Honestly, I haven't thought of Eredin Control as a bad match-up for Skellige, and even Dagon is manageable. I haven't seen NG Mill yet I think; it's possible that one opponent was trying to play it against me but that worked out like a charm for me.

The match-up I'm the most concerned about is actually Consume. If Consume wins R1 (not unlikely), I have to win R2 with one card up; otherwise I can't interact with the Grave Hag played on their last turn.

I can't bring myself to play discard. While Dagon possesses a power level other decks just don't reach at least there is variation in play with plenty of tech choices. And despite popular opinion saying it's easy to play (which is true) it's harder than is imagined to master (still not particularly difficult). My moves aren't mapped out, whereas Longship, Longship, Bran, rest of discard, res Skirmisher play Pirates is all discard does 99% of the time. The deck is the most autopilot pile around with little in the way of tech or thought to put in the deck.

It's one of the reasons I might stay with my Dagon build for the final grind rather than switch is because it doesn't fear discard. I wonder what weaknesses I introduce to Eithne if I tech for discard...

Talk about "easy to play, hard to master"? That definitely fits Skellige as well. Yes, your general strategy is linear and easy enough to pick up; and I expect everyone knows to play Ships>Bran>Pirate(>Ermion) in R1.
The devil is in the details. There are also a bunch of decisions to be made; and while most of them revolve around very basic principles (like passing, card advantage, bleeding, keeping track of what is in your/your opponents's yard/deck/hand), they are possibly more crucial than in any other deck.
What do you do in different match-ups (yes, there are grave differences)? How do you avoid catastrophies if your starting hand is bad (in fact, the mulligans are not always straightforward)? When is it correct to pass round 1? How do you manage your resurrections for Cerys? The deck has very, very much micromanagement involved; more than meets the eye when playing against it.

Ugh can't find a Dagon / Iris build I'm happy with. There's just not enough deck thinning and not enough token generators. Maybe I'm just building it wrong, and should treat the deck as a linear combo deck. Take a card like BTM in the deck. It has its uses, sure, but it also doesn't further my gameplan. Same goes for a card like Caranthir. Instead maybe I should be using Triss: Butterfly and Commander's Horn instead.

About "easy to play, hard to master", that applies to all Gwent, no?

I'm in agreement with this but I'm a bit biased. I think the single biggest skill when playing with or against this deck is always having an eye on that Cerys timer and sequencing accordingly. There are a lot of cute Gremist plays to maximize Cerys value and discarding Priestesses to chain rez at a key moment is also quite elegant.

Seven free points on a gold body multiple times without spending a card is the real power of the deck.

And Coral, don't forget Coral.

The mulligan for this deck can also be quite punishing if you're not used to playing it.

The deck is also light years better when it draws Ermion vs. when it doesn't so I've been playing Svanrige over Donar the entire time. There are games when not having a Donar is a liability but Svanrige is almost never bad and can be resurrected with Sigrdrifa. One of the biggest problems with the deck is getting those Raiders stranded in hand with no way to discard them. Mini-Ermion helps with that and also helps to find his big gold brother.

Basically this; though I'd go as far to say that the mulligans are as important as the Cerys counter. For the reasons you described, every single mulligan holds a certain risk, and you need to assess correctly how important the mulligan is vs. the risk of stranding a Raider in your hand.

Oh yeah, Coral. She was my last craft for the deck (since I had Igni early) and when I first included her my winrate tanked like no tomorrow because I was trying to play her like Igni too much. It took me a while too get used to what she offers over Igni; but when I did, it was absolutely awesome and she has squeezed out so many wins it's not even funny.

I absolutely feel you for the games you don't draw Ermion; that immediately makes your job immensely harder. If I were allowed to run a 7th Silver, Svanrige would be in no doubt. However, Donar just does so much - unlocking your Ships R1, locking opposing threats and messing with your opponent's plan by discarding an important Bronze out of their deck - that sometimes works like a charm for you afterwards. Svanrige is never bad, but he competes for his slot with six absolutely amazing Silvers.

How do you guys think Coral is going to be nerfed? (from oblique comments from several people on the PTR she is almost certainly going to feel the bat). Rounding down and no longer ignores armor?

Comments have been made regarding Donar too: he's to swingy, because if he hits the right card it can win games right then and there, plus CDPR have said they want to minimise the influence RNGesus has over the game.

Harpy change/nerf is already confirmed and I can see Reaver Hunters being hit. I think Foglets are likely to see attention too. I'm not sure what the best approach is though. Making them doomed is an option I've seen discussed, but that just kills them completely IMO and neuters the entire swarm archetype which should be viable, just not overpowering. Going to 1 seems it might be worth a trail, especially in conjunction with the Harpy nerf.

Anything else people want to see changed?

