Draft Review

So last night, I went home, curled up under a blanket with my significant other, we put some horror stories on in the background, and I played Draft for the night. After playing a lot of it I wanted to put my thoughts down while they were still fresh, what i liked, what I didn't like, what I think still needs work, etc.

For a starting point, I compiled some of my thoughts while Draft was in Beta, discussing what I thought at the time were the issues with it. I will restate those here.

akaean (3 months ago)

1. the packs are not balanced. Generally speaking when you are building a deck, and looking at the cards offered to you, some are extraordinarily good, while others are practically worthless. Things like thinning packages are basically better than anything else, so you will always take them when offered.
2. Your deck ends up being incredibly repetitive. Part of the problem with Draft is that it offers you cards that it thinks you will want to pick based on the packs you have chosen and your leader ability. That is fine and dandy, except what ends up happening, is you get offered the same good card, over and over again, and you take it, over and over again, because its the best thing you could get. My last Draft deck was an ST movement deck, and I ended up with at one point, 3 Gezras. That isn't interesting or fun, or finding new combos from all of the faction cards. Its just the strongest card of an archetype taken over and over again.
3. The way packs are added and removed feels arbitrary and punishing. Sometimes it will take away a key pack that has cards you really need… sometimes it will offer you nothing but garbage. Sometimes the game won't offer you any thinning packs. Sometimes the packs are outdated, like a thinning pack with Foglets… what is this… months ago. This can result in your deck getting significantly worse, through realistically no fault of your own. It can also result in your deck getting significantly stronger, due to luck offering you an opportunity to cut a weak pack from you deck and add a strong one. This adds a ton of luck to the game, and you might just get curb stomped in a match you wouldn't have for no other reason than your opponent got lucky with packs and you got shafted.

So lets look at the decks I played yesterday and break them down a little bit.

Mahakam Forge – 6 : 1 – This deck ended up just being a mediocre dwarf deck with the Crones, what I mean by that is by the end of the draft I had 1 Brouver, 1 Gabor, 1 Novigradian Justice, 1 Zoltan Warrior and those were the best cards in the deck. It was just a solid deck, and with the lower amount of control in Draft Brouver can just curb stomp people. My one loss was to Nilfgaard which had an answer to everything, and it was the second match in the game before the Dwarf package really came together. Earlier rounds in the Draft felt more dynamic and interesting, as this deck had a small Alzur package with some spells like Uma's curse, and it had Boat Builders and Trollollol. The Boat Builders were really disappointing, because the game refused to give me any Dwarves besides Brouver who would work with them. I could not get a single Berserker. I could not get Yarpen. But boy was I swimming in Mercenaries which made taking any non dwarf pack dubious. It was a good but boring deck by the end and I think some of its success was due to lucky matchmaking.

Congregate – 2 : 5 (one of those losses was a win that my connection dropped). – This deck just felt like a below par Congregate deck. SY really feels bad in Draft overall, as the coin mechanic makes taking neutrals and other faction cards awkward. As a result I felt like I was playing earlier rounds like a normal Fire Sworn deck without any Fallen Knights, and I was never offered anything spicy like Crimes + Whoreson Sr or even things like Bone Talismen or other swarm payoff cards. I always felt like getting enough coins to get sewer raiders out was a nightmare. The deck still played… okay. I was robbed from my third win by a disconnect but these things happen. One of my losses was a hilarious loss to a casino Nilfgaard player who always hit exactly what he needed from Uma's curse (he had 5 of them, first one found Scortch for a 14 point lone champion, second found Alzur…)

Ursine Ritual – 5 : 2 – Interestingly, this deck felt the best out of all four that I played last night. It was by far the spiciest and the packages worked really well together including out of faction packages. The deck had a core of Cerys, Queensguard, 2 Olafs, Blueboy, Arnaghad, Bear Witcher Quartermasters, etc. One of the really neat synergies was a "Shield pack", which offered a Dao (meh), Kaedweni Knight, and a Cintrian Artificer. The Knight was really neat to smack with a Quartermaster or be placed next to a Priest when I had those, and the Artificer would often come down the turn before Arnaghad and give him a shield. This deck felt really fun to pilot- especially since it matched well into White Frost and Vampires (as you care a lot less about bleed and frost damage when its hitting things like Queensguard and Olaf)

Imposter – 5 : 2 – oh boy. THIS DECK. Double ball, with lots of poisons and locks, and 6 Hunting Packs. It was stupidly strong, and almost impossible to pivot out of, as once you get far enough into poison locks and aristocrats the game almost always offers you ball, and once you have two balls, why would you ever pivot out. There were some interesting things I noticed, namely Braathens is really awkward, the Disloyal pack that has Braathens doesn't have any other disloyal spies, so you have to find another disloyal pack, and you can't swap either of them out without either losing or bricking Braathens. Doesn't feel great.

