Hope the design paradigm shift but I doubt it

Some of these new cards look pretty interesting. I'm hoping these are the beginning of a broader trend to get rid of some of the design goals that have gotten the game feeling frustrating.

At the moment, Gwent revolves around a small collection of cards that are essentially broken. Why we are stuck with this small group of broken cards is an interesting question but I think it largely revolves around a well-intentioned but misguided attempt by the developers to give each faction some sort of identity…when fundamentally, that's what the art is for and everything else is just adding and subtracting points. This goal has lead to NG (and now SY to some extent) having a distinct advantage over every other faction because they are playing chess while the other factions are largely playing solitaire. The solitaire decks rely on capitalizing on various synergies to try to get their points and NG mostly works to frustrate that and steal as many points as possible while they are doing it. I'm glad to see NG moving away from poison, which was a miserable mechanic, but I'd like to see the game either give powerful removal cards to each faction or abandon them. Heatwave should be tossed and faction-specific cards that have to be integrated into an actual strategy should replace them. I think these new cards are a step in that direction so I'm hopeful, but I guess we'll see.

The blue stripes kind of epitomize this whole conundrum. The idea was a really interesting idea, the lore and the cards are cool, and it represents what is still sort of an unusual, 3-round strategy (though to my mind spellatael is basically their own version but with less dependence on orders). But I see the blue stripes as one of the primary reasons NG was structured the way it is. And it invited disruption because it was not a very interactive strategy. The developers really need to concentrate on giving each faction a few different options. Give each of them a point slam build, give each of them a control build, make devotion decks worth it for each faction, etc. That's how you'll get happier players and deck diversity… Anyway, happy to see some MO graveyard disruption, hope it plays well.