Arnaghad is, without a doubt, my favorite card from the WotW expansion. I played him a lot when he came out. Sukrus, Defender, Patricidal Fury, the whole shebang. I stopped playing him because Viy players would just mess up Sukrus with Prince Villem, NG would lock or Yenvo him, and ST would just screw everything up with movement techs. As much as I love this card, I have to admit that he is extremely binary and unplayable more often than not.

Arnaghad Strategies

Realistically, there are 3 ways to play Arnaghad: With shields, with bloodthirst+armor, and with Sukrus.

Shield Arnaghad requires tutoring Arnaghad with Quen and then restoring his shield with cards like Lady of the Lake, Watchman, and Sangreal. It doesn't really work though, because your opponent can usually play a low strength card (like the 2-for-8 tutors or Quen) followed by a tall card. Also, you miss out on one turn of Arnaghad's adrenaline due to Quen's adrenaline being lower. And if you play Sangreal, your opponent will just laugh at you that much harder when they pop their heatwave.

Armor Arnaghad synergizes the best with what SK already does best, but is still shutdown by heatwave like everything else. The opponent can play tall cards like Harald Gord that would normally be targeted by Morkvarg, in order to cut Arnaghad down to size. Finally, NR witchers counters this pretty hard by both denying bloodthirst and having easy access to tall, shielded units. Keep in mind that Arnaghad's armor translates to points most efficiently when your opponent plays units with 7 or less strength. If they play a unit whose strength is equal to Arnaghad's strength+armor, Arnaghad gets OHKOd and he essentially becomes a lousy 7-for-10.

Sukrus Arnaghad doesn't work reliably because it requires having 3 specific cards in round 3, and is heavily telegraphed. It is also shut down by spies. Sigdrifa's Rite helps a bit if you were forced to play one of the combo in round 1, but you should expect either defender or Arnaghad being heatwaved, which denies Sigdrifa value. Also, the setup of defender+Sukrus telegraphs your moves to your opponent, allowing them to start planning how to take him out before he even hits the board. Your best bet is probably to try and have Dracoturtle soak up heatwave while providing a secondary Sigdrifa target, but then you have to add an alchemy/druid package, which is a completely different type of deck than I believe Arnachad was intended for.

Interactions

When Arnaghad is bad, he's terrible. When he's good, he's unbeatable. Here's some of the more notable interactions.

Arnaghad killers:

• Geralt: Quen

• Griffin Witcher Adept (Especially with AA)

• Joachim DeWett

• Most locks (except Dimeterium shackles, Artefact Compression, and the NR lock)

• Heatwave (Trades even, but with no setup required)

• Morkvarg (Trades down by one point, but with no setup required. Would normally brick vs SK)

• Yghern (Usually OHKOs Arnaghad and moves conveniently to the graveyard for Ozzrel)

• Donimir of Troy

Juicy Targets:

• Gezras of Leyda

• Kolgrim

• Keldar

• Seltkirk/Anseis

• Koschey

• Margarita Laux-Antille

Analysis

So what is Arnaghad supposed to do? What is his niche? How should he fit into a Skellige player's gameplan? Well, most cards fit into one or more of 5 roles: pointslam, engine, control, finisher, or tech. Arnaghad is clearly trying to be a mix of control and finisher. He's almost an engine, but his value is basically capped by strength+armor unless he's protected by Sukrus. As control, Arnachad struggles because he is played too late in the game. By the time Arnachad is up, your opponent should be ready to play their finishers. Cards like Gord, Lyrian Scytheman, Viper witcher mentor, Leo, Ozzrel, Morkvarg, and Heatwave are going to be making appearances. All of these cards can often 1-shot Arnaghad, while requiring less setup and provisions. Additionally, Arnaghad competes with Morkvarg/CC/heatwave to damage your opponent's finishers.

In short, Arnaghad is played too late in the game to counter greedy engines, and too early to avoid cards like heatwave. Obviously you'll usually put him behind a defender, but the greedy card behind defender problem has already been explored before with Vysogota, Kolgrim, and many others. In short, he sucks.

How do we fix him?

This is ultimately up to CDPR, but I think there are a couple options. Basically, I think that Arnachad+Bloodthirst should be viable, while Arnachad+Sukrus should be a meme.

1. Have him somehow deal damage on deploy so that he doesn't trade down so hard.

2. Make it so that Bear Witchers deal 3 damage (without adrenaline 4) if Arnaghad is in hand. This would really help setup the required bloodthirst in the first place.

3. Make it so that Arnaghad can gain conditional veil or immunity based on bloodthirst. Maybe bloodthirst 3 -> veil and bloodthirst 6 -> immunity.

4. Drastically reduce his adrenaline requirement, possibly removing it entirely. Remember, the sooner he drops, the less armor he gets.

5. A more extensive rework.

What do you guys think? I'd love to hear some feedback on this. If it were up to me, I'd probably go with options 2 and 4. Maybe allow veil from option 3 but not immunity.