I had not seen this prior, thanks for the read.

To be honest though, that is a disparity that I believe to be perfectly tolerable. M:TG has a similar winrate difference between going first/second (I believe it's around 60-40 most of the time) and even chess has a similar disparity (historically, roughly 37.5% of games are won as White, 37.5% are drawn, 25% are won as Black). The article only mentions the points gotten, and indeed the draws mellow the discrepancy out somewhat, but if the game was less draw-ish, the numbers would look similar.

My solution is that the person who loses the flip starts Round 2 with 1 point.


Solves everything. You're welcome, Earth.

So, the public PTR for the upcoming patch is out. I have bad news, divinevert, Mill is dead. There's no way to demote Avalla'ch anymore and Magne Division lost its ability. Lots of other changes, too, but too many to list them all here.

Ugh. No mill? Why? It's a necessary archetype to keep things like self-mill in check. Now everyone can draw their whole deck with impunity

Self-mill? Drawing their whole deck? In Gwent?

Patch is now out and the changelog is here: https://www.playgwent.com/en/news/12391 ... -available

There are a number of builds in Skellige and Nilfgaard that could pretty easily draw their deck, or at last 95% of it

Just because it's tolerable doesn't mean it shouldn't be improved though. Hearthstone's win rate is about even whether one goes first or second. If Gwent can do the same, I would prefer it to do so.

I have mixed feelings about mill. On the one hand it's so extremely different from other decks, and attacks from such a different axis. On the other hand without mill, there's nothing to punish thinning. Thinning is obviously advantageous, but too many thinning cards makes for awkward mulligans. I'd rather not the game reach a stage where one has to run thinning to compete against other decks with thinning, even if one has to risk death by mulligan. Last patch NR would consistently thin to the last card, which is both impressive and potentially problematic.

Impressions so far, Cursed Skellige looks really strong. Each one of those "spawn-a-bear" units is worth 12 points. Then Restore is worth 19, and Priestess of Freya 20. That's not counting the units that boost themselves based on how many cursed units are on the board, either. Scorch is a defense, but only a partial one, since they can stagger units quite easily.

I'm still a masochist and playing with Francesca handbuff. Schirru looks much stronger now as a +4 power Scorch that's buffable with Iorveth. Malena is eh. Not great but not terrible. The new unit that says "do 6 damage to the units at the end of a row" is also great, often worth 17+ points. Generic power boosts across the board has made the deck somewhat better. Muzzle has gone MIA.

It's arguable the power creep is real. On the other hand some other things weren't buffed (e.g. weather damage / turn) so those provide baselines for what is overpowered and what isn't. Right now I'm not seeing that much weather (although Dagon has returned, and not being able to kill Foglet with weather clear is jarring), but weather feels kind of like dredge - once people start shaving hate, it crushes everyone.

True to form I'm not particularly inclined to play while the meta shakes itself out. Where's sjokwaave to do all the playtesting for me?

Tinkered a bit with a Nilfgaard Alchemy deck and was quite happy with it. Very fun to play, but not that competitive I feel.

Started to try out a variation of Pumpkin's new Scoia'tael hyperthin deck and pushed from Rank 17 to Rank 18 in roughly 2 hours. Very nice! And has the tools to line up bears for Scorch and remove pesky Ciri:Novas in the last round.

Mixed feelings in general so far about the patch:
+ Great new UI (room for improvement here and there, but still great)
+ Loads of new things to tinker with

- Loss of general flavor by shortening card names and general dumbing down: Saesenthesis -> Saskia: Destroyer, Swallow Potion -> Swallow, Mardroeme -> Mushroom (really?!, come on...), Emhyr var Emreis -> Emhyr, etc.
- Annoying bugs introduced by the tech rework under the hood (Emhyr bouncing opponent's units, etc.)
- "Create" cards able to spawn silver spies...

The Phoenix challenge was too damn easy.

Eredin still appears to be very strong, which is good.