Playing a Ciri Dash/Avallac'h Scoia'Tael build (after already piloting Dashgaard a bunch) I can honestly see these cards coming to the forefront even more than they already are after the patch. The long game control decks could be in danger of running away with the next meta IMO if CDPR aren't careful. They're already fairly strong against a few decks (with Scorch and Schirru at it's disposal the Scoia'Tael deck destroys dorfs and NR) and if they're nerfing monsters which is their natural predator and tuning up Nilfgaard then I can quite easily see them becoming the next bogeyman.

Also news regarding social features in the upcoming patch:



EDIT: potential buffs can be seen to generic Geralt (base 11) and DShackles (damages enemies/alchemy tag so can be found with new Gold Vesemir).

EDIT 2: doing a quick calculation, you are guaranteed 35 kegs going into next season if you reach 4200 MMR (19 from season rank, 10 from newly announced starter pack and 6 from carryover rank up rewards (you will start at 1400 MMR next season so you don't crush the hopes and dreams of complete newbs). Not bad. Not bad at all considering the same would cost a little under $50 in the shop.

Yeah, I can see Coral getting nerfed; she's insane. You almost never get under 20 power worth of value out of her. Rounding down alone would make her much worse, though.

Making Foglets doomed but not disappear when the fog is cleared? Seems fine to me; makes them very similar to NGs Golems.
Setting their power to 1 would be decent as well.

BTW, what is the harpy nerf exactly going to be? The only thing I recall is that they're going to have 6 power, what else?

There's a PTR?

I'm actually not convinced Coral is overpowered. Strong yes, but overpowered is a different level entirely. There're lots of other powerful golds, and she needs some factors in her favour before she hits peak potential. If she's nerfed, a reason might be to indirectly buff decks like Dwarves, which Timmy is bound to like but has a lot of strong counters. The way to nerf her I'd suggest decrease her power value, so that she's not worth that much more than Merigold's Hailstorm.

Generic Geralt definitely needs a buff. I doubt he'd be playable even at generic 11, however. I can agree with a possible buff to DShackles as well. Thing about that card right now is that it's such a narrow hate card. If you miss your target it's completely useless. If it existed in Magic nobody would play it main deck for that reason. Foglet I think is OK. Fog is a weak weather, and they're not that easy to summon since there's no Wild Hunt Hound equivalent for fog.

Other changes off the top of my head, probably biased towards monsters since I play that faction:

Woodland Spirit - probably nerf in some way. Generating 16 power AND six bodies makes it by far the strongest gold card for a swarm strategy.
Celeano Harpy - this card is very strong and could probably use some small changes. Making the harpies not trigger deathwish for example, or making it so that buffs have weaker effect on the eggs / they don't provide 5 power when consumed. However a problem is that this card is also a core card of swarm strategies and simply has no replacement. If swarm is to be viable, then there should be some other card that makes bodies (or something).
Arachas - I don't like this card because the way it's worded it'll only ever be effective with Arachas Behemoth. Maybe make that spawn a different kind of Arachas, and give the vanilla Arachas some kind of extra ability (compare the elf variant, and Temerian Infantrymen).
Harpy - 3 power is a total joke here. Give it at least 6 (and make Celeano Harpy's eggs spawn a different kind of harpy).
Swallow - should buff by more. Thunderbolt Potion, Immune Boost etc buff for more than Swallow, and it's already easier to counter a single big minion than multiple small ones.
Skellige's Storm - should not be blocked by gold units, which is really lame considering it's at best a 5-power play and has lots of counters.
Assassination - I've never seen this card played. Maybe if it said "demote it first if it's gold" it would see play, although I don't know if it'll be too strong then.
Restore and Treason - add some kind of "... and buff it / a unit on the board by 2" to them, or they're just not good enough.
Machines in general - needs buff, never see them.
Ice Giant - too weak. Would use say 6+6 power although I'm not sure it'd see play even then.
Chort - as above. Maybe 8+3 power, although I'm not sure it'd see play even then.
Botchling and Lumberkin - what are these for?
Wild Hunt Rider - I'd rework this card. It's a contradictory card right now. They're already weak on their own, and if you slog through the hoops to play 3 of them, they start buffing themselves. But they gain resilience if you lose, which means opponents are incentivized to pass. What's the point of giving up tempo early in the round for tempo later in the round if the opponent is just going to pass before it becomes a factor? If it said something like 'gain resilience if you win', then they might be something.
Nithral - with Frost in its current form, this card is not good enough.
Draug - buff or it's just a weaker Fire Elemental.
Zoltan: Animal Tamer - buff since even in a swarm strategy there're better options (Yennefer & Triss: Butterfly).
Caranthir - make it move "up to three" units. Mainly a QoL fix since otherwise you actually want to play Caranthir before your Wild Hunt Hounds. However Caranthir is already a strong card, maybe lower its power a bit to make up for it.

