Today I had one of the most disappointing losses in Gwent.

As a long-time Monster player, I played against a Skellige deck today with – you guessed it – Eist.

I was using a homebrew vampire/thrive deck, and I knew that my only chance of winning against Eist is to win round 1, bleed round 2, and have last say on round 3. So I did it.

Round 1 wasn't too hard, I was able to outpower my opponent with Detlaff and a few bronze vampires.

Pushing in Round 2 was risky as Skellige is very strong in short rounds with big tempo swings and control cards, and if I end up with a card down to start Round 3, it's game over for me. Luckily, I managed to bleed my opponent down to 3 cards with my Golyat, Yghern, Crimson Curse, and Orianna.

And so we started off Round 3 with 6 cards each – I managed to save all 3 of my Carapace leader charges in order to play the biggest Ozzrel possible (1+13+3×3=23 points), and I swapped out almost all my units for specials just so my opponent can't get any value off of his cards. I'm left with Predatory Dive, Feast of Blood (x2), Heatwave, Nekurat (discarded to graveyard later), and my Big Ozzy.

Now, you might ask why I discarded my Nekurat instead of putting it on board get bleeding value out of my two Feast of Blood. That's because my opponent still has Blood Eagle on his hand, and I didn't want him to pull out yet another warrior from his deck. My 3-point Nekurat won't survive on board for long anyway.

I used all my special cards to counter my opponent's Totem, Protector, Greatsword, and Tyrggvi. I then discarded my Nekurat and he discarded his Blood Eagle. In his last turn, he played Eist followed by Blaze of Glory which summoned Jutta – That's 5+12=17 points in one turn, excluding a max. 12-point damage to any units I could've had on board.

Along with his remaining Svablod Fanatic and damaged Greatsword, my opponent ended Round 3 with 27 points on board. My Big Ozzy (23) could not catch up to that, even with 3 valuable charges of Carapace.

I don't mean to post this as a rant, but just wanna share that sometimes you could play out your hand perfectly and still lose in the end, whether it's due to your opponent having better cards/strategies or well, something I consider to be way too overpowered for the game.

After the match, I stared at my ceiling for a good while. I'm sad and disappointed, after what was like my 3rd straight game against Eist today with a sprinkle of very interactive Scoia'tael Trap decks for dessert.

P.S. Now that I think of it, the description of Blaze of Glory reads "Move a Skellige unit from your deck to your graveyard, then damage an enemy unit by its power.", shouldn't that not be counted as "discarding a unit from deck" and triggering Eist's ability?

P.P.S. On my last turn, I simply discarded my Ozzrel to my graveyard instead of playing it out. My opponent sent out his "Thank you" emote, perhaps he felt my hopelessness and pain? lol