays.

3) Caretaker has been rather underwhelming. The best general case has been resurrecting a mage card like Dethmold, but even then Caretaker is 4 + 4 + 7 = 15 power, not exactly stellar. Against graveyard decks it's better, and taking a 15-power Skirmishers is pretty big. But then Succubus can also do that, as can Bekker's Twisted Mirror. Other scenarios could be taking my opponent's Water Hag in a monsters mirror, but then he would actually have to use the Hag first and then it must die. A lot of the time as well my opponent's graveyard is stocked with synergistic cards (e.g. against consume) and there simply aren't good cards to take.

4) So far BTM has proven to be a competent replacement for Succubus. It's not perfect, and I've almost screwed myself a few times by using BTM without noticing that my opponent has the lowest-power (or tied lowest power) unit as well. But it's almost as good, and it frees up a gold slot which is great. Thanks for the idea Sjokwaave.

5) On playing the crones - divinevert what if you go first? Do you weather empty rows or do you play Harpy / EE, then weather, then crones?

I have 800 scraps again and am debating what to craft. Still on the to-do list: Yennefer, Geralt: Igni, Yenn Con (maybe), Old Speartip, and Woodland Spirit. I feel like Igni is the least useful of them, with weather helping to ensure that opposing units aren't at the same power. Besides it's an anti-high power unit card, and BTM / Scorch / Succubus do that very well too. I have my doubts about Yenn Con with weather as well. One of the remaining three and I'll swap out Caretaker, probably ...

The latter. I think one of my carryover power units

Bwahaha my ladder rating is 68-9-1, with at least a couple of the losses being very bad punts. I vaguely remember my first loss where I was ahead by so much I figured "anything wins", and did things like using Fiend to lock my own unit, and then lost. I remember another loss when my opponent played Kambi against me. I thought it blows up everything on my board, so I played Succubus on his side figuring "okay I'll take this after Kambi blows up". Then it turns out Kambi blows up both boards, and I lost the game by one point. RIP Succubus.

idk if I'll keep going but we'll see When's the season ending?

Also a question: I had one game where my opponent's Earth Elemental carryovers started at five power instead of two. What card could possibly do this? I looked through the history and didn't see anything.

EDIT: I think it's Iris that does that - my opponent did play it but I promptly boosted it with a Thunderbolt potion and thought I was safe. That looks quite strong then. Round 1 play out all the carryover units as well as Iris, round 2 wreck everything with +3 Harpies and Lesser Earth Elementals. Heck it increases Harpy carryover by 100% and EE carryover by 150%; even if Iris dies in round 1, it's adding 9 power per Harpy and 3 power per everything else, such as Foglets. The only out is to lock her. How does this card not see more play!?

EDIT #2: Missed this -



I don't agree, any time there's a big minion on the other side of the board Succubus is a huge threat. Being a second-last turn play isn't on its own a problem; after all NR combo also runs Reaver Hunters that aren't meant to come down until really late. There are also other decks that wait till near the end of round 3 to play their win conditions (e.g. Nilfgaard reveal, Skellige Pirate Captains). Succubus is at her best against these decks. The delay isn't long either - two turns, and if she's played on the second last turn you don't really have time to react, not to mention you've probably used the cards that can counter her. The list of cards that can counter her also drop sharply if she's played on a row with more than one big minion.

If Succubus is played earlier, it's generally to force a pass. As in, I play Succ, you pass (forced), I play something, then pass. I'm down two cards, but I've probably won the round.

The real problem with Succubus is when she doesn't have any good targets, and the fact she's an enormous liability if her effect is countered. Like, you could've been counting on a 30+ point power swing, and instead end up giving the opponent 5 power. High risk, high reward - that's the card.

Rank 18 is 3700 MMR. I beat a Succubus player on my way up yesterday afternoon, he tried to take my 17-point Pirate Captain which was the only unit on my ranged row, so Gremist made a Bear out of it and he didn't get anything. That wasn't you Banedon, perhaps?

No lol, if it were me I'd probably have played Succubus 2nd-last card, and if you still had Gremist in hand then I'd be surprised

Up to 4200, something like 120-58 or so. I'll screencap the weird leaderboard that shows up for me. No clue why it's different than other Xbox players. Legit confusing tbh

Banedon, disagree with your opinion of Caretaker. There is almost always a play that generates like 10 points of value, so he's like 14 points and scales up from there. Succubus is 6 points and scales up from there and is easier to interact with. Even a "bad" Caretaker play is....resurrecting a Caleano Harpy, generating 11 power over two rounds.

And then, when you play the decks that interact with the graveyard, he's amazing. Stealing an 11 power Queensguard from your opponent's graveyard makes him a 25 point swing, but giving you the power and denying them that power. Even the bad matchup for Caretaker, which is probably NR, he can take Dethmold or a Knight-Elect where it's still at least 11-14 and the Elect gives the ability to scale up.

Basically, it's always something, which is useful.