Are they adding new cards already? The game's not even out of beta, and new cards?

This game is easy to learn and hard to master - I lost one game to a Nilfgaard deck after forgetting that I had to use BTM before using Lacerate (since that gave him two more 1-power units, making BTM unreliable). I almost lost another game to discard Skellige after forgetting that when frost finishes off Morkvarg, it revives, and that can potentially trigger Cerys. Bleep. Mission 4200 is on though! 4111 now, not that far away.

I've not actually played with Coral, but I think this might be too simplistic. Coral requires several things to come together: opponent must have a long row, and opponent must preferably have high-power units on that row. This isn't easy to achieve. People already try not to overload rows (because of cards like Water Hag / Geralt: Igni), and they also try not to have high-power units in long rows (again because of Geralt: Igni). You are highly incentivized to play Coral in a long round, but in a long round there's always the chance the opponent is going to pass / play more units, in which case your Coral might be too early or too late. If you turn out to be too late then she's a lot weaker in subsequent rounds. Furthermore there are other things that are almost as good: Lacerate is a bronze card and is extremely high value against a stacked row as well.

If you look only at power then Iris could easily be broken as hell. I mean, a swarm deck shouldn't have too much trouble getting 10 bodies on the board before playing Iris. Iris then becomes a jaw-dropping 30 power!! For a silver card!! And if opponent passes she still triggers on carryover!! But if you examine things more closely, triggering Iris favorably is not easy at all. The same, I suspect, applies to Coral.

By invitation only. Mostly the big streamers and top of the ladder players.

Between all the plays designed to punish tall creatures (Igni/Mardroeme/Scorch) and Caretaker to interfere with their graveyard strategy (usually stealing a 14/17 power guy in Round 3), Eredin has alot of ways to punish Dwarves/Skellige.

Oftentimes, between the Hound and Frightener, I can limit the War Ship/Bran combo to only dealing 4 damage, which really puts them behind the 8-ball round 1. It's not rare that I can pull off 2-0 wins thanks to significant carryover power to offset Morkvarg/Cerys/Olgierd, greatly limiting the value to Cerys and recursion strategies simply by taking away their ability to stretch the effect over all three rounds.

Yes but it's going on now? Usually I see PTR footage on Twitch and all the top streamers I've seen are playing the same build we are.

It's a completely closed environment and they have to sign NDAs. They aren't allowed to stream or talk about it accept to say it exists and they are in it.

How does Dagon do vs. Elves Control? Because that is a painful matchup for me.

If by Dagon you mean Dagon swarm, I don't have explicit memories of the matchup, which is a sign that it's not poor. Spam all the tokens you got and make their Scorches, Braenns and Villen-whatsisname look silly. Sure their trappers will do some damage, but not that much damage, and as long as your tokens stay alive (you have boosts too) your payoffs later will overwhelm them in value. You can lock one with Fiend.

Oddly enough, I don't find Enya control a bad matchup with Eredin, either.

I have a question for the Skellige discard players: how bad is it for you if you play Longship x2 and opponent passes at once, or do you prefer if this happens? What about 3x Longship?

I'm debating the threat posed by the Longships. Right now I get the feeling that a single Longship isn't bad, but two generate a crap ton of value if they're both on the board before the power discard plays are used. Three is even worse. I'm currently thinking that since Skellige discard is not based on winning round 1, I can safely pass round 1 if they play two Longships. Since the Longships are only worth 6 value on their own, I'll probably also enter round 2 up a card and possibly with some carryover (EE being a great minion to tank the first Longship hit).

So example games with Eredin control vs. Skellige discard:

Opponent goes first, plays Longship. I play Crones. He plays 2nd Longship. I pass.
I go first, play Crones. He plays Longship. I play Earth Elemental. He plays 2nd Longship. I pass.

The alternative is to go for the long game, which would involve weather-ing the Longships at once. Opinions?

Skellige Discard does want to win round 1 so that they can bleed out the opponent. I generally try to do so without being 2 cards down (which I think is not worth it), but being 1 card down is not so bad.

So in general, if I'm on the play and the opponent passes after seeing 2 Longships I'm reasonably happy. Moreso because I can often start R2 with a Longship (either drawn from hand or resurrected by a Priestess of Freya) while still having my discard online.

To get to your examples:



I think playing the second Longship is a mistake by the Skellige player here since you can pass and put the opponent dow by 2 cards. There are some situations where playing the Longship before discard is not correct (another example would be if the first ship gets Lugos'd in the mirror). I'd 100% go King Bran to avoid falling behind on board.



As a Skellige player, I'm very happy to see your pass here; I'll go Bran into discarding Cerys, Morkvarg, An-Craite Raider and win Round 1 at -1 card; which I value as fully acceptable.