4Game

To start: I have always been an optimist about the game and I'm usually the one stubbornly defending design choices and "broken" complaints even though a lot of people, justified, disagree with me. In fact, I still believe that the last few seasons before this one were some of the best seasons in Gwent with a variety of decks being played and a lot of unique stuff that I saw on ladder.

But this last card drop has sort of hit a sour note. You will see why in a moment.

As a sort of experiment, I decided to keep track of the decks I have faced in the Rank 3-1 region in the past few days. Here is my list:

-NG Mill with Nova/Nekker

-NG Clog with Nova/Nekker

-NR Travelling Priestess Abuse

-SK Warriors

-NG Mill with Nova/Nekker

-SK some strange deck with Bear Witchers and Nekker

-ST Elf Spam

-SK same tempo Nekker deck, I don't really know what to call it but it was the same

-SK Warriors

-NG Mill with Nova/Nekker

-NG Mill with Nova/Nekker

-NG Mill with Nova/Nekker

Not joking, I faced the exact same deck three times in row.

-MO Vampires. This was the only MO players I faced in the past two days.

-SK Warriors

-SY Midrange. This was one of the only two SY players I faced in the past two days.

-ST Dwarves

-NG Clog with… you know what I think you already know

-NR Travelling Priestess Abuse

-NG Hyperthin with the usual suspects

-NR Travelling Priestess Abuse

Stats:

8/21 Nilfgaard: all Mill or Clog other than one Hyperthin. Almost all used Nekker/Nova.

5/21 Skellige: about half and half Warriors or some tempo I assume netdeck heavily using the new cards

4/21 Northern Realms: I kid you not, the only NR deck I faced was the exact same Travelling Priestess one. I would have welcomed an Alumni deck for God's sake…

2/21 Scoia'tael: Elf Spam and Dwarves were a pretty welcome sight

1/21 Each, Monsters and Syndicate: encountered a vamps player and a SY midrange player

I myself played, in about equal measures, SK Warriors, NG Status/Ball, and SY Firesworn. My winrate was slightly below 50% (10/10/1) because I wasn't playing my best, but I did not leave or forfeit any games early as I wanted to see the entire deck of the enemy player.

I was planning to play more games, around 50, to get a bigger sample size (I know 21 isn't very much) but I'm gonna be honest I just got burnt out of seeing the same things over and over. I am really not a fan of extremely strong or auto-include Neutral cards (almost every deck I faced, regardless of what it was, ran Ring of Favor for example) which make games boring, reminds me of initial Sunset Wanderers. To make matters worse, Travelling Priestess and Mill, the most common decks I faced, are basically uninteractable and you just need to 2-0 or bleed out the big combo leading to annoying gameplay. Seriously, watching the Travelling Priestess player click their order dozens of times has to one of the most frustrating experiences in Gwent.

That being said, Magic Compass into Lippy or Morkvarg helped against those decks a lot. I saw some success with Deathwish because most of the enemy players did not have hard control for greedy combos. And NG Status with Skellen + Cadaverine dunks on Kolgrim, assuming those combo pieces don't get milled.

Anyway, just wanted to vent my frustration and share some data. Did I just get unlucky? What have you guys been playing facing? Anyone know a silver bullet deck that will make Mill players rage quit? Any discussion is appreciated.