Depends on the version you're facing. If you face the armor-heavy version (with Knight-Elects and the guys that get bigger once theor armor is removed), I doubt this'll be enough.

Even if, it's still negative tempo (at least the Compression for Trollolo) and you need to have the answers ready... I wouldn't like it I think.

Five-minute guide to casual mode meta, don't know how much of this holds on the ladder:

Monsters
Unseen Elder: rare. Expect similar cards to previous patch, they might run Nekker Warriors now though. You might also see Deathwish-based variants with cards like Griffin.
Eredin: uncommon. Expect heavy control with White Frost + plenty of move cards.
Dagon: rare. Only thing I've seen in common is one (and only one) Foglet.

NR
Quite common. Typically armor, regardless of leader. Not every deck runs Trollolol now, but they'll all have Stennis, Shani, DB Heavy Cavalry, etc. Some machine decks are floating around but they're uncommon - if you meet one, expect Battering Ram.

Elves
Eithne - very rare. Expect spells, with silver and gold weather.
Brouver - rare. Resilient Dwarves is completely gone. Expect move-based decks that work off Mahakam Pyrotechnician & Dol Blathanna Marksman.
Francesca - common. Same as Brouver, expect elf-based move-based decks. They'll have 3x bronze weather clear, and yesterday I ran into one with the mage as well (really...?).

Skellige
CAC - uncommon. Expect Greatsword / Light Longship variants.
Harald the Cripple - uncommon. Expect Axemen, with both gold weather.
King Bran - uncommon. Expect Queensguard. They seldom run ships anymore.

Nilfgaard
John Calveit - common. Expect spies with 3x Impera Brigades & Enforcers, as well as a large assortment of spies.
Emyr - common. Expect mill. They will have 3x Rot Tossers for the last turns when you've passed.
Moruran - rare. Expect reveal. They can have very large units via revealing Geralt for Spotter.

Banedon pretty much got the gist of it, I'll chime in with my experiences (Ladder around 3.5k MMR).

Monsters: Dagon has gained some popularity as far as I can tell; often running a Consume sub-theme with Nekkers and Ekimmas. Eredin is seen mostly running the Frost control list; some are trying a Wild Hunt Longship list at lower MMR. Unseen Elder is pretty much the same as before, but he's rare.

NR: Most NR decks run Radovid, as he provides the most power as well as the most flexibility in the Bronze slot (there are quite some different builds possible here). Henselt will run a more machine-focused build with Kaedweni Siege Support. Foltest can run any of the Radovid lists, but is seen very rarely.

ST: Surprisingly, I found Eithne to be one of the more common ST leaders. While Scoia'Spell is not really a thing, she seems to provide value to move-based decks due to rebuying tech like Merigold's Hailstorm or simply First Light.
I've seen a lot less Francesca these days; probably because Saskia seems to have fallen out of favor.
Anyways, expect movement-based decks with heavy Elf subtheme regardless of leader.

Skellige: Pretty rare overall. Bran is almost 100% shipless QG, I've not seen Harald at all in a good while, Craich An Craite will be running Axemen with movement subtheme (Whale Harpooner, Geralt:Aard). Greatsword/Light Longship variants seem to be a lot less common nowadays.

Nilfgaard: Calveit Spies is by far the most common NG deck and seems rather optimized to me except for maybe one Gold slot. I found Mill to be rather uncommon; as is the case with Reveal.

I'm not sure I can agree about spies; there maybe some set core cards, but even the most common bronzes are run in differing numbers. When I think of optimised lists I think of discard from last patch - that deck was practically set in stone. Spies can vary quite a lot. Do you want to run Rot Tosser? Iris? Peter? Assassins? How many Enforcers? Stefan, Vilgefortz, Zoltan or Assassination? Assire and Roach? Cynthia for tempo?

