4Game

I'd like to discuss Auberon for a minute and explain why I feel he's in serious need of a buff to get him close to the power levels of Skelliges Harald.

I'm going to compare their potentials purely from a round 3 point of view (as this is when they're most commonly used, and when they're both at their most powerful) which means they'll have transformed into Auberon Conqueror, and Harald The Cripple.

Both cards are at 5 strength / 12 provisions, and the reason I'm choosing Harald as my competitor for Auberon is because their abilities are fairly similar, in that they bring another bronze unit to the board when they're played, and they both have a 1 point rolling additional ability depending on what units you play next.

Auberon works with Wild Hunt units, of which there are 8 bronzes and 7 golds = 15 total. Must point out however that 1 of the golds is the Winter Queen which gets pulled from deck and never played from hand.

Harald works with Warriors of which there are 21 bronzes, and 19 golds = 40 total.

Auberon creates a bronze WH unit of which you get to pick from a random choice of 3, and 5 out of 8 of these bronzes require dominance to get their full value.

Harald allows you to choose which ever bronze warrior you want, from which ever you've put into your graveyard over the course of the game, which is a much more solid and reliable ability. This is because it is not random, has been purposefully set up by the user in rounds 1 and 2, and allows the user to pick which ever warrior best suits the current board/game situation.

Following on from their deploy abilities, Harald's 1 point pings is a slightly worse ability than Auberon's 1 point buffs (as the pings can hit shields and armour) however the 1 point pings do have the potential to create Bloodthirst which is a very powerful and commonly used tool in Skelliges arsenal. Where as the 1 point buffs from Auberon will hardly help achieve the need for Monster's dominance. Couple this with the fact that Skellige have a MUCH greater pool of warriors at their disposal, this gives Harald a huge advantage over the price-matched Auberon.

So to sum up: Harald has a much more versatile and reliable deploy ability, and the 1 point pings assist with the need for Bloodthirst. Also he benefits from having 40 available warriors to choose from. Auberon's deploy ability can be reasonable if RNG blesses you with a sweet choice from the 3, but the majority of the 8 bronze cards require dominance to be any good. Without dominance, the Aen Elle Conqueror for 7+1 points is the only decent pull (if RNG is kind). Harald does not need RNG, nor dominance to be able to put a Tuirseach Invader on the board for the same 7+1 points.

What does Auberon need then? It's been suggested many a time that he creates a bronze WH unit from your starting deck. This would most commonly be Conqueror, Bruiser and Rider. A lot of people however would claim that creating a rider, and pulling the other 2 from the deck is far too strong. This could be avoided if the wording for Riders ability was changed from 'summon all copies' to 'summon a copy'. Perhaps the WH bronze that Auberon creates should have no need for dominance to take the sting out of all the times we get the choice of Navigator/Hound/Warrior. Perhaps a simple change to Auberons provisions is the way to go.

Please discuss and lets see if we can balance Auberon. Thank you.

TLDR: Auberon's deploy ability is far inferior to that of Haralds (due to RNG). Auberon's 1 point buff to WH units has very little benefit compared to Harald's pings which set up 'bloodthirst'. And Monsters only have a pool of 15 WH units as opposed to Skelliges 40 Warriors.