Let’s talk NR Mages/Patience

Ok so I spammed quite a few games in pro rank with various NR Mage/Patience decks and wanted to share my thoughts hopefully for CDPR to read. I'm not going to focus on power level as IMO it is disadvantaged against numerous current meta decks. This is more to discuss new cards from a gameplay design perspective.

Aretuza Student – Although a worse version of Ban Ard Student, still basically auto-include as it is better than most other 4p NR cards due to powercreep

Practice Makes Perfect – An awkward, super situational, RNG card with high potential upside. Its a card you want to play later for full value, but has a very high chance to be a 0 point brick in later rounds. Anti-synergy with Shani, and it has RNG in terms of what is pulled from your deck. As is I don't believe this card will ever see play, however it is quite a powerful situational card to use with Gerhart.

-My suggestion: The card should be non-RNG option for Patience carryover. I would suggest that it shuffles the target card to the bottom of your deck and pulls the top bronze Mage from your deck. This guarantees Patience carryover (if you have tutor/access to the bottom of your deck) and limits potential highroll of pulling the same Mage back out of your deck (unless it is the only bronze Mage remaining in your deck). I would also like to see it be able to target any bronze because it is too easy to brick, although this might be too big of a buff. I do think the 0 point floor has to be upped in some fashion for it to see play.

Leticia – You hardly ever get value out of her, however given how opponents react to her (I've seen numerous opponents use full leader to deal with her), I believe she is fine as is. In the off-chance she survives you can usually win R1 and develop some potential carryover. Basically a 7p Melusine.

Tissaia – Everybody knows how bad this card is so I won't rehash that but I will just point out how awkward this card is. To get good value from it you need to play a bunch of patience engines which you typically are playing in R1. This may change with the last card drop in 2 months but I'm pretty skeptical this card will ever see play as is. I think they need to at least remove the condition that the order has to be used the same turn she is played.

Last thing of note on the patience archetype as a whole. The whole point of the Patience mechanic should be the carryover mechanic. Right now the only practical way to do that is with Shani. So combined with my Practice Makes Perfect suggestion above, what the archetype really needs is a high end tutor. So perhaps Tissaia can be reworked or one of the future card drops gives us that tutor and now the archetype starts to become really fleshed out. Something like a gold tutor that allows you play 2 bronze Mages from your deck. This also has some synergy with Istredd as well.