I think the core is 3 Emissary, 3 Impera, 1 Nauzica, Cahir, Rainfarn, Joachim, Cantarella and Vanhemar. That's only 12 cards, the rest is builders choice. A case could be made to add Menno and 2 Infiltrators to that list but I have played against decks that don't run them, though I think it's foolish not too myself.

Not playing it myself, but from the opposing decks I've seen I'd definitely consider Menno, at least 2 Infiltrators, Ceallach and at least 2 Enforcers to be core cards. On the other hand, I'm not sure about Vanhemar (I've seen lists omit him). That's 17 cards that are set in stone.
The last gold is a flex slot indeed (mostly seeing Vilgefortz, Assassination seems good, Skellen seems possible but not great IMO).
As for Silvers, Assire+Roach are very popular at least (though I can fully understand not calling them core as these silver slots could go elsewhere). Last Silver goes to your favourite of the bunch (Cynthia, Peter, Auckes, Vanhemar, Hailstorm; I've mostly seen Cynthia here though).
Out of the remaining four Bronzes, two are to interact with the opponent (either 2 Tossers or 2 Assassins), the remaining 2 either fill out playsets of the 2-of core cards or take tech spots (Vicovaro Medic, Imperial Golem (as 1-of alongside Cynthia) or Standard Bearer).

Not quite as set in stone as Skellige Discard pre-Gold Immunity (where your 2-of Bronze was your only flex slot really), but the lists tighten up more and more.

Indeed Dagon has gotten more popular. Mostly seeing the consume variant, although I've also played against heavy control lists that make me wonder "why aren't they using Eredin". I'm still not seeing Eithne. Why would you use Eithne instead of Francesca in a move deck? Francesca is a powerful consistency card, and if you're interested in First Light you could just run the mage. 2x Hailstorm is also inferior - the value you get out of the second one is likely to be a lot less than the first.

As for spies: I'm not playing it either, but I don't see why you wouldn't play 3x Impera Brigades & Enforcers? Boosting and damaging off Rot Tossers is just very powerful. They're both so threatening that I try to kill them whenever I can.

Let's not call the deck unoptimized though. The diversity means the game is more balanced, with more options!

Basically no one runs Clear Skies right in now, so I I'm back with Eredin

No Clear Skies, really? I've been playing against decks with 2x bronze Clear Skies, 3x bronze weather clear + mage, decks with both gold weather, etc, and you're not running into Clear Skies?

By the way; a site called GwentUp has collected data and posted a meta report: https://gwentup.com/report/2017/13.

Most popular leaders are no surprise (Radovid, Dagon, Calveit). Dagon and Radovid also put up great winrates and match-ups across the board, Calveit is the best Nilfgaard leader and aces out all of the Skellige leaders as well, but he suffers from really bad match-ups against both Dagon and Radovid.
In Scoia'tael, Brouver Hogg puts up the best winrates, his match-ups vs. Radovid and Dagon are even and his only really bad match-ups are An Craite and Calveit. Eithne is definitely interesting as she has the single best match-up vs. Dagon.

Hmm, it surprises me that Radovid is outperforming Henselt. The Support, PFI, Ram build is disgusting. You either answer the Support and get your board blown out with Rams or stop the Ram and get blown out by Support tempo. The fact it just casually throws in Shani/Stennis/Dumb Banana for round 3 is the icing on the cake. While I know NR has been over tuned since the patch I never felt oppressed and found ways to combat it for the most part, but this current build that I'm seeing A LOT is stupid. I can only have so many answers and when something sticks it becomes a huge danger because of Henselt and the resulting ridiculous bronze value. Radovid can be nasty but I've always felt some semblance of fairness there like I could fight my way into a game.

I actually sat down last night to play and quickly went 3-0 in casual with Queensguard, felt good. Is it seeing any play in ranked? Can it hang? I'm off Friday so I have to decide on a deck for my ranked climb by then. Skellige is my jam but this doesn't feel like the patch for me if what I'm reading above is true.

