A closer look at Pirate’s Cove…

and some other related stuff;
Well, after 400 matches with SY this season so far, I think it is more than enough to draw some conclusions about its current situation.

I'm a SY main, and have almost 2.000 wins with it, and this season I'm sitting at 2470 mmr, coming down from 2290 mmr when trying some other leaders (I rarely play other people's decks and meta decks).

It is also important to note that I've tried every single leader, plenty of decks variations and of course, the meta decks, namely Pirate's Cove and Lined Pockets.

The easiest wins have been with Pirate's Cove, the 3 versions tested: Redrame's, Shinmiri's and one of mine with Passiflora and Collusion. I went 17-3 while playing these versions, and all of them are great, despite huge gap in card variations.
These 3 lists were also tried with different leaders, especially Hidden Cache, Blood Money and Off The Books. The results with these leaders were mediocre, less than 50% winrate.

* The biggest difference is obviously the room you make in your deck by not having to fit 2 Sea Jackals into it. It allows you to fit coin generators, poisons, and the mid range golds, aka the Borsodi Brothers and the Bleinheims.

So, with all the complaints I've been hearing about Whoreson Junior and Professor, I think they are based on nothing but generalized gossip and sometimes frustration, since these 2 cards with the leaders tested are just good cards (as they should be at 10 and 11p) and the winrate with the other leaders were mediocre, despite having both cards into these decks.

What about Hjalmar, Morkvarg, Baron, Anseis, Yennefer Invocation, Vincent all 9-10p cards, and no one says anything : ) .

They are all as good/better than Junior. Anseis removes a unit with more than 20p with Shieldwall (and can be played twice with Viraxas), Baron is a 6p body that resets any unit and gives it bleeding. Hjalmar requires setup (but you never play him round 1 anyways) and removes 8-12p units, Morkvarg plays for dozens of points usually (unless you face SK). Yennefer Invocation is 9p and simply takes ANY enemy card on the board and put it in the top of your deck, Vincent destroys any enemy card with status (the easiest thing to setup with nilfgaard). Why can't Syndicate have a good 10p removal like these ?

So, my final conclusion and suggestion to CDPR, is to be very careful with what you are going to do with these 2 cards with all the complaints we have been seeing this season, since they will likely be primordial in sinergy with the new Syndicate cards, and to nerf Pirate's Cove by 2 provisions, since it is very clear to me that this leader is insanely good.

Take care.