Let’s talk Geralt: Yrden, shall we?

This is the definition of a busted card; that is, it's either an auto-win, or it's completely bricked. Due to the nature of the card, many players, myself included, believe it is toxic and used simply as an effortless get-out-of-jail-free card.

Most decks that are affected by it require multiple turns if setup, if not the whole round, and after being reset, have essentially waisted five or so minutes of their life (or however long the round was) because everything they did was just erased.

The problem is, many NR decks revolve around boost, and many combinations essentially require the player to boost in the one row. It seems CDPR encourages NR players to row stack boosts with cards like Anna.

Yrden used to be a high risk high reward card against players who abused certain arch-types, however the risk with this card is essentially gone, now that cards like Oneiromancy and Snowdrop exist, making this Yrden punishment for anyone who wants to make a deck that utilizes boosts.

It therefore discourages certain play-styles and and enables other players cheap easy win. Greedy decks may be dealt with using control decks or outpacing them. In the loading screen of the game, it will sometimes even say that "if left unchecked, NR can grow out of control." That's the key word — unchecked. The opponent should be able to stop NR from growing crazy out-of-control, for example, throughout the match, but a be all end all card, that allows the opponent to completely negate everything the other player has done, while still being able to pointslam themselves and making no sacrifice to their play-style, is unhealthy for the game and frankly, quite frustrating against which to play. Outpaced by the opponent? No need to setup control measures, simply use Oneiromancy on the final turn to Yrden them and continue whatever you were trying to do.

Adrenaline is a keyword that was designed essentially for potentially broken mechanics, such as this one, to keep them in check; Yrden, on the hand is designed to keep crazy greedy decks in check and the idea is solid, but the card needs to be toned down a few notches.

Fixing the card the u/xinnie_the_wuflooh way:

Geralt: Yrden:
3 power, 10 provisions
Deploy: Reset the power of all the units on the targeted row
Adrenaline 2: Reset the power of two units, instead.
Adrenaline 0: Reset the power of two adjacent units, instead.

This makes for a check to crazily greedy decks, while allowing the the opponent to still ultimately gain value from their tedious setup, but forces them to watch out for Yrden as well, as it could cause massive damage, without likely being overkill. This makes for a more engaging, less binary, more balanced, and overall less frustrating interaction when playing against this card.

Everyone complains about greedy decks, but you know what the greediest deck of all is? Viy. Viy has no checks. No counters. He's completely uninteractive. Why shouldn't he have any checks?

I understand that with the change I proposed, defenders, like Donimir may now potentially be seen as a get-of-jail-free card, on the receiving end of Yrden, but I also have issues with defenders.

Next week on r/gwent :

Defenders: Let's discuss, shall we?

Edit: TL;DR:
"yRDeN iS fiNE REeeEeEeEe. iT CoUntERs gReEDy DeCKs brRRrRR. thERE aRe WOrKarOUnDs DUuUUuUhhhHhHh"