You need Drake to bulk them up to compete against the power-creep. But that is really low tempo and even buffed they just don't fair well against the tempo other decks are generating. Plus Caretaker and Vicovaro Medic are common sites on the ladder. As I said if you want to compete with Skellige, you have to go Xmen.

Not a deck I'm really scared of.

What is this Dagon list that's generating such a high win rate at 4000+? Dagon never struck me as very powerful tbh.

Hybrid consume.

http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/30848-specimens-hybrid-consume

Manticore? Renew? 3x Harpy? Seems like some weird choices tbh

I was watching SuperJJ play a very similar list to that one this morning, only one or two cards different. I'm trying to recall his 4th gold card, he wasn't using Renew. As far as Manticore goes, it's there as Toad Prince fodder that can also feed Katakan if you don't need to hate on anything.

Also, the Woodland Spirit Wolves proc the Harpies, so he was getting away with the three-pack. There were some awkward hands and mulligans, though, a lot of that stuff wants to be in the deck for R1.

Interesting.

I still think it's very rare that I can't generate 16+ points with Scorch, though. It feels criminally underutilized.

Agree it's underutilized. It's not so much that I can always generate 16+ points, but even if I can't, it pulls its weight. It bypasses armor, and the most popular decks all have units vulnerable to it.

The meta snapshot is interesting. After all my games with Eredin I think NR is the hardest matchup (armor counters weather), followed by move ST (3x bronze weather clear and plenty of ways to escape the damage). On the other hand I haven't lost to Emyr ever since I started blacklisting WH Hounds instead of Biting Frost, and Dagon is very beatable. In fact looking at the Dagon list I don't really understand why it's so effective vs. Eredin. It's only got two rows of weather, it's fully vulnerable to weather spam, it makes big minions that die to stuff like Scorch. Heck, the vaunted Toad Prince + Manticore + Katakan play just ends up feeding 34 points to said Scorch. Harald the Cripple as one of the worst matchups also doesn't make sense. I don't think I've lost a single game against Axemen - they're completely reliant on the two gold weather cards, so after the first one I pass, and clear the second with Abaya, and the game is mine.

I suppose I should play more on the ladder. Is there a difference between the pro ladder and the normal ladder? I know Ordev said there's no reason at all to play on the normal ladder, but for some reason after winning on the pro ladder I don't seem to be gaining MMR (?)

Just looked it up; Geralt:Aard. Interesting; generally Regis:Higher Vampire and Caretaker are more common in that slot.



Queensguard suffers from many different factors, making it not a good choice right now IMO (and it hurts me to accept it)

-Wanting to win round 1, but absolutely not having the tools for it. King Bran, Draig Bon-Dhu and others just leave you behind on tempo too much.

-Not having a fifth good Bronze in general. What are your Bronzes aside from Priestess, Queensguard, Raider, Warmonger and the 1-of Skirmisher? Pirates are underpowered without Ships and vice versa, but you ain't got the space to fit them all. Swim tried running Whale Harpooners, after some testing I was rather underwhelmed though; and a card like Clan Torrodach Shieldsmith just feels so mediocre...

-Horrendous match-up versus Monsters as well as meh match-ups versus ST and NR.




Scorch is interesting, but most of the time Merigold's Hailstorm just generates more points (especially if you can move units around) and most decks don't have the room to run both. That being said, try it out.

Can't really give much input on Eredin vs. Dagon as I'm not playing either deck myself; my thought process is that Eredin might have problems dealing with carryover and Dagon having generally slightly better tempo plays to dominate the rounds. That being said, I don't know what your Eredin list looks like.
Harald having a good match-up vs. Eredin makes sense seeing how Harald always has access to Whale Harpooner plus Lacerate.

Regarding the ladders, I think if you are still building your collection and don't have ambitions I'd suggest just playing the normal ladder as you get your rank-up rewards there (pro ladder doesn't count into normal MMR since the pro ladder uses a very own MMR system).

How do you switch between pro and regular ladder?