It's no secret that over the past couple of months, posts and comments complaining about Golden Nekker, and, this month, Sihil, have been extremely prominent. To be honest, I've had a lot of difficulty understanding where people are coming from in reasonably justifying that these cards are overpowered. I'll get in to why I think that in a moment.
Putting that aside for a second, it's especially frustrating seeing how many people, while talking about the game's meta and balance, choose to insult the game developers' intelligence and good will simply because they don't like the current meta. Seriously guys, what are you thinking when you do this? The devs work hard to create content and balance a small, niche game running off of a basic system unlike any other card game on the market. Insulting them is childish and uncalled for. I've been playing this game for a very long time, and believe me when I say this game has had some horrible metas before, certainly worse than any recent ones, and it will have some horrible metas in the future. Welcome to multiplayer video games. If you're getting frustrated enough by the state of the meta enough that you're jumping online to insult the devs and whatnot, maybe it's time to take a break. Gwent can wait. There's a difference between constructive criticism and vitriolic negativity.
Moving on to the cards themselves, I'll start with Golden Nekker. I've found myself absolutely astonished by the amount of complaints and cries for nerfs I've seen against this card, and it really seems to only be present, in my experience, on this sub. It requires a highly restrictive deckbuilding condition (which includes needing enough of each type of card, on top of the provision restriction) and its randomness makes it highly inconsistent, easily being able to brick, and is unable to be played early. Every other post and comment I see complaining about it talks about it with phrases like "30 for 9!!!" and "3 cards in 1 turn!!" as if these both aren't extremely unfair and incorrect ways to evaluate a card. The "3 cards in 1 turn" criticism is particularly egregious, as it is often referenced alongside the removal of "play an extra card" leader abilities, despite the fact that Golden Nekker is almost impossible to reliably combo with, and avoids the same problems that the "multiple cards in a turn" leader abilities brought forth.
Golden Nekker was exactly what the Ciri Nova restriction needed. Prior to its release, Ciri Nova was borderline unplayable except, for a time, in Kolgrim Clog decks. Why? Because it prevented the polarization, and thus the "rule of 16," that Gwent deckbuilding highly encouraged. Golden Nekker allowed these decks to actually work, because, by playing extra cards, it let you actually get the value from your provisions that the ability to, at base, only play 16 cards from your hand in a single game normally prevents, and I applaud CDPR for recognizing that that was the type of card the Ciri Nova restriction needed. This is, in part, the same reason you see GN decks play Roach and Knickers -because it's essential for these decks to be able to get value out of their deck without needing to play the cards themselves. The other reason is for tempo and Aerondight, which are actually problematic things for this game, but that's besides the extent of this post. GN isn't overpowered, just viable, which is where it should be.
Playing with these heavy deckbuilding restrictions should be strong and have good payoff, as Devotion (used to) be, and GN itself is highly limited by its restriction, on top of being inconsistent and potentially bricking. It's not like it's even some unit with a nuts effect that you have to listen to the voiceline for every game, it's literally just playing other cards from their deck, so I don't even think it's at all unfun to play against repeatedly.
I won't go into too much depth on Sihil, but it also doesn't seem like an overpowered card either. I think the overwhelmingly negative response against it on this sub has been for a couple reasons:
- It's being played everywhere. The reason for this is because it's the one new (very big) build-around card we got this patch, and it's a rework of a classic card that has been dead for years. People are going to play it, they want to have fun with the new toy.
- It's a polarizing card. This isn't because it's overpowered per se, but because the game largely becomes decided at the beginning, rather than the end. You're either able to keep their Sihil from growing off the ground, or you can't. This, in of itself, is problematic design, but it doesn't mean it's overpowered.
As a whole, it sort of feels like many on this sub just kinda complain about whatever gets played the most, overpowered or not, even when it's just some gimmicky combo deck a popular youtuber/streamer played like the AQ Gerni deck from a few months back. I just wish people here weren't so quick to blindly jump on a hatewagon for some deck they got crushed by without even thinking about what they could have done differently to beat it. I know this game can be unfun when you lose to something, but there's a lot of ways to identify why you lost other than "My opponent's cards need to get nerfed."
With all that said, complaints about things like the tempo meta and Aerondight among others are entirely valid when done with tact. Please stop insulting the devs and projecting all this overwhelming, vitriolic negativity because you're unhappy with something in the game. Thank you to all who read my giant rant.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/comments/usj60f/unpopular_opinion_golden_nekker_and_sihil_are/