My current list:

Eredin

Ge'els
Imlerith
Caranthir
Caretaker

Jotunn
Scorch
White Frost
Abaya
Iris
Frightener

2x Wild Hunt Rider
2x Ice Troll
3x Wild Hunt Hound
3x Drowner
3x Biting Frost
Lacerate
First Light

Pretty strong, haven't run into any Yrden yet, though. Just need to be sure to not double Iris into it.

Potential changes into Sleeping Giant for Imlerith, adding additional Ogroids for the benefit to Ice Troll. But I dunno how valuable Bridge Troll is, even at 10 power.

Yrden got a bit toned down since it first got revealed. It only affects one row now, so you should be fine if you spread your units across multiple rows.

Bridge Troll sounds interesting as a counterpart to Drowner. Instead of moving units to frost you can move the frost to them (or frost away from them and then move them into frost again with drowners). Not sure how viable that would be...the last time I played a frost deck was in closed beta...

Oh cool, the tuning of Yrden makes me think the deck will stay solid. Bridge troll is useful for things like the units that clear a weather from an important row or you have a dead row (such as White Frost and them just stacking things on the third row). Usually I get my value by just pulling individual units into the frost with Drowners/Jotunn, but there is something to be said about moving the frost to them. It feels counter-intuitive with Riders, though, where they want to be aligned with the frost at all times.

My impressions of that list (not having played Eredin this patch) are that you have too many control tools? Imlerith, Rider, Drowner, Jotunn, Scorch, Lacerate and now Ice Troll - you might just run out of things to hit. Also, did people stop row-stacking vs. Eredin or what?

I'd think of something like -Jotunn -Imlerith -Lacerate +Woodland Spirit +Dorregaray +Foglet.

EDIT: Nevermind, Dorregaray got rekt, lol!

Eh, I hate diversifying weather. If I wanted to be a combo weather control, I'd move to Dagon, but that's not what my deck is about. I like things that work as removal, which is why I greatly prefer cold to Fog, getting bodies off the table. My ideal scenario is both of us finishing with about 5 bodies, just in time for me to combo off with Iris. It is a very controll-y build, but that's up my alley. Things like wiping Imperia Enforcers off the board with Drowner into weather, etc. is my jam.

Honestly, if I were making one change, it might be cutting Lacerate for another Ice Troll. Lacerate was nice because it gave me another option for getting Iris off the board in a pinch, but Ice Troll would accomplish that same thing, weather or no.

The Nilfgaard deck that plays the 12 power guy, boosts him to 18, and then spams Spotters and Shields to give everyone 18 power boosts is ridiculously strong. If you don't have a very well timed Scorch, it will absolutely run you over. I foolishly gave them round 1 and after winning Round 2 by Scorching like 50 damage off the table, they were still able to rebuild and do it again to me Round 3.

Decks like that are why I'm currently running 2x anti-big unit effects ...

Gotta pity Lurker, since Spelltael's probably suffering from all the splash hate.

Nah, I'm fine with my Scorch ST deck currently. Haven't played Spellatael since the patch hit.

Current Scorch ST deck:

Gigni
Iorveth
Iorveth: Meditation
Schirrú

Ida Emean
Milaen
Malena
Scorch
Aelirenn
Alzur's Double Cross

3x Elven Merc
3x Recon
3x Half-Elf Hunter
3x Dol Blathanna Archers (f*** the new name)
3x Blue Mountain Commandos (f*** the new name)

Spellatiel certainly seems like the best matchup for it, but if it builds correctly, it basically has nine 23+ power units (3 spotters, 3 ointments, 3 shields) and another unit (Bonhart), which can net about 25 if they have a big enough target to extract maximum value. It certainly feels like something that will become oppressive and then get nerfed out of existence in 2 weeks.

There seems to be a proliferation of highly non-interactive decks right now. The Spotter deck is one, Cursed Skellige is another. They're really good at dumping out points, but they are almost entirely unable to interact. You might want to consider running Succubus, divinevert.

Now might also be the time to break out Ciri, Octvist, etc.