Overall from my experiences it seemed as though the strongest decks were Nilfgaard, Monsters, and Guerilla Tactics. Nilfgaard just feels like it has a monopoly on control, as their decks are just swarming with locks and other statuses and combos like double ball are just insanely powerful. Monsters have access to Vampires, which just work really well and always felt solid when I played against them and Overwhelming Hunger which will frequently be offered multiple Haunts. Guerilla Tactics makes the list because they frequently get offered movement packages, and with the lower amount of control in Draft (aside from NG), the movement package is really potent… and they frequently will have multiple Gezras which is insane.

When I look back to my prior criticisms, it is apparent that the first two remain problematic, however the option to skip packs has largely resolved number 3 (although there is still significant luck in what gets offered to you in the first place). I won't go through all those complaints again here, but there are still some packs that are obviously horribly bad, like triple foglets, and some that are really good (realistically any of the thinning ones). And decks still feel really repetitive, because why wouldn't you take the best card in an archetype over and over and over again as many times as you can??

What I really like about Draft is that it requires you to think about the game in a different way. What packs can I get, what interesting combos can I pull to take my opponents off guard. I started a draft this morning that is in process, and was offered Feign Death in a Wild Hunt deck. HOW CAN I SAY NO THAT? There is a ton of possibility for spicy combos that you just won't ever have an opportunity to pull off in a regular game of Gwent and the game is noteworthy because of that. Overall, I think its just minor things that need to be tweaked to make Draft a more enjoyable environment overall.

Now what do I think could use improvement. Pack balance first and foremost, but I won't dwell on that, because CDPR has already acknowledged that this needs work.

1. Remove high end duplicates. The way Draft offers keynote high end cards feels bad and generally these cards should be limited to one per deck. Players shouldn't ever be staring down the barrel of double Ball, double Gezras, double Haunt, or double Salamaner. It feels bad to play against because if you didn't happen to draft into something similarly broken… you doomed. It feels bad to play because when you are playing a deck like that you aren't finding unique combos from multiple factions… you are just playing the strongest card of an established archetype over and over again. Keeping high end golds to one per deck (if you have Ball, you don't get offered Ball), makes people play more diversity in their Draft decks, instead of repetitive decks. I think we are all playing draft because we want diversity. I don't want to feel that I'm not playing an interesting deck and just spamming the strongest card in an archetype- this is one of the biggest issues with Draft overall in my opinion.
2. Remove or make thinning packages universal. Thinning packages are way too strong and players are almost actively punished for not taking them. Sometimes players will have multiple of them, and sometimes players will not even see them. Thinning packages should either be removed entirely, or they should be offered as a single automatic pull for your first draft. Everybody gets offered 1 thinning package. Thinning packages feel bad because you are gimping yourself if you don't take them, and often that means passing up a really interesting pack that could actually combo well with your deck in favor of them.
3. Add card based matchmaking. While I'm not sure if this is the case or not, Draft should, where possible, favor a card based matchmaking system. This is something I noticed when looking at my game history of my Dwarves compared to my Congregate or other decks. My last few games with Dwarves were against players with mediocre decks making pretty severe misplays- despite having an overwhelmingly winning record. If a player has 5 wins and 1 loss, the game should try where possible to match them into an opponent with 5 wins and 1 loss. Obviously due to player base size that won't always work out, but the algorithm should at least try, if there isn't another player in queue with 5 wins, then look for a player with 4 wins or 6 wins, etc. The point is, if you are losing, your competition should get softer and if you are winning your competition should get stiffer.

Anyway those are my thoughts on Draft currently. Overall its a pretty fun mode and I'd recommend at least giving it a go. Hopefully it keeps improving